Spitalfields Life

Complementing last week’s feature of leading businesses from Modern London, 1888, I present these progressive commercial enterprises selected from Illustrated London, 1893

Allen & Hanburys, Manufacturing Pharmaceutical Chemists & Wholesale Druggists, Bethnal Green – For the origin of this eminent firm we have to go back to as far as the days of Mr Silvanus Bevan who was admitted into the Apothecaries’ Company in 1715. Moreover, the firm does not neglect the requirements of modern enterprise . They are always progressive and their works at Bethnal Green are large and splendidly equipped, and are devoted to the  extensive manufacture of many important specialities

Messrs H R Mopsey & Co, Ironmongers, High St, Wandsworth – Founded in the year 1840, this firm embodies all the improvements which the interim of half a century has enabled the proprietors to introduce and  you will find the aspect of the firm’s handsome premises quite in accordance with the representative and leading position which the house has long occupied in this vicinity.

Messrs Culverwell, Brooks & Co, Brokers, Colonial & Foreign Hides, Skins, Leather, Furs, Taloow &c, Sunn & Toppings Wharves, Bermondsey – This is one of the most important businesses of its kind in London and it is still steadily growing in extent and importance. The partners are business men of sound judgement and marked enterprise, and are worthy representatives of the important branch of commerce with which they have been so long associated.

Messrs Morel Bros, Cobbett & Son Ltd, Importers & Purveyors of High Class Comestibles, Piccadilly – The extensive and mercantile concern now carried under the above title was formed several years ago by the amalgamation of two old-established and high class businesses long known in the West End. As purveyors to Her Majesty to the Queen, the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Duchess of Albany, Prince Christian and Prince Henry of Battenberg, Messrs Morel Bros, Cobbett & Son Ltd enjoy the most distinguished patronage it is possible to secure.

Jay’s Mourning Warehouse, Regent St – The last half century has witnessed in London the creation of a number of unique mercantile institutions predestined to win fame and play the part of leaders in their departments of commercial activity. Undoubtedly, no other firm will more readily occur to our readers as answering this description than Jay’s, which has conducted over fifty years that great mourning house in Regent St. Recently, this noted firm sustained a loss in the death of its distinguished founder Mr W C Jay.

The Manufacturing Goldsmiths’ & Silversmiths’ Co, Regent St – Some of the finest business establishments in the world line the broad and fashionable thoroughfare of Regent St and the conspicuous feature in this brilliant array of shops are these showrooms with their unequalled display of beautiful and costly specialities.

Messrs Whitebread, Morris & co, Engravers, Steam Printers & Lithographers, Bookbinders & Export Stationers, Fenchurch St – In connection with the printing and lithographing art industries which are so extensively carried on in the City of London, a prominent position has long been held by this well known firm whose name is identified with the production of a large variety of high class work.

Herbert Finch & Co, Designers, Engravers & Colour Printers, Wholesale Manufacturers & Export Stationers, Specialists in Novelties for Advertising, Leadenhall St – In 1879, they erected this noble structure within which their trade is now carried on, and which forms one of the largest and finest printing offices in the City. Mr Herbert Finch is widely known in the trade and is thoroughly and practically versed in all its details, and he continues to take an active and supreme part in its management of the firm which owes its success and advancement to his energy and foresight.

The Great Tower Tea Co Ltd, Jewry St – To the enterprise of this firm, the public is indebted for a very marked and widespread improvement in the quality of tea.

Whyte Ridsdale & Co, Manufacturers’ Agents, Warehousemen & Importers of Fancy Goods, Houndsditch – For over twenty-five years, they have been involved in the business of preparing, collecting and distributing British and Foreign fancy goods, and they have been compelled – more than once – to increase their accommodation and pull down their premises. Still, the increase of their business outstrips the room which the enlarged premises afford and this year is to witness a further large addition to the building they occupy.

Mr Henry Conolly, Manufacturing Sanitary Engineer, Tolmers Sq – In connection with the great developments in sanitary science which have taken place during the past half century, no name is better known or enjoys a higher reputation than that of Henry Conolly.

Messrs John S Fitter & Son, Meat Salesmen, Leadenhall Market – Every visitor to the market is familiar with this fine establishment in the Grand Avenue .They were the earliest appointed agents in England for New Zealand and Australian frozen meat and, by their energetic advocacy of this valuable product and the splendid quality of the supplies they placed in the market, they speedily overcame the, altogether groundless and short-sighted, objections which at first met their endeavours to develop this new and useful trade.

Royal Rubber Co, Sloane St – Not so very many years ago, the waterproof garment was universally regarded as a necessary evil by travellers and persons whose business forced them to face inclement weather, because of its extreme awkwardness and uncompromising ugliness. Now the celebrated Royal Rubber Co brings forward perfect weather defences, in the form of graceful, elegant, artistic and essentially comfortable items of waterproof attire.

H Mallett, Window Blind Manufacturer  & Upholsterer, Finchley Rd – After nearly thirty years in the business, Mr Mallett, an expert and skilled workman, took the above premises and developed what has now become the most important business of its kind in London. Mr Mallett has shown much ingenuity in introducing many useful improvements and desirable novelties in his trade.

Messrs Symmons Bros, General Drapers, Hosiers, Silk Merchants, Lades’, Gentlemen’s & Children’s Outfitters, Finchley Rd – This establishment is splendidly appointed in the best modern style, served by numerous and highly efficient staff, and stocked with a choice selection of goods, that entitles it to comparison with the leading houses of the West End.

C Holz, Theatrical & Private Wig-Maker, Covent Garden – Although the modern perruquier is not so universally in demand as his predecessor of the ‘good old days,’ he is – if anything – called upon to exercise far greater skill in his art by fashioning wigs which cannot be distinguished from the natural normal head of hair and, among the cleverest exponents of the craft in the metropolis, a place of distinction must unquestionably be accorded to Mr C Holz, who entered upon his present prosperous career in Fulham twelve years ago and subsequently migrated to his current, eligibly situated, premises to give full scope to a rapidly-expanding business.

Wade & Co, Tailors, Habit & Breeches Makers, Colonial & American Outfitters, Gracechurch St – The founder, Mr Zachariah Wade, attributes its success to the recognition and application of the principle of cash payments applied to the production and sale of best goods only, a principle hitherto associated with what is known in the trade as slop-made articles.  Lighted with electricity, goods now may be selected during a London fog with almost as much satisfaction as upon a bright sunny day.

Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute

You may also like to take a look at

Modern London, 1888

Allen & Hanbury’s Surgical Appliances

Roman London is still under construction

From Spitalfields, you have only to walk down Bishopsgate to find yourself in Londinium, since the line of Bishopsgate St follows that of Ermine St which was the major Roman road north from London Bridge. Tombs once lined the path as it approached the City, just as they did along the Appian Way in Rome.

The essential plan of the City of London was laid out by the Romans when they built their wall around Londinium at the end of the second century, after Boudica and her tribes burnt the settlement. Eighty years earlier, the Romans had constructed a fort where the Barbican stands today and, in their defensive plan, they extended its walls south to the Thames and in an easterly arc that met the river where the Tower of London stands now.

A fine eighteenth century statue of the Emperor Trajan touts to the tourists at Tower Hill, drawing their attention to the impressive stretch of wall that survives there, striped by the characteristic Roman feature of courses of red clay tiles, inserted between layers of shaped Kentish Ragstone  to ensure that the wall would be consistently level.

Just fifty yards from here at Cooper’s Row, round the back of the Grange City Hotel, is an equally spectacular stretch of wall that is off the tourist trail. Here you can see the marks of former staircases and medieval windows cut through to create a rugged monument of significant height.

Yet, in the mile between here and the Barbican, very little has survived from the centuries in which stone from the wall was pillaged for other buildings. It is possible to seek access to some corporate premises with lone fragments marooned in the basement, but instead I decided to walk over to All Hallows by the Tower which has a little museum of great charisma in its crypt. Here is part of the tessellated floor of a Roman dwelling of the second century and Captain Lowther’s splendid model of Roman London from 1928.

At the Barbican, a stretch of wall that was once part of the Roman fort is visible, punctuated by a string of monumental bastions which are currently under restoration. Walking up from St Paul’s, you come across the wall in Noble St first, still encrusted with the bricks of the buildings within which it was once embedded. Then you arrive at London Wall, an avenue of gleaming towers lining a windy boulevard of fast-moving traffic, which takes it name from the ancient edifice.

I was lucky enough to be permitted access to a secret concrete bunker, beneath the road surface yet above the level of the underground car park. Here was one of the gateways of Roman London and I saw where the wooden gate posts had worn grooves into the stone that supported them. At last, I could enter Roman London. In that underground room, I walked across the few metres of gravel chips that now cover the ground level of the former roadway between the gate posts, where the chariots passed through. Long ago, I should have been trampled by the traffic if I had stood there, just as I should be mown down if I stood in London Wall today. We switched out the light and locked the door on Roman London to emerge into the daylight again.

In the gardens of the Barbican, the presence of foliage and grass permits the bastions of the City wall to assert themselves, standing apart from the contemporary built environment that surrounds them. From here, I turned west to visit the cloister of St Vedast in Foster Lane, which has an intriguing panel of a tessellated floor mounted in a frame, and St Bride’s in Fleet St, where deep in the crypt, you can lean over a wall to see the floor of the Roman dwelling that once stood there, reflected in a mirror. The reality of these items stirs the imagination just as their fragmentary nature challenges it to envisage such a remote world.

By now, it was late afternoon. I was weary and the sunshine had faded, and it was time to make tracks quickly back to Spitalfields as the sky clouded over – yet I was inspired by my brief Roman holiday in London.

Eighteenth century bronze statue of Trajan at Tower Hill

Model of Roman London in the crypt of All Hallows by the Tower. Made by Captain Lowther in 1928, it shows London Bridge AD 400 – Spitalfields appears as a settlement of Britons beyond the wall.

Roman City Wall at Tower Hill

At Tower Hill

At Cooper’s Row

Lines of red clay tiles were inserted between the blocks of stone to keep the wall level

Tessellated floor in the crypt of All Hallows by the Tower

Timber from a Roman wharf preserved in the porch of St Magnus the Martyr

In the cloister of St Vedast Alias Foster

In the crypt of St Bride’s, Fleet St

Foundation of a Roman Guard Tower in Noble St

Outside 1 London Wall

Part of the entrance gate to Roman London in the underground chamber

Model of the north west entrance to Roman London

A fragment of wall in the underground chamber

Bastion at London Wall

You might also like to read

In Search of the River Walbrook

In Search of Shakespeare’s London