Spitalfields Life

Following Part 1. A Discovery At Christmas and Part 2. Christmas On The Moor, this is the concluding piece in a series of three short memoirs, revealing the contents of a locked box that my father carried his whole life and telling the story it contained, which I discovered after his death.

Peter & Gwladys

This is the only photograph of my grandmother, Gwladys Brown, and my father, Peter, yet even in this image – taken in Exeter in 1924 – she appears to be fading like a ghost, just as she vanished from his life and from the world after he had been adopted. I only learnt of her existence in 2001 when I opened a locked box after my father died and discovered a dozen of her letters which revealed she was a single mother who had been forced to give him up as a baby.

These letters comprise Gwladys’ account of the unravelling of her life – my father’s adoption and her confinement in a tuberculosis sanatorium on Dartmoor for ten months. Only one subsequent letter exists, written on the day she was discharged to a nursing home, suggesting that the treatment at the sanatorium was ineffective and, in the absence of any further correspondence or information, I can only conclude that she died there.

Looking back over the correspondence, I am puzzled at how Gwladys found herself alone and without any family or relatives in the small cathedral city of Exeter. Just as the father of her child was unidentified, she seemed to have sprung from nowhere. How fortunate she was to have the support of my adoptive grandmother, Edith, an entrepreneurial middle-aged woman who ran a fish and chip shop and rented out her yard for bicycle storage to the crowds visiting the local football ground. With her husband, a newspaper seller and rent collector, they adopted my father and – perhaps as an attempt to put the tragedy behind them – moved from a terrace in the city centre to a new house in a small estate along the river, where my father grew up.

Accompanying the letters in the box was Peter’s birth certificate with the official truth spelled out, confirming Gwladys Brown as his mother and without any name listed for his father. Peter was too young to understand what happened to him when he was given up and it seems unlikely he had any memory of his mother. He used to tell me about the poor children with no shoes that he saw in the street when he was a child. It was a memory that haunted him and I think he was relieved that he had been spared.

The couple who adopted my father had a daughter of their own and my father used to take me to visit her on Sunday mornings when I was small child but, once I started preparatory school, these visits ceased and I never saw her again. I wonder if this was a deliberate separation between his old life and his new on his part. From the moment I was born, my name was put down for a private school and throughout my childhood my parents struggled to find the fees even at the reduced rate we paid, thanks to a means test that my father tolerated in silent humiliation. I realise now that my father worked his whole life to become middle-class and, though as an adolescent I found it embarrassing, I have come to appreciate the virtue in possessing the facility to take control of your life rather than existing at the mercy of circumstances, as my grandmother had done.

It was a matter of great shame to my father that, at eleven years old, he went to work in a foundry, yet he redressed this degradation through his prowess on the football pitch and whenever I walked through the city with him he was always greeted by fellow players who had become his lifelong friends. It was at the peak of his sporting success that he met my mother, an educated woman from a classy background. Her liberal mind and his social aspiration bound them together, yet also rendered them baffling to each other.

The achievement of my university education fulfilled both their ambitions, even if my father was disturbed to witness the mental exertion of academic study close up. “You can only do your best,” he reassured me once, on discovering me in a delirious state of exhaustion, “I only want you to be able to do what you please in life.” I realise that much of who I am today came from the direction I was given by my father in reaction to that crisis of 1923. But, in his final years, he told me several times he was satisfied with his own life and its outcome, and I believe Gwladys would have been gratified to learn what became of her child.

I often wonder when my father first read his mother’s letters and I think he made the box to contain them himself when he was a young man, as part of the process of fashioning his own world. I believe he chose to preserve the letters and keep them safe his whole life as a tender remembrance of her. I have also kept all the letters and cards that my parents ever wrote to me and, now that both are dead, I cannot part with any of their missives.

I understand why my father needed to keep his story secret and I deliberated whether to tell my mother, until I realised that if my father had wished to tell her then he had already done so. In the years prior to his death, she had suffered bouts of mental illness and his loss accelerated her confusion, so the question of whether to reveal the contents of the locked box quickly grew irrelevant.

It was a lonely responsibility Peter carried but I believe the all-consuming drama of life took him away from sadness and grief. In a sense, he could ‘forget’ about the contents of his box, even if he could never destroy it. I like to think he kept it for me to find after he had gone.

My dearest Mrs -, You will be surprise to hear that I am at Ivy Banks. I came down today. I am here for a couple of months. The Dr at Hawkmoor thinks I have been there too long, ten months this week, & another change will do me good. How are you getting on? Sorry to have kept you so long for a letter but have been so poorly again, have been in bed three weeks & still in bed. I came all the way by car with a nurse. How dear I would love to see you come and see me. Come down, I expect you know the visiting hours, 2 till 5 o’clock in the afternoon, I would love to see you. Being so far away at Hawkmoor I had no chance of seeing anybody. Of course dear, you know I have never forgotten you & I never should. In fact I thought of you such a lot while I was at Hawkmoor. Excuse short letter but in haste for post. Would love to see any of you. Pop in, it do cheer one up. Hope all are well. All my dearest love to you all, Gwladys xxxx Peter love  xxx

Peter Brown

The couple who adopted Peter

Peter’s first bicycle

Peter as a boy

Peter in 1990

Gwladys Brown

You may also like to read

Part 1. A Discovery At Christmas

Part 2. Christmas On The Moor

The White Hart c. 1800 by John Thomas Smith

Charles Goss, one of the first archivists at the Bishopsgate Institute, was in thrall to the romance of old Bishopsgate and in 1930 he wrote a lyrical history of The White Hart, which he believed to be its most ancient tavern – originating as early as 1246.

At the end of the year which saw last orders called at The White Hart forever, I have been reading Goss’ account to compose this elegy for one of London’s oldest inns.

“Its history as an inn can be of little less antiquity than that of the Tabard, the lodging house of the feast-loving Chaucer and the Canterbury pilgrims, or the Boar’s Head in Eastcheap, the rendezvous of Prince Henry and his lewd companions.” – CWF Goss

In Goss’ time, Bishopsgate still contained medieval shambles that were spared by the Fire of London and he recalled the era before the coming of the railway, when the street was lined with old coaching inns, serving as points of departure and arrival for travellers to and from the metropolis. “During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, The White Hart tavern was at the height of its prosperity.” he wrote fondly, “It was a general meeting place of literary men of the neighbourhood and the rendezvous of politicians and traders, and even noblemen visited it.”

The White Hart’s history is interwoven with the founding of the Hospital of St Mary Bethlehem in 1246 by Simon Fitz Mary, whose house once stood upon the site of the tavern. He endowed his land in Bishopsgate, extending beneath the current Liverpool St Station, to the monastery and Goss believed the brothers stayed in Fitz Mary’s mansion once they first arrived from Palestine, until the hospital was constructed in 1257 with the gatehouse situated where Liverpool St meets Bishopsgate today. This dwelling may have subsequently became a boarding house for pilgrims outside the City gate and when the first licences to sell sweet wines were issued to three taverns in Bishopsgate in August 1365, this is likely to have been the origin of the White Hart’s status as a tavern.

Yet, ten years later in 1375, Edward III took possession of the monastery as an “alien priory’ and turned it over to become a hospital for the insane. The gateway was replaced in the reign of Richard II and the date ‘1480’ that adorned the front of the inn until the nineteenth century suggests it was rebuilt with a galleried yard at the same time and renamed The White Hart, acquiring Richard’s badge as its own symbol. The galleried yard offered the opportunity for theatrical performances, while increased traffic in Bishopsgate and the reputation of Shoreditch as a place of entertainments drew the audience.

“Vast numbers of stage coaches, wagons, chaises and carriages passed through Bishopsgate St at this time,” wrote Goss excitedly, “Travellers and carriers arriving near the City after the gates had been closed or those who for other reasons desired to remain outside the City wall until the morning, would naturally put up at one of the galleried inns, or taverns near the City gate and The White Hart was esteemed to be one of the most important taverns at that time. Here they would find small private rooms, where the visitors not only took their meals but transacted all manner of business and, if the food dispensed was good enough, the wine strong, the feather beds deep and heavily curtained, the bedrooms were certainly cold and draughty, for the doors opened onto unprotected galleries – but apparently they were comfortable enough for travellers in former days.”

The occasion of Charles Goss’ history of The White Hart was the centenary of its rebuilding upon its original foundations in 1829, yet although the medieval structure above ground was replaced, Goss was keen to emphasise that, “When the tavern was taken down it was found to be built upon cellars constructed in earlier centuries. Those were not destroyed, but were again used in the construction of the present house.” This rebuilding coincided with Bedlam Gate being removed and the road widened and renamed Liverpool St, after the Hospital of St Mary Bethlehem had transferred to Lambeth in 1815. At this time, the date ‘1246 ‘- referring to the founding of the monastery – was placed upon the pediment on The White Hart where it may be seen to this day.

“This tavern which claims to be endowed with the oldest licence in London, is still popular, for its various compartments appear always to be well patronised during the legal hours they are open for refreshment and there can be none of London’s present-day inns which can trace its history as far back as The White Hart, Bishopsgate,” concluded Goss in satisfaction in 1930.

In 2011, permission was granted by the City of London to demolish all but the facade of The White Hart and this year the pub shut for the last time to permit the construction of a nine storey cylindrical office block of questionable design, developed by Sir Alan Sugar’s company Amsprop. Thus passes The White Hart after more than seven centuries in Bishopsgate, and I am glad Charles Goss is not here to see it.

The White Hart from a drawing by George Shepherd, 1810

White Hart Court, where the coaches once drove through to the galleried yard of the White Hart

Design by Inigo Jones for buildings constructed in White Hart Court in 1610

Seventeenth century tavern token, “At The White Hart”

Reverse of the Tavern Token ” At Bedlam Gate 1637″

The White Hart as it appeared in 1787

The White Hart, prior to the rebuilding of 1829

The White Hart in recent years

The White Hart as it stands today

Amsprop’s impression of the future of The White Hart as a facade to a cylindrical office building.

Archive images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute

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Bishopsgate Tavern Tokens

Piggott Brothers of Bishopsgate

At Dirty Dick’s

J.W.Stutter, Cutlers Ltd

At James Ince & Sons, Umbrella Makers

Vivian Betts of Bishopsgate

Charles Goss’ Bishopsgate Photographs

The Romance of Old Bishopsgate

Tallis’ Street Views of Bishopsgate 1838

Following Part 1. A Discovery At Christmas, this is the second in a series of three short memoirs, revealing the contents of a locked box that my father carried his whole life and telling the story it contained, which I discovered after his death.

Gwladys Brown, 3rd September 1917, aged 22

After Peter, my father, died in October 2001, I collected all the old photographs in the house and attempted to identify them, but there were many people from the time before I was born whom I did not recognise. I arranged those who were familiar to me in a series of photo albums, while those who were unknown were reluctantly consigned to a box.

At Christmas that year, when I opened my father’s padlocked document chest and discovered a series of letters from Gwladys Brown, revealing that she had been compelled to give him up as a baby – a secret so painful that he carried it his whole life – I returned to the box of photographs seeking pictures of her. Labelled in Gwladys’ own handwriting that I recognised from her letters, I found this photograph of her looking so bright and full of life, and it was a curious sensation to recognise my own features in her face. This image of Gwladys had always been in our house but I never looked at it before because I did not know who she was.

Now that Gwladys is present in my life as my grandmother, the intimate quality of this photograph fascinates me and I find myself scrutinising it to ascertain the precise emotional timbre of the picture. Even though it was taken six years before she gave birth to my father, I cannot separate the portrait from this event and I equivocate between seeing composure and uncertainty in her beautiful features. Most of all I am consoled to recognise the sense of dignity and self-possession apparent, reflecting the courage and strength of mind revealed in her writing.

Among the dozen of Gwladys’ letters to my father’s adoptive mother that I discovered in his box were a series written from Hawkmoor Sanatorium, Bovey Tracey. I found that once Gwladys had returned to her work as a housemaid in the employ of Mrs Dimond, after she had given birth to my father in 1923 and a friend had agreed to adopt him, a further crisis overcame her. At first, when Gwladys wrote repeatedly  of “feeling bad” I understood this as a reference to her grief but, once I learnt that Hawkmoor was a hospital built at the edge of Dartmoor for patients suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis, her language took on its true meaning.

Gwladys’ account of her bizarre treatment at Hawkmoor, which included sleeping in unheated chalets in winter with the doors open to admit rain and snow, makes you wonder how she survived such harsh therapy in her vulnerable condition.

Dear Mrs -, At last I am writing to you as I promised to. Well dear, it is lovely place up here & such nice views you can see right down on the moors. You will be pleased to hear that I am much better & my cough has gone thank goodness. I don’t take medicine, they just keep you out in the air all day. We all have to go for a long walk every day. You need some strong shoes up here as the walks we go on are so muddy and stones, it cuts your shoes awful. I am getting quite sunburnt. Must tell you I had nice company when I got out at Bovey Station, she was going to Hawkmoor as well so it was nice to have company. There was a car at the station waiting for us, so we had a lovely ride. It is a good three miles from the station. I have breakfast in bed for a bit, must tell you we have to rest before dinner at 11:50 to 12:50 & again before tea at 4:50 t0 5:50. We have breakfast at 8 o’clock, dinner at 1 o’clock & tea at 6, bed at half past 8. We see the Dr every morning & get examined every month. There are such a lot of women & they are so jolly, & such a lot of men. It is pitiful to see some of the men up here, poor things, & a lot of them are married. We had 3 more came in today, so they are getting full up again now. I expect I shall only be here for 3 months. How I would love to see you all, but I must wait until I come back & then I will come up & see you. How are you getting dear? How I do think of you, as you have been a good friend to me, like a mother. It do seem hard to get down bad like this through hard work. Well dear there is only one post out a day here & that is 4 o’clock. So we have to write pretty early to catch post as the time goes so quickl. By the time we have been for our walks & then rest hours, it don’t give you much time. I do hope you will write to me as I don’t get many letters. I do wonder how little Mary is getting on. Well dear, I must stop now as I shall miss the post. Hoping you are keeping well & dear little Peter. My love to you all, Evelyn, John, Mr – , also dear little Peter from Gwladys xxxxx Hoping to hear from you soon dear. I will write again when I hear from you xxx future

My Dearest Mrs -, You will think I am unkind not to answer your last letter but really dear I have not been very well. I caught a nasty chill & had to stay in bed a fortnight, but glad to say I am much better & about again. What would I give to see you again. Am longing to come home & see you. I don’t think I shall be home for Xmas. Must tell you it is a bitter cold place here in winter. We sleep out in the open & when it rains it comes right in & you are not allowed to shut any doors & the wind nearly blows you out of bed. We have had dreadful weather, rain every day. We had a lot of snow yesterday. It is so pretty to see the children playing with the snow, it makes me think of dear little Peter. I do think of him such a lot in this cold weather wondering how he is keeping, bless him. It is awful here, no fires at all, have not seen a fire since I left home. I guess you have got a lovely fire now. I can just picture John sitting around it. I don’t know what sort of Xmas they spend here. Have you made your Xmas pudding yet? I hope you will send me a little bit to taste. It will seem more like a Xmas to me if I taste a bit of pudding. Glad to say I am putting on weight so I must be getting better…

My photograph of the view from Haytor towards Bovey Tracey at Christmas 2002

You may also like to read the beginning of this story

Part 1. A Discovery at Christmas