Colin O’Brien at the Fair
Last month, after Colin O’Brien & I interviewed Anna Carter of Carters’ Steam Fair in Victoria Park, Colin went back alone to take photographs of the fair in action, which I am delighted to publish today alongside a selection of his earlier fairground pictures stretching back over half a century.
“I can remember when I first went to the fair, it was 1946 when I was six years old,” Colin admitted to me fondly, “My father came back from the war in 1945 and took me to the Victory celebrations in Piccadilly Circus, but I was scared of the crowds – so, the next year, he took me to the fair on Hampstead Heath and I wasn’t scared of the crowd because I liked the movement and the colour. I always feel safe in a fairground crowd just as I do in a market crowd, and I love the cries of the stallholders. But I don’t like the rides so much, I’m scared of the Big Dipper and I’ve never been on it to this day. My favourite has always been the Dodgems, even before I could drive and it was my father at the wheel, it was fantastic.”
Colin’s fairground pictures fascinate me because, in spite of all the changes in the world, there are many instances where the rides themselves have barely changed at all. “It is has been a formative subject in my photography because, when I didn’t have any money and couldn’t afford to go on the rides, I used to take pictures instead,” Colin told to me, revealing how he compensated imaginatively for his own for lack of resources and how that fired his creativity during those threadbare years.
Rather than feeling excluded, Colin delights in witnessing others’ joy. “Fairgrounds are a wonderful subject, because I enjoy seeing people enjoying themselves and, during the war and after the war, people didn’t get many opportunities to enjoy themselves,” he confided to me.
Photographs copyright © Colin O’Brien
Carters Steam Fair is at Westway Common, Caterham, this weekend and at Croxley Green next weekend, 14th & 15th September.
You may like to look at these other pictures by Colin O’Brien
Colin O’Brien’s Clerkenwell Car Crashes
Colin O’Brien’s Kids on the Street
Travellers’ Children in London Fields
Colin O’Brien’s Brick Lane Market
On Saturday 7th September 1940
Tom Betts
On Saturday 7th September 1940, life changed abruptly for twelve-year-old Tom Betts. It was the first day of the London Blitz, when bombs came raining down from the sky upon the East End and, that night, one fell into the shelter beneath the Old Columbia Market, where Tom and his family took refuge. It exploded killing more than forty people and, although Tom was seriously injured, he was lucky to escape with his life. Yet the events of that night brought an unexpected and sudden end to his childhood.
“I am happy to say that although my story was horrific, my life has been good since.” Tom reassured me when I spoke with him, “I went into the RAF at seventeen years old and then married at twenty-two in 1950. I became a specialist school teacher and I have a great and active life which I share with my lovely wife Betsy and two children.”
When Tom and Betsy asked to join the housing list in Bethnal Green after the war, they were told there was a twenty-five year wait. But then Tom learnt that new homes were being offered in the new town of Corby in return for six weeks work. “I got a job running the first bowling alley and I got a house, and that was beautiful,” he informed me in fond recollection.
Tom rarely visits Bethnal Green, the location of his formative experiences, anymore. It has changed almost beyond recognition, yet today he is returning to lay a wreath in Columbia Rd in remembrance of the events of that other Saturday, more than seventy years ago, when life broke apart.
“It was a very warm, cloudless Saturday, just like any other early September day. We lived in Columbia Buildings in Bethnal Green, part of a grand project built by Madam Burdett Coutts – of the banking world – as a philanthropic venture in the eighteen-sixties. It was an enormous Gothic creation that comprised a covered market, accommodation for several hundred, plus shops and storage for the traders. We had our own church, swimming pool and baths, and the luxury of a laundry on the fifth floor – it was by no means the typical East End block of flats, it was something far more majestic.
That Saturday, after my mother had cooked breakfast for my brother & me, I went out with friends knocking on doors to take orders of coke from the local gas works. Doing our bit for the war effort earned us threepence a sack which was enough to buy pie and eels, and also the means to go to the Saturday cinema. In the afternoon, the sirens began but since we had some light air raids in the previous nights, we were not too alarmed. Yet that day was different, there was much more anti-aircraft gun activity, so we were more curious and climbed up six floors onto the roof to take a better look. There were hundreds of German airplanes, flying so low that the crosses on their wings were clear to see. Then bombs began dropping from them and landing on the docks. It was bizarre – I remember looking down at the square below where children were playing, oblivious to the destruction not too far away.
Eventually, the all-clear sounded and because of the raid my mother was late for the weekly shopping trip into Bethnal Green Road. It took about an hour to buy the weekend groceries and our usual Superman comics. When we arrived home, we found that the water to the flats had been cut off. We learned later that this was due to the amount of water being used to fight the fires and, as evening came, the flames from the docks were very bright. I was sent to the standpipe in the next street to fetch water and I had just filled my bucket when a woman came out to tell us she had heard on the radio that another wave of bombers were on their way. So, fearing an even more ferocious attack, I raced home to persuade my mother to go to the shelter – a large area previously used as storage under the Market Square.
We were not too familiar with the shelter and had only used it once before, when there was light bombing. It was large – about one and a half football pitches in size, divided it into two equal parts by a wall. We had all been given the luxury of a sheet of corrugated metal to sleep on. The shelter began to get warmer and, with over a hundred people down there, it became very hot. Everyone was calm and in one spot there was a wedding party going on they were laughing and singing. The noise outside told us all that bombs were falling and the occasional rumble indicated they were getting closer.
As the night went on I must have fallen asleep, but I remember feeling very uncomfortable and hearing my mother next to me, chatting to my aunt. All that I can recollect after that was feeling giddy and sick. Still feeling very giddy, I opened my eyes. It was dark. I could hear screams and whistles. Startled, I remembered where I was and began to feel around for my mother and brother, as it was impossible to see. The air was full of dust and it was pitch black. In the far distance I could see a tiny light from a small bulb. I could not get my bearings. Still lying on the ground, I focused on the dim glow coming from that bulb in the distance. It was hanging above the exit doors.
I saw silhouettes of people pouring out of these doors, so I began to crawl towards the source of the light and I crawled over a sheet of metal covered by a blanket where a woman sat. She screamed at me to get off as she did not want her blanket covered in blood, but her words made no sense – what blood was she talking about? I felt my head. I had assumed that the sticky liquid I could feel was perspiration. It wasn’t. I began to realise that I was the source of the blood she was referring to.
As I neared the light, I realised fully what had happened and remembered that within the shelter was a First Aid room, as I had been to it as a volunteer to be bandaged up weeks earlier. So, instead of going into the street, I pushed my way towards the First Aid room and, after I nearly forced the door, they let me in. Inside, there were about twenty people including one of my friends. A nurse bandaged my head and we sat in there for what seemed like hours. When the ambulance cars arrived, I was led by two ARP wardens out into the street that was as light as day from the glow of the fires. The warden who was holding my arm asked me to put on a blanket that he held. He said it was for shock. The converted ambulance took me to the Mildmay Mission Hospital where they were really working hard, looking after dozens of casualties.
After being re-bandaged, I was taken onto another ambulance – this time with four stretchers in it and an attendant First Aid worker. It was an horrendous journey, all the time the raid continued, and often we stopped and turned around to avoid blocked streets. At one stage, the woman First Aider who was with us told the driver, through the slot in the cab, that the man on the stretcher above me had died. This really did scare me and when she touched me on the head I shouted out, “I’m not dead.” I am glad she believed me. The driver tried several hospitals and I could hear them saying, “Sorry mate we are full.” Eventually, a hospital in Kingsland Rd took us in.
I was cleaned up and put into a room alone, still listening to the guns and bombs raining down. At last, I heard the all-clear and felt a lot easier. It was now daylight. It sounds silly now but I waited in that room for a whole day before another person came. It was a nun. She gave me some jelly to eat and some warm tea to drink. Later, a nurse came in and changed my dressings – making me feel calmer. That evening, an uncle came to see me. He had traced me from the previous hospital and he told me that my father was on his way down from RAF Sealand in Cheshire to see me. I began to fret over my mother and brother, knowing that we had all been separated.
By an incredible twist of fate, it appears that a fifty kilogramme bomb had fallen through a ventilation shaft and exploded in the centre of the shelter, which was an approved Air Raid Shelter and an ARP depot. My mother, brother and I were less than fifteen feet from that ventilator, which was made from glass! How unlucky and how unbelievable that such a shelter could be built. To this day, I still do not know how many people died in that approved air raid shelter.
When night fell on the 8th September, the raiders returned. This time I really felt scared as I was alone, some four storeys up in a small room, listening to the bombs crashing down. Early next morning, a nurse came in with some tea and food. Then, about ten o’clock, two ambulance men carried me down the stairs to the front of the hospital where a Greenline coach, converted to carry stretchers, was waiting and I was taken to the Chase Farm Hospital in Enfield.
Arriving there, I was taken straight to the ward at the top of the block where I was bathed, fed and prepared for stitches to be put into my head. This was a rather painful experience as I was kept in my bed as they stitched. They were talking extremely kindly to me but it really hurt. At one stage, a black man from a ship who was unable to speak a word of English went berserk. Unable to understand anything going on around him, he screamed in his own language and began to throw things around the ward. I was concerned that he might hit the doctors while the needle was going into my head. However, eventually he was restrained and my head was sewn up and dressed.
After ten days, my father found me and told me that he had been looking for my mother since the event. By the time he discovered which hospital she was in, she had already died of her injuries. It appeared that she had been taken to a hospital and initially she was unable to speak but, when she was able to so, had given her maiden name making it impossible to trace her. I discovered that my brother had escaped without any injuries and was with my grandmother. I was devastated and I still have feelings of guilt because, on that day, I was the one who had insisted we all went to the shelter.
After a few weeks, I was allowed up and began to help on the wards and I worked the washing-up machine which was in another part of the hospital. I remember at one stage while cleaning up a casualty, a man who had been brought in, I noticed a piece of brick imbedded in his ear. I called a nurse and remember feeling that I was contributing something to the hospital. Although I felt well in myself, my head wound refused to heal and so I remained in hospital receiving an occasional visit from my grandmother.
Christmas came and a nurse took me on an outing to Enfield Town. It was a wonderful treat, she even bought me a waffle with honey on it – a treasured memory during a dreadful time. In the New Year, I underwent surgery and skin was grafted from my leg onto my head. I believe that this technique was in its infancy at the time. I stayed in the main hospital until May and was then transferred to a convalescent home, where I remained until the late August when my grandfather came and took me back to the Buildings where we lived. When I saw the first of my friends, they told me they were convinced I had been killed in the air raid. I assured them that that was not the case.
My grandfather had an allotment and the King came to visit, and spoke to us. He asked what I was doing and I said, “I’m helping my grandfather.” Then, on 24th March 1944, I was having breakfast in my grandfather’s kitchen in Columbia Buildings when the last bomb of the war fell upon Vallance Rd. My porridge flew up in the air, out of the bowl, and landed upon my leg burning the skin. So, on the very first day of the bombing and on the last day, I got hurt by a bomb!”
Columbia Buildings where Tom grew up
Columbia Market constructed by Angela Burdett Coutts at the suggestion of Charles Dickens in 1859
Old Columbia Market during demolition in 1958, with the cellars that served as a shelter visible.
These stone pillars in Columbia Rd are all that remains today of the Old Columbia Market
Photos of Old Columbia Market courtesy of Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives
Commemorating the anniversary of the bombing of the air raid shelter beneath the Old Columbia Market Sq in which more than forty people lost their lives on the first day of the Blitz, 7th September 1940, there will be a wreath-laying next to Sivill House on Columbia Rd today at 1:00pm.
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So Long, Leslie Norris of Bethnal Green
As a tribute to Leslie Norris who died on Wednesday, I am republishing my profile of an East Ender who was a much-loved and widely-respected member of his community.
Leading this splendid parade advancing manfully down the Old Ford Rd is Leslie Norris, Warrant Officer of the London District Air Training Corps, at the head of the very first Bethnal Green Carnival in 1952 – and such was the joy that Leslie felt in being at the centre of his community, evident in this heroic image, that it remained undiminished even half a century later.
Growing up in the streets around Hackney Rd, Leslie earned the nickname “Ginger” and although – at eighty-five – only a few fiery-red hairs in his eyebrows remained as clues to its origin, when I visited Leslie in his home in Essex, he was eager to declare his enduring emotional loyalty to Bethnal Green. “Even though I live in Romford, I am an East Ender,” he confirmed to me absolutely with a grin.
Born at 26 Hassard St, Bethnal Green, to Florence, a French polisher and Albert, a seed merchant, Leslie grew up “with a whole family of aunts and uncles all within a mile of each other,” and the interweaving streets around Columbia Rd were the centre of his world. “Friday evenings we’d do jobs for the Jewish women,” recalled Leslie, laughing in delight at how resourceful he and his pals were at the age of ten. “We’d get sixpence from Mrs Leibowitz, Mrs Brodsky and Mrs Bukowski. We would run errands, clear up and light the fires for them because they weren’t allowed to work. And we used to go to the Spitalfields Market at closing time with a knife and ask for offcuts of fruit in a bag for our mums – and that would be our supply for the week.”
At first, when Leslie’s father took over his uncle’s sawdust business, Leslie helped out by delivering the sawdust to jewellers in Hatton Garden, but his first proper job was as a “glue-boy” in a furniture factory in Columbia Rd. “At the age of fourteen, I once pushed a barrow with an oak dining table and four chairs all the way to St. Anne’s Rd in Tottenham – I know it was 7th September 1940, because afterwards I had to rush home and put on a suit for my brother’s wedding. And then that night, during a raid, three of my cousins were killed,” he recalled in sober contemplation. Next, Leslie went on to work in a saw mill in Ezra St – but the events of September 1940 meant that he had already determined to join up as soon as he was old enough and in 1943, after training, he became a wireless officer in the Royal Corps of Signals, serving in Burma.
Back home after the war, Leslie centred his existence around St. Hilda’s East on the Boundary Estate. “It was the place everyone met in those days. We’d go every night. We used to love to dance – even though we only had five records to dance to!” he enthused. Blessed with the charisma of a born leader, Leslie became both Chair of the Senior Club and Captain of the football team at twenty-four, organising camping trips and days out – involving his contemporaries from the neighbourhood who all became life-long friends. And the exuberant photographs capture the spirit of carefree summer jaunts and youthful high jinks that prevailed, illustrating how St. Hilda’s performed a crucial social function. As Leslie confirmed with a gleam in his eye. “Twenty marriages came out of those years at the club,” he boasted, “including my own” – indicating a photograph of his wife who died in 2007. Leslie had known Joyce since she was seven and they married on the 29th March, 1952.
“Joyce was determined we should marry in St. Leonards, Shoreditch, but we were out of their parish and the Reverend, a guy by the name of Rutter, wouldn’t permit it,” admitted Leslie. Fortunately, a priest who Leslie knew during the war stepped in and performed the ceremony “with bells and everything,” he informed me, triumphantly. And when thick snow made wedding photos impossible outside the church, Leslie & Joyce led the wedding party over to St Hilda’s East to use the gymnasium for their pictures.
Years later, Leslie discovered his great-great-great-grandfather, John Norris, had married at St Leonards in 1786. And he and Joyce returned to where Leslie’s ancestors had made their vows more than two centuries earlier. “We went back for our fiftieth wedding anniversary in 2002 and renewed our vows,” Leslie revealed to me, recalling the congregation of nearly two hundred that came to greet him and Joyce. “It was beautiful to be back again,” he confided to me, “Some joker even asked if I was wearing the same suit!”
In the fifty years that passed between the two ceremonies at St Leonards, Leslie worked as a butcher at Smithfield, maintaining his ties with the area and becoming a Freeman of the City of London – even though he moved from Bethnal Green with Joyce and their two children in 1968 to live among the green fields of Romford. Inspired by his passionate sense of community, Leslie was President of the St John’s Ambulance, Mile End Division, for thirty years and became Vice President of the South West Essex Burma Star Association, earning the O.B.E. for his service to others.
“I still sing the school song to myself every night,” Leslie told me, revealing the depth of the connection he felt to Bethnal Green, and, quite unselfconsciously, he sang the opening verse, beginning, “Columbia, the name we treasure/ Thy name ever dear to me/ Thy memories will always bring me pleasure/ Though far away I may be…” just as he remembered hearing other soldiers sing it in the tents in the jungle when he was serving in Burma so many years ago.
And, as I listened, Leslie Norris became “Ginger” Norris again and I understood the indelible impression that the life of this small patch of streets in Bethnal Green had made in shaping his destiny.
Post-war celebrations in Cuff Place, where Leslie and Joyce lived for the first twenty years of their marriage – Joyce stands at the centre of the lower picture.
Leslie (on the left) with pals in Bethnal Green.
Leslie as captain of the St Hilda’s football team.
Leslie and Joyce on their first date, Southend, Easter 1949.
The first kiss.
On a Summer camping trip from St Hilda’s East.
Leslie and Joyce.
Leslie and the boys enjoyed getting into drag for a lark.
Joyce did the washing up in a field.
Leslie swept Joyce off her feet.
Leslie and Joyce on their wedding day after the marriage at St Leonard’s, Shoreditch, 29th March 1952, – photographed in the gymnasium at St Hilda’s due to heavy snowfall.
“We used to go every year to Ramsgate in the Summer, to the same house, for sixteen years”
Joyce sits among family on the beach at Ramsgate in the sixties.
A gathering at Leslie and Joyce’s in Romford in the seventies.
Joyce and friends enjoy a knees up.
Leslie and Joyce, 1973.
Leslie Norris of Bethnal Green
Commemorating the anniversary of the bombing of the air raid shelter beneath the Old Columbia Market Sq in which more than forty people lost their lives on the first day of the Blitz, 7th September 1940, there will be a wreath-laying next to Sivill House on Columbia Rd tomorrow at 1:00pm.
More Drypoint Etchings by Peta Bridle
Illustrator Peta Bridle sent me more of her beautiful drypoint etchings of some of my favourite people and places in the East End, which she has been working on over the summer. I love all the detail, and the depth of tone and richness of hatching this ancient technique offers, romancing these familiar locations into myth.
Wapping Old Stairs – “To reach the stairs you have a to go along a tiny passage to the side of the Town of Ramsgate. Originally, the stairs were a ferry point for people wishing to catch a boat along the river. I think they are quite beautiful and I like to see the marks of the masons’ tools, still left on the stones after all this time.”
The Widow’s Son, Bow – “The landlady stands holding a hot cross bun in front of a large glass Victorian mirror with the pub name etched onto it. Every Good Friday, they have a custom where a sailor adds a new bun in a net hanging over the bar to celebrate the widow who once lived here, who made her drowned sailor son a hot cross bun each Easter in remembrance.”
Newham Bookshop, Barking Rd – “It is a real proper independent bookshop and they are celebrating being open for thirty-five years this year”
Newham Bookshop – This is the other side of the bookshop, the children’s side.”
Gary Arber, Third Generation Printer & Flying Ace, Roman Rd – “I love the glass display cabinets behind him, stuffed full of paper and notepads, and the Scalectric posters stuck on the front of the counter. There was string hanging down from the ceiling too and boxes everywhere!”
Anna Pellicci – “She is surrounded by her customers and it was Christmas, so the decorations are up.”
E.Pellicci, Bethnal Green Rd. “Nevio Pellicci kindly allowed me to make a couple of visits to take pictures as reference to create this etching. It was at Christmas time and after they closed for the afternoon. Daisy my daughter is sitting in the corner.”
Paul Gardner at Gardners’ Market Sundriesmen, Commercial St. “I did buy a few bags off Paul whilst I was there!”
Tanya Peixoto at bookartbookshop, Pitfield St. “I am friends with Tanya who runs this shop and she has stocked my homemade books in the past.”
Des at Des & Lorraine’s Junk Shop, Bacon St. “An amazing place that I want to re-visit since I never got to look round it properly …”
Liverpool St Station
Prints copyright © Peta Bridle
Julius Mendes Price’s London Types, 4
This is the fourth and final series of London Types designed and written by artist Julius Mendes Price and issued by Carreras with Black Cat Cigarettes in 1919. The presence of the war dominates this set but the Representation of the People Act of 1918, which gave the vote to women over the age of thirty, was a landmark for women’s suffrage and the advance that women achieved through participation in the war effort is manifest here in a number of roles.
You may also like to take a look at these other cigarette card sets of the Cries of London
Julius Mendes Price’s London Types 1
Julius Mendes Price’s London Types 2
Julius Mendes Price’s London Types 3
More Wax Sellers of Wentworth St
Adetayo Abimbola, Franceskka Fabrics
Two years ago, I asked Contributing Photographer Jeremy Freedman to take portraits of the magnificent women who sell Holland Wax, French Lace and Swiss Voile on Wentworth St. The results were so spectacular that I suggested he extend the portfolio and today you see his complete series of textile goddesses – celebrating these shrewd businesswomen who are bold trendsetters, designing their own fabrics, modelling their creations, defining the fashion and styling their customers too.
When I did my first set of interviews, it was winter and the fabric shops shone like coloured beacons in the gloom but, returning at the height of summer, I found the dazzling colours of the textiles in sympathy with the soaring temperatures. As before, I started at Franceskka Fabrics, opened by Franceskka Ambimbola as the first shop on this street that is now the European centre for African fabrics.
Franceskka was in Nigeria, where she has two other shops, but she had left her international business empire in the capable hands of her three daughters – Abby, Tayo and Joki. “It’s good working for your mum,” admited Abby, “she’s created a foundation for us to build upon.” Abby, who has a degree in Business Studies, deals with textile orders, while Tayo specialises in selling expensive lace and Joki takes care of bridal and internet sales. It is a measure of their enterprise that they now have a full-time tailor on the premises, one of the few men to be employed in Wentworth St.
Just a few doors down, Monique Azenor, who has been running Monique Textiles for more than ten years, had a similar tale to tell of a female dynasty in the making. “It’s a family business – my mum, my sister and my two daughters are involved,” she told me, confirming hers as an exclusively female endeavour. “In Nigeria, the only way you can take care of your children is to open a shop,” Monique explained, “You don’t have much unless you can make your own living and keep your children around you too.”
“I’ve been in this business thirteen years,” Honey of Honey Textiles revealed to me, “I used to have a shop called Honey’s World where I sold everything and ran a hair salon too, but it became unbearable having to stand all day when I became pregnant, so that’s when I decided to digress. I came to see my aunt who ran Benny’ Textiles and told her my plight, and she helped me get this shop.” Today, Honey’s is one of the largest fabric shops on Wentworth St and Honey runs it all from the comfort of an office chair. “It’s mostly women that go into this, it’s a cultural thing that’s passed down,” she assured me, “I like it, it’s something I desired to do and I feel fulfilled doing it. I can stand up and sit down when I please!”
Across the road at Vida Fabrics, Franca Aina prides herself on her bold designs aimed at the youthful, more fashionable market. “Women run these shops because women like buying from women,” she informed me, “A woman can talk to another woman.” Franca has another three shops in Nigeria and her success is characteristic of the jet-setting lifestyle enjoyed by all her colleagues in Wentworth St – women who design their fabrics and visit their manufacturers in the Far East, Italy, Switzerland and Holland regularly, while managing retail outlets in Africa and Europe.
Anna Maria Garthwaite, the most famous designer of eighteenth century silk, who ran her business with her sister from her premises in Princelet St, would recognise more than a little in common with the wax sellers of Wentworth St – they are the noble inheritors of her vibrant endeavour in Spitalfields.
Franceskka Ambimbola, Franceskka Fabrics
Josephine Yokessa, Beauty Solutions
Sheba Eferoghene, Novo Fashions
Tayo Raheem, Royal Fashions
Fola Mustapha, Fola Textile
Onome Efebeh-Atano, Beauty Stones
Honey, Honey Textiles
Bola Ilori AKA Madame Boltex, Boltex Textiles
Veronica Ogunmola, Monique Texiles
Tayo Oladele, Tayo Fashions & Textiles
Benke Adetoro, Benke Fashions
Monique Azenabor, Monique Textiles
Franca Aina, Vina Textiles
Photographs copyright © Jeremy Freedman
You may like to read at my original feature
The Wax Sellers of Wentworth St
and take a look
A Walk From Shoeburyness to Chalkwell
At Westcliff
At the end of August, I always feel the need to leave the city and go to the sea, taking advantage of the last days of sunshine before the season changes. Admitting that I have spent too much of these last months at my desk in neglect of summer, I found myself on the train out of Fenchurch St Station with the East End receding like a dream.
At Shoeburyness, the ocean lay before me gleaming like a tin roof beneath a flawless azure sky. Surely no-one fails to be surprised by the sea, always more expansive than the image you carry in your mind. I sat upon the warm buttery-yellow sand of East Beach to assimilate this vast landscape before me, humbled by the open space after too long in narrow streets.
Military fences obstructed my intention of walking east across open land towards the River Roach, so instead I turned west, following the coast path through a wildlife reserve embellished with abandoned structures of warfare now being appropriated by nature. Local myth speaks of an ancient settlement lost beneath the sands and archaeology has revealed an Iron Age camp, confirming the strategic importance of this site overlooking the estuary where Shoebury Garrison was established in 1854. Wild fennel, sea holly, coltstfoot and stonecrop grow freely upon the sea wall, where the works of man are sublimated by greater forces. It came as no surprise to encounter a religious service enacted upon the shingle here, with priests in white robes and red sashes presiding, like their Celtic predecessors, upon unyielding waves lapping at the beach.
Then, in a sudden change of atmosphere, leaving the reserve and crossing a road brought me to Thorpe Bay with its regimented lines of cabins that serve to domesticate the shoreline. Yet even on this baking Saturday in August, just a few lone sun worshippers were setting out their deck chairs and upholding their secular rituals beneath the glassy sky. Meanwhile, an equal languor prevailed below the tideline where yachts sat marooned and inert upon the glistening mud.
The long pier and white towers upon the horizon led me on, absorbed now in walking, even if the featureless esplanade offered no sense of progress until, turning a shallow corner, I found myself in the midst of the throng of Southend with its endless diversions and hullabaloo. Extended family groups clung together, laden with bags and babies, and huddling as if they were refugees caught in the middle of a battle, while my own attention danced and darted, drawn by amusement arcades, crazy golf, souvenir and novelty shops, and pleasure parks. In the event, I took a nap in the shade of a pine tree upon the cliff overlooking Adventure Island, where fellow day-trippers were screaming in terror while being flung around on white-knuckle rides that looped and twisted for their enjoyment.
Walking on, the frenzied action relented as the sedate charms of Westcliff made themselves apparent in the form of elaborate nineteenth-century balconied villas. The tide had retreated still further and the declining sun reflected golden off the pools where lonely beach-comers strayed. A stone obelisk upon the strand indicated the boundary of the Thames and its estuary, and beyond lay a causeway across the mud banks where a long procession of curious ramblers were walking out to the horizon.
In overt contrast to the demonstrative thrill-seekers of Southend, I spied bowls played upon lawns discreetly screened by well-kept privet hedges in Chalkwell. Here my walk ended and I took the opportunity of reflection upon the day’s journey, stringing together the disparate locations that comprise this stretch of coast. Dozing on the train, I awoke in Fenchurch St Station and as I wandered back through the familiar deserted City, it could have been as if my adventure had been but a fantasy – if it were not for the residual sensation of sunshine and wind upon my skin that was evidence I had been somewhere else.
You may like to read about my previous trips beyond Spitalfields at this time of year
