Angela Flanders, Perfumer
Angela Flanders
There is something magical about Angela Flanders‘ secret workshop. Her little room in Bethnal Green is lined with bottles full of scented oils, the contents of each one carefully inscribed in silver ink. It does not take a huge leap of imagination to see Angela as a modern-day alchemist, mixing potions and precious substances together until they are transmuted into something miraculous.
Small and neat with bright grey eyes and an inquisitive – almost academic – spirit, she could easily be transported back in time into the orbit of Spitalfield’s most famous herbalist Nicholas Culpeper. She refers to her bottles of essential oils as “my library of ingredients.” The air of Angela’s workroom – a private, experimental space – is heady with the scent of flowers, spices and resins from all over the world. If you could capture it in a bottle you could almost carry the globe in your pocket.
She surveys the bottles and vials lined up on the shelves behind her. “I don’t think you could call what I do remotely conventional or scientific, I just follow my instincts. Sometimes I spend the whole day here mixing and trying different combinations to see what happens. I always start with the base notes because an old ‘nose’ in France once told me: ‘You wouldn’t build a house from the roof down; you must always start with the foundations’. So that’s what I do”.
“I play with layering separate ingredients here in the workshop, other times I’ll carry the idea of a scent around with me for several days, wondering where to take it. Then something pops into my head – a new ingredient to add to the mix that blends and lifts. Usually those flashes are absolutely right. To be honest, I don’t know why it works, but I think it must be a happy combination of instinct, inspiration and experience.”
She smiles, “I suppose you could relate it to good food? I think it’s a little bit like that programme Ready Steady Cook where people brought a bag full of the most unlikely ingredients to the TV studio and a chef would produce something mouth-watering. Creating perfume is similar – you develop an olfactory palette.”
Angela has been based in Columbia Rd since 1985 and, appropriately, given that London’s best-loved flower market is on her doorstep, for much of that time, she has worked with scent. When she first found her premises – a former shoe shop dating from around 1850 – it had been closed up and forgotten for 25 years. “We had to get a locksmith to let us in,” she recalls, “It was in quite a state. The roof was shot and there was a terrible smell, but it was full of all its original features and I was determined to keep as much as I could. I saw it as somewhere in need of care and attention. I fell in love with it.”
One of the fascinating things about talking to people this week has been the connections. I was delighted to learn that The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings where I work, was Angela’s first port of call – nearly thirty years ago – when trying to find information about the right things to do to care for her lovely old premises
“The walls were painted a dark blue-grey and I wanted to keep it,” she explains, “I wasn’t sure what to do, but SPAB advised me to leave the paintwork alone and to simply scrub it, wash it down and then wax-polish it. So that’s exactly what I did and it brightened up beautifully.”
Initially, Angela intended to run her own decorative paint business from Columbia Rd. A graduate of Manchester School of Art, she worked in theatre design and as a costume designer at the BBC. Subsequently, she attended courses in Interior Design at the Inchbald School and at Hackney Building College and her plan was to work primarily with furniture. But remember that “terrible smell” mentioned earlier? It was finding something to remedy the problem that set Angela on the perfume trail. She began to buy and then to make her own pot pourri, using essential oils and dried flowers – and people liked what she made.
“It was something that just grew,” she says, “I suppose I loved doing it because I’d always enjoyed making things and transforming things. With the pot pourris I think I was enjoying conjuring up atmospheres for rooms – scents that might suggest the past or a mood. At first I’d go to Spitalfields Market and buy the odd box of flowers and I’d dry them out by hanging them all round this building. Then I went to Covent Garden and bought a few more things from a merchant and within a year the business had expanded so much that I was taking in van-loads of flower deliveries. It was then that I realised that I couldn’t take on any more furniture commissions, because this was clearly the right thing to do.”
The perfume business is a direct result of Angela’s early experiments with essential oils and dried flowers. “I’ve got this theory that if you are on the right path people help you and that certainly happened to me,” Angela confided.
Sometimes assistance has come out of the blue. “It was odd,” she says,“One day I was in an antiques shop and I felt myself guided, literally, to the back shelf where there was a book by a nineteenth century perfumer called Septimus Piesse. It’s mainly him holding forth on scent and his opinions and it includes some of his formulas too, one of which I have used. It has become one of my bibles.”
Although she readily admits that she is entirely self-taught, perfumes by Angela Flanders have won international acclaim. Last year, Precious One – a rich floral created to celebrate the fifth anniversary of her daughter Kate’s elegant boutique, Precious in Artillery Passage – wafted off with the award for Best New Independent Fragrance at the annual Fragrance Foundation Awards Ceremony. Known as the Fifis, this is the scent industry equivalent of the Oscars. The decision, based on a blind ‘nosing’ by eminent fragrance writers and journalists was unanimous and Angela is still clearly delighted by her success. “We didn’t for a moment think we would win, because we were up against such stiff competition. It was marvellous.”
Intriguingly, since working with scent, she has discovered that the East End has a history of perfume manufacture. Essential oil distillers Bush Boake & Allen traded from premises near Broadway Market and today, the offices of Penhaligons are situated near Artillery Passage, Spitalfields, where Angela now has a second shop just along from her daughter’s.
“There’s a strong tradition of perfume making in this part of London. In fact, historically, a lot of the scents made here were sold in the City and in the West End.” She grins ruefully. “That’s the old story, isn’t it? The West End made its money off the talents of the East End, but it’s always been true. Think of the furniture makers, the gilders and the wood carvers who worked here for generations – all of them making a living as artisan craftsmen. I like to think that’s what I do – make things.”
When Angela moved into Columbia Rd she was in the vanguard of the new wave of small artisan businesses that now make it such a destination. “The flower market had flourished for one hundred and fifty years when we arrived, but it was a very different place then. At the time, as well as me, there was Jones’ Dairy, a deli and the Fred Bare hat shop. But slowly, slowly it took off. Someone once said to me, ‘If you can run a shop in Columbia Road, you can run a shop anywhere.’ I think that’s quite right!”
Angela pauses and looks at the glittering bottles surrounding around us in her shop. The colours of the liquids range from pale greens and delicate aqua shades to the deep golden tones of the darker woody fragrances that have become an Angela Flanders signature.
After a moment she nods and continues. “I also think I’m very lucky because I don’t have to satisfy the concerns of the big companies. I can play, I can have fun and I can make very small amounts of a scent. Being tiny, you can afford to be brave! Very often perfumers are forced to work to a commercial brief and it can be difficult for them. I’m not bound by that – I can explore and I treat myself to that freedom every day. Really, I just pootle along here in Bethnal Green and it’s wonderful.”
Angela Flanders and her daughter, Kate Evans.
Photographs copyright © Jeremy Freedman
Angela Flanders, 96 Columbia Rd (Sunday only, 10am to 3pm) & 4 Artillery Passage (Monday to Friday 11am to 6.30pm)
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At The Monument
If you lay The Monument on its side to the West, the flame hits the spot in Pudding Lane where the fire broke out in Mr Farriner’s bakery during the early hours of 2nd September, 1666.
One of my earliest London memories is climbing to the top of The Monument with my dad when I was around four years old. I remember clearly pushing through the turnstile and dodging through people’s legs to reach the enticing black marble staircase that spiralled up through the centre of the column.
I could not wait to get to the top and see the view. Once we were up there and my dad lifted me onto his shoulders – so that I was even higher than everyone around us on the narrow stone platform – the thrill was electrifying. Yet I doubt ‘Health & Safety’ would allow that these days, even though the top of The Monument is now securely caged as a protection against pigeons, and a deterrent to potential suicides. (There were a few of those in the past.)
When I was four, I raced up those three hundred and eleven stairs but returning – in the company of Spitalfields Life Contributing Photographer Alex Pink – forty-six years later, I make the ascent at a much more leisurely pace. In fact, I stop several times and lean against the curved wall of cool Portland stone. Ostensibly, this is to allow an excited party of school children to pass as they loop back down the narrow stairs but, actually, I pause because the muscles in my legs are crying out for mercy and I am beginning to wonder if there could be an oxygen cylinder around the next turn of the stair.
Guide Mandy Thurkle grins as I gasp for breath. “You could say it keeps us fit. There are always two of us here on duty and, between us, we have to go up four times a day to make our regular checks. They say the calories you’ve burned off when you reach the top is the equivalent of a Mars Bar – not that I’m tempted. I’m not that keen on them.” She stands aside in the narrow entrance through the plinth as another party of school children jostles into the little atrium at the foot of the stairwell. There is an ‘ooh’ of excitement as they cluster together and crane their necks to look up at the stone steps coiling above them. “I love working here,” Mandy says, “I love the interaction with the visitors, seeing their reactions and answering their questions – the children’s are usually the best.”
Built to commemorate the rebuilding of the City after the Great Fire of London in 1666, The Monument – still the tallest isolated stone column in the world – attracts more than 220,000 visitors a year. Designed by Robert Hooke under the supervision of Christopher Wren, it was one of the first visitor attractions in London to admit paying entrants. Back in the eighteenth century, early wardens and their families actually lived in the cell-like basement beneath the massive plinth. This room was originally designed to house Hooke’s astronomical observatory – he dreamed of using the new building as a giant telescope while Wren saw it as a useful place to conduct his gravity experiments.
It is easy to imagine those first wardens welcoming a succession of bewigged and patch-faced sightseers eager to view the newly-rising city from the finest vantage point. Once, The Monument was a towering landmark, clearly visible from any angle in the City, now that it is confined by ugly, boxy offices, its former significance is obscured by walls of glass and concrete. In any other great European capital, the little piazza in which it stands would become a destination in itself, flanked by coffee shops or smart boutiques, but these days you come upon this extraordinary building almost accidentally.
French-born Nathalie Rebillon-Lopez, Monument Assistant Exhibition Manager, agrees, “In France, I worked for the equivalent of English Heritage and they would never have allowed a building like this to be hemmed in. There is a rule that development cannot take place within fifty metres of an important site.” She shrugs, “But then, Paris is sometimes like a giant museum. You have to move with the times and things have to change. I often think London is good at that – it is very open to creativity and eclecticism, it is always alive.”
Of course, Nathalie is right but as we speak in the little paved square it is hard not to feel oppressed by the sheer scale of the new ‘Walkie Talkie’ building lumbering ever upwards in the streets beyond. Where The Monument is all about elegant neo-classical balance, the ‘Walkie Talkie’ is a cumbersome affront to the skyline – a visual joke that is not very funny. Monument guide Mandy, who has worked at the building and at its sister attraction Tower Bridge for twenty-three years, shares my misgivings. “I get a little bit upset at the top sometimes,” she confides, “I look down and see all the tiny old churches and their spires completely lost amongst the new buildings and it seems wrong.”
Not surprisingly, given that the Great Fire of London is a component of Key Stage One on the national curriculum, many of The Monument’s visitors today are under ten-years-old. They all receive a certificate on leaving to prove that they have been to the top. “Usually they are very well behaved,” says Nathalie approvingly,“We have to monitor stickers on the walls and things like chewing gum and even the odd bit of graffiti, but generally with those unwelcome additions, adults are more likely to be the offenders!”
The interior of The Monument – all two hundred and two feet of it – is cleaned by a team of regulars who come in three times a week at night when the visitors are gone. They must be the fittest cleaning crew in London! “They use simple mops and buckets to clean the marble stairs from top to bottom,” Nathalie explains, “We have to treat the building very, very gently because it is Grade One listed. We cannot make any changes or alterations without consulting English Heritage – even our turnstile, which we no longer use, is listed.”
When I first visited The Monument back in the sixties, it was black with soot and pollution. Today, after the major conservation work, the creamy Portland stone gleams almost as brightly as the gilded flame at the very top.
“We welcome visitors from all over the world and a surprising number of Londoners come here too,” says Nathalie, “It’s important to people – it’s part of the fabric of the city. It has a good feeling and it’s a very romantic place. For a fee, we allow people to come here after hours and propose with the whole of London spread out below them. Imagine that!” Standing on the viewing platform at the very top of the column, it is not hard to see why that would be appealing. Despite the development taking place in every direction, the view is simply breathtaking. Here at the very heart of old London you can look down on the streets below and still see, quite clearly, the imprint of the ancient, incinerated city that The Monument was built to commemorate.
Once I manage to catch my breath, I ask if people ever give up before they reach the top and the spectacular view. Nathalie laughs, “That’s quite rare. Once they’ve started most people are very determined. Just occasionally we might have a visitor who can’t make it because of vertigo, but we always give them a refund.”
For my money, whether you are a tourist or native, the best three pounds you could possibly spend in the City of London is the the entry fee to The Monument. And if you visited regularly you could ditch the gym membership!
(In September, Kate Griffin’s first book for children ‘The Jade Boy ‘ will be published by Templar – a dark tale of sorcery, secrets and what really caused the Great Fire of London.)
“my legs are crying out for mercy”
The view from the top photographed by Alex Pink
The view from the top photographed fifty years ago by Roland Collins
The Monument seen from Billingsgate.
In Pudding Lane
Mandy Thurkle –“You could say it keeps us fit. There are always two of us here on duty and, between us, we have to go up four times a day to make our regular checks.”
Sean Thompson-Patterson, first day of work at The Monument.
The reclining woman on the left is the City ‘injured by fire.’ The beehive at her feet represents the industry that will help to rebuild the City. The winged creature behind her is Time which will help the City to regain her feet again. Charles II stands on the right in a Roman breastplate, putting things to rights. At his feet Envy is disappearing into a hole, while Peace and Plenty float on a cloud above the scene.
Photographs copyright © Alex Pink
The Monument, Fish St Hill, EC3R 6DB . Open daily. Summer (April – September) 9:30am – 6pm. Winter (October -March) 9:30am – 5:30pm.
Bill Judd, Boxer
Bill Judd
“That was brilliant!” A boy no older than nine years old pulls free from his dad and runs to his mum who has come to meet them both outside the KO Muay Thai Gym HQ situated beneath three railway arches in Globe Rd, Bethnal Green. The woman grins as she catches her son’s hand and her brightly patterned shalwar kameez flutters in the breeze. “You will be a champion?” she asks, ruffling his hair.
It is Saturday morning, and sessions for children aged between seven and twelve at the gym are just coming to a close. Girls and boys jostle out into the sunlight, many of the boys stopping to admire the gleaming Ducati motorbikes lined up on the forecourt of the workshop in the arch next door. “You’ll have to wait until you’re a bit older and bit richer before you can have one of them.” Gym owner Bill Judd smiles as one of the tiny fighters ogles a particularly impressive red model. “When I’m famous?” the boy asks.
It is not beyond the realms of possibility. The KO Gym has a track record in training, nurturing and producing world-class competitors in the emerging sport of Muay Thai Boxing. Current World Champions Amanda Kelly and Greg Wotton are just two of the gym’s success stories.
Back inside the cavernous arched space, adults are beginning to drill. It is almost like watching a ballet as two heavily-padded men circle each other. Suddenly, one of them lashes out with his foot and the heavy ‘whumph’ as it makes contact with the pad secured to the other man’s arm demonstrates the force and strength of the strike. They repeat the sequence on the red foam matting, then that kick comes again – swift, high and viciously accurate. Although it is clear this is a fierce contact sport, there is a rhythmic grace and elegance that is beautiful.
It is mesmerising to watch the pair of them work through the choreographed moves that will enable them to perform fluidly and instinctively when they are in the ring. Each time they run through the combination, they are establishing a pattern in their brains and muscles that will allow them to act on auto-pilot in a real fight.
Bill Judd, who studied Sports Science at university in Australia in the seventies, explains,“It’s technical, by repeating the moves again and again you create neurological pathways in your brain. When you’re learning to drive a car you come to a point when you don’t have to think about what you’re doing anymore. Muhammad Ali would disrupt his opponents in the ring by whispering something in their ear – that would make them angry and break their concentration. Their automatic responses would stop and then he’d go in. It’s all psychology.”
Born in East London of Irish stock, Bill is the son of a boxer. As a child, he followed in his father’s footsteps training at a traditional East End boxing club, Fairbairn House. But from an early age he was also involved with Judo, which led him to compete at international level in Japan. It was there that he first became aware of Kick Boxing and he subsequently went on to win a world Kick Boxing title.
He smiles ruefully, “As a champion Kick Boxer I thought I knew it all, but when I came up against a very experienced Thai Boxer I soon found out I didn’t! I was a cocky so-and-so back then and I got completely hammered. I wanted to find out more – that’s how it started really. There was just something about the history and culture of Muay Thai that got to me. The whole ethos of it appealed – the structure, the strategic element. I went on to train –and train hard – with a very famous master in Thailand.”
He brought hard training and the very particular culture of Thailand’s national sport back with him when he returned to the East End. The KO gym opened in 1976 and today it offers classes in Muay Thai, traditional boxing and the increasingly popular discipline of Mixed Martial Arts.
Initially, Thai Boxing was viewed as something outside the mainstream, but that has changed. The sport is on the verge of Olympic recognition and the KO Gym, which is revered in Thai Boxing circles throughout the country, attracts people from all walks of life. City boys spar with Bangladeshi boys from the estates in Tower Hamlets. Heavily accented Eastern immigrants – from Russia, Poland and Lithuania – spar with easy-framed, street-sharp black lads. Some people here – men and women – are professional fighters, some are here simply to keep fit while others use the controlled explosion of Muay Thai technique as an outlet to relieve the stress of modern living.
Bill explains, “This place is all about community. It’s something that’s increasingly lacking from the East End these days but, here, we cross all boundaries of religion, nationality, cultures, class and race. We have members who are Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus and atheists – you name it, they’re here. It’s amazing the diversity of languages spoken in the gym, but everyone understands the ‘language’ of the sport. It’s like a home, everyone leaves their prejudices at the door. It’s how a community should be.”
With his clipped grey hair, piercing blue eyes and compact build, Bill Judd has quiet authority – a natural dignity. You listen when he speaks and you get the strong feeling that the people who attend the KO gym see him as a mentor. It is obvious that he takes particular pride in the young people who attend sessions. “First and foremost it’s fun,” he says, “but it also gives them discipline, confidence, a sense of progress, and it encourages tolerance.” He pauses for thought, “Most of all, I think it gives them somewhere they feel they belong. It’s better to be part of this sort of community than part of a gang that idolises violence and money.”
As well as bringing a new heart to this community, the gym also continues an East End tradition. Just up the road in Paradise Row, opposite St John’s Church on Bethnal Green, stands Daniel Mendoza’s house, complete with blue plaque. Though he stood five foot seven inches and weighed only one hundred and sixty pounds, Mendoza was England’s sixteenth Heavyweight Champion from 1792 to 1795. He was the only Middleweight to ever win the Heavyweight Championship of the World. In 1789, Mendoza opened his own Boxing Academy and published ‘The Art of Boxing’ on modern ‘scientific’ boxing style – a book from which every fighter has learned since. Notably, he was Jewish and his success and popularity helped transform the popular English stereotype of a Jew from a weak, defenceless person into someone deserving of respect.
‘Respect’ is an important word for Bill, it crops up often in our conversation. He is absolutely clear that everyone who comes to the gym should show respect for the art of Muay Thai and for each other.“I’m proud that everyone round here knows this place,” he says,“It’s become a landmark and people respect it – the kids respect it and their parents respect it too.” Then he thinks for a moment and nods to himself, “Yeah, I am carrying on a tradition here and I’m proud of that. But I’m also proud of what I see people achieve here through hard work and determination.
“It’s not fighting spirit that wins, it’s the indomitable spirit – rising to the challenge. Some people climb mountains, some people swim in the wild, some people go deep into the earth to find caverns that no-one’s seen before.
“Whatever you do, you’ve got see it through to the finish.”
“It’s not fighting spirit that wins, it’s the indomitable spirit”
Abdul Yassine, Trainer
Amanda Kelly, current WMC, MAD, and ISKA World Champion, fights between 58kg and 63kg. She has beaten all the top names in women’s Muay Thai including Julie Kitchen and is considered, pound for pound, best female fighter in World Muay Thai.
Danielle Anderson is being trained by Amanda Kelly
Bill Judd, Boxer
Photographs copyright © Colin O’Brien
The KO Gym HQ, 186 The Arches, Globe Rd, E1 4ET
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John Claridge’s Boxers (Round One)
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Matthew Slocombe, Bottle Expert
The Bishopsgate Bottle
If you present Matthew Slocombe, Director of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, with a bottle, his eyes light up. Do not run away with the wrong idea though – the bottle has to be empty and at least two hundred years old.
“Yes, I admit it – I am a bottle man.” Matthew grins, “I’ve been fascinated since the age of eleven. Some boys are interested in cars or model trains, for me it was bottles. It began when we went to stay with some family friends who had a rustic cottage in the Marches on the Welsh border. There were some bits of broken glass poking out of a bank in the garden and I started excavating.”
“It turned out that hundred years or so earlier, the inhabitants of the cottage had simply been chucking their refuse over the hedge and their ‘rubbish’ was still there. That was when I first became interested. As a boy, my particular passion was quack cure medicine bottles. My absolute dream was to find a nineteenth century bottle for the wonderfully-named Radam’s Microbe Killer, mainly – I think – because it had a skeleton being bashed by a man with a club on the front!”
This enthusiasm grew and developed – as Matthew became more knowledgeable about bottles and their history he started to seek out even earlier finds, particularly ancient wine bottles. “I became a guerrilla bottler,” he says, “I used to look for likely places – usually old tips or ancient cess pits – where I could go digging. It seems odd, I happily admit it, but it’s impossible to emphasise the buzz of being on a site and delving down into the past to get to the ‘gold’.” He pauses for a moment and winces,“Archaeologists would be horrified to hear me say that – and quite rightly. These days I would be much more careful and ethical.”
An Architectural Historian, Matthew is something of a Bottle Expert, having published pamphlets and essays on the subject. His own collection of historic glass is displayed at his home in West Sussex. “Glass is fragile, but that’s the great beauty of it. At home my bottles are on a glass shelf suspended above the staircase. I like the drama and the jeopardy of that. That’s the thing about historic bottles – they are so old and so delicate and yet they have survived into the present.”
Appropriately, one of London’s most significant and earliest bottle-making sites was discovered close to the Society of the Preservation of Ancient Buildings’ offices in Spitalfields. In 1549, eight Murano glass workers from Italy arrived in London and set up their furnace in the Crutched-Friars Monastery. When the site burned down in 1575, glass house manager Giacomo Verzelini established a new furnace and thriving business in Broad St.
Matthew explains how important this was, both in terms of his hobby and his work with old buildings, “This is where the connection between the two happens for me. What you have down the road in Broad St is the development of glass for bottles and glass for windows hand-in-hand . Remember, up to this point, windows were a massive status symbol – light in a building was something only the very rich could afford. So this was a moment of a new technology surging forward, glass was the plastic of the Tudor age – solving all your household needs in one go!”
In the sixteenth century, glass suddenly became disposable, which is why it has found today in so many building sites across the City. Matthew explains, “Anyone with a Georgian house in Spitalfields would probably find old bottles – fragments at least – in their garden.”
“And they’d probably find them in other places too – in roof spaces, fireplaces and hidden beneath doorways. But these would be witch bottles, filled with items and fluids used in folk magic, sealed and deliberately concealed in the building. Some bottles would have been intended for protection others were curses.” He frowns,“As director of the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings, I strongly advise people against poking around in old chimneys or destroying the fabric of a building in the hope of finding a witch bottle.”
Collectors of early English wine bottles – Matthew included – particularly prize the mid-seventeenth century shaft and globe type. These are the earliest forms to survive in any number because the methods used in their manufacture made them more robust than their predecessors. The fact that these bottles are sometimes impressed with a seal, denoting original ownership (both by taverns and by wealthy individuals), is especially significant and thrilling to an enthusiast.
An exceptional example is on permanent display just a stone’s throw from the Society’s headquarters in Spital Sq, in the entrance hall of the modern offices at number two hundred and eighty-eight Bishopsgate. To a casual passer-by, the damaged bottle in the case might look like an unexceptional chunk of brown glass, but to the expert it is a magical piece. Excavated from the site when the foundations were going in, the bottle bears the seal of Thomas and Ann Kent.
Vintners records for the City of London show that the Kents were tenants of the King’s Head in Chancery Lane from 1630 until 1660. Thus there is strong evidence that any bottle seal relating to the Kents at the Kings Head must date from 1660 or before, making the Bishopsgate Bottle traceable survival of an exeptional early specimen.
“It is a fantastic thing,” says Matthew, adding rather wistfully, “It’s a bottle I would love to own. I can honestly say I walk past it every day on my way into the office to make sure it’s okay.”
“For any true bottle collector, the dream is to find an old bottle that can be linked with an individual through its seal, or a bottle that can be linked to a point in time because they are so completely dateable. The Bishopsgate Bottle does both which makes it important.” He thinks for a moment,“The Holy Grail would, I think, be to find something with the seal of Samuel Pepys. He was a proven drinker – the diaries show that. It would be the Tutankhamen’s tomb of all bottle finds.”
Tantalisingly, the Bishopsgate Bottle is linked, tangentially, to the celebrated diarist. Pepys visited the Kents’ establishment in Chancery Lane on June 26th 1660, noting, “Went to the King’s Head and had very good sport with one Mr Nicholls, a prating coxcomb that would be a poet but would not be got to repeat any of his verses.” On October 23ed 1663, the diary records that Samuel inspected his own “new bottles…with my crest upon them.”
Yet Matthew’s own ambition when it comes to expanding his collection is more modest. “To find a bottle marked with the seal of Peter Ogier who built number 37 Spital Square would be marvellous. Now that, for me, would be a very special bottle indeed.” he admits.
English wine bottle 1690s
English wine bottle of 1720 with surface irridescence caused by burial in the earth
English wine bottle 1730s
1790s English wine bottle from a shipwreck with contents, bought by Matthew aged twelve.
English wine bottle of c. 1850, dug up by Matthew
Hand-applied lip to an early nineteenth medicine bottle from the East End
Some of Matthew’s collection.
Matthew Slocombe, architectural historian and bottle expert, with his son Felix.
Photographs copyright © Matthew Slocombe
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At Wilton’s Music Hall
Wilton’s Music Hall by Marc Gooderham
When The Gentle Author invited me to take over for a week my first thought – being daunted and flattered in equal measure – was to visit Wilton’s Music Hall in Graces Alley, just off Leman St in Whitechapel, since my book Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders was partly inspired by a visit to Wilton’s a couple of years back in the company of a group of conservation officers and old building specialists.
I work just up the road from Wilton’s in Spitalfields at The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and during that first visit I tagged along on a field trip organised as part of a course being run by the Society. Hard hats were an essential element of our costume for the afternoon since Wilton’s Music Hall was pretty much a building site at that time. But while everyone else was knowledgably tapping the Acro-props in the bar and admiring the exposed, structural elements of the building as they mulled over the gritty conservation challenges ahead, I was inhaling the atmosphere – spellbound by the faded beauty around me and the stories it whispered. I think the seed for Kitty Peck was sown that afternoon.
In 2010, The Gentle Author interviewed Frances Mayhew – the surprisingly youthful guiding hand behind the resurgence of the oldest surviving ‘grand music hall’ in the world. Back then, Frances had been at the helm for five years. Thanks to various grants and donations from trusts and individuals she had already managed to raise enough money to make the auditorium safe for the foreseeable future, but she was keenly aware of the enormous tasks that lay ahead – not least tackling the subsidence caused by crumbling Victorian drains, gently parting the theatre from the Georgian buildings that run along its frontage in Graces Alley.
When I visited at the end of June, the building was buzzing with energy. Glowing with excitement, Frances told me the news. Wilton’s had won its first Heritage Lottery Fund grant – £1.85 million, allowing essential stabilisation and development work to begin on the four buildings (just) attached to her theatre. This is where the offices, front of house, bar and meeting rooms are housed in a warren of intriguing spaces – and now that the auditorium is secure, this area is key to Frances’ plans for the future.
She grinned broadly as she talked about the success of the bid – news so fresh that it was under embargo. “It’s fantastic,” she said. “In effect, it means that for the next three years, as the work goes on around us, I will be running the most amazing community and education project – involving SPAB and the Buildings Craft College and about twenty-five primary schools, three high schools and thousands of volunteers. It’s going to be hard graft – and I think we’re all going to become the modern equivalent of dockers!”
“The grant will enable us to do all sorts of wonderful things. We’ll get to two studios, an archive, a visitor room – to be known as The John Wilton Room – there will be rehearsal spaces and I’ll also put the archive online and improve the cafe. As well as being a performance space, Wilton’s will have rooms to rent, rooms to study in, and rooms to just hang out in. It means we will be open all the time, days and evenings. And, most importantly ,it will be so much fun – a whole new chapter.”
Wilton’s is already crammed with stories but Frances’ own story is one of the most inspiring. She first became aware of the Music Hall while an intern for previous occupants, Broomhill Opera, and as a classically trained recorder player, she expected to be working there as a musician … but she was wrong.
“I had the grottiest jobs. I had to clean out pigeon shit, handle the dead rats and generally remove God-knows-what from the gutters. A few years later, when I found out that Wilton’s was threatened with bankruptcy and that Wetherspoons were on the verge of taking it over – quite honestly – my first thought was not, ‘What a sad thing to happen to such a beautiful building.’ No – what actually went through my mind was, ‘I don’t believe it! I worked my nuts off for that place – day and night for those people, opening and closing and cleaning and sweeping and dusting and delving in gutters. That is not going to happen. I won’t let it.’”
Admitting that she was probably swept away on a wave of romance, Frances stepped in with a bold offer to run Wilton’s single-handedly to pay off its debts.“The experience with the opera company gave me a grounding in how to look after a delicate old building, so I knew what it would entail and what to do. But once I’d done it, there was only me. Every night I’d wake up and I couldn’t get back to sleep because my heart was beating with fear. I used to race in here every day, stay all day, work all weekend and all through the night. I did fall in love with the building, but there was also a huge element of wanting to do the right thing for it.” Nine years later, she and her partner Filippo de Capitani, Technical Director, are still doing the right things for Wilton’s.
Filippo is the creative drive behind the Wilton’s App – centred on the true tale of a nineteenth century female performer who took theatre owner John Wilton to court alleging that her costumes had been damaged due to his his negligence. Wilton argued successfully that the guilt lay instead with a young boy working for the hall, who was ultimately fined. The App revisits that story and takes the viewer on a mystery tour through the building to seek clues to discover what really happened.
As ‘Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders’ is full of strong female characters – a particular fascination of mine – I could not resist asking Frances about some of the women associated with Wilton’s. She reeled off a string of evocative names – The Sisters Gilbey Gifford, daring Jewish trapeze artist, Madame Senyah, and, most fascinatingly, Welsh Nightingale Annie Delamont, who was sent to prison after being convicted of both bigamy and incest. There were obviously plenty of stories there, but let me admit that the tale which most caught my attention involved a murder.
In Wilton’s Victorian heyday, a drunken heckler was attacked so violently from the stage by an angry performer that he died from his head wounds. Astonishingly, when the case came to the Old Bailey, the victim’s wife gave evidence on behalf of the performer, explaining that her husband had been “most excessively drunk and abusive” and probably deserved it. The contrite performer was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to just two weeks’ imprisonment because the victim had provoked his own injury. It makes modern stories of outraged actors admonishing mobile phone users in their audience seem tame by comparison.
Frances confessed she admires the spirit of reckless abandon which infused the music halls of the nineteenth century, adding that sometimes she wishes she could recapture that element of the unexpected. “People came from all walks of life looking for excitement. Alongside the dock workers, there were women in amazing silk gowns, men in gorgeous top hats, and foreign sailors, fresh off the boats and searching for entertainment. You have to remember that Wilton’s was world famous back then, more of a landmark for some people than St Paul’s Cathedral. You came here and you didn’t know what to expect, but you hoped it would be exciting – either as an observer or as a participant. It was simply a great big, rowdy pub with a stage. Occasionally, I regret that we’ve lost that element of surprise …” Frances grins, “Although maybe not the murder!”
One thing is certain. Now that the grant has enabled the next phase of her vision for the world’s oldest music hall to be fulfilled, the next three years at Wilton’s are going to be far from ordinary. I’ll leave you today with an observation about Wilton’s from a newspaper circa 1880.
“Through the little hall, where the lady money-taker sits placidly in her sentry-box, passed two lady patrons who are vainly attempting to come in to the downstairs room, and who are mildly but firmly informed that young ladies without escort are all expected to sit upstairs, and passing into the open you learn that two policemen-looking men at the door are kept there by the proprietor to scrutinise visitors and to exclude all who have been convicted of unruliness or open impropriety. The poetry may not always be as well-chosen as the music, the stars may, to an hypercritical eye, twinkle and grow pale, but there is no doubt that under the paternal despotism which, as a form of government, Wilton’s Music Hall is, in its way, as carefully conducted and affords as much gratification as if it had titled ladies for its patrons, Hanover Square for its locality and the spread of classical music for its aim.”
Frances Mayhew, Director of Wilton’s – “People always ask to speak to Mr Mayhew”
Photographs copyright © Stephen Griffin
Wilton’s Music Hall, 1 Graces Alley, E1 8JB
An exhibition of prints by Marc Gooderham runs at the Townhouse, 5 Fournier St until 21st July.
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My Family in Limehouse
It is my pleasure to welcome Kate Griffin as guest writer for the next seven days, celebrating the publication of her first novel Kitty Peck & The Music Hall Murders by Faber & Faber – a murder mystery set in the world of East End music hall in the eighteen-eighties. Kate’s family originate from Limehouse and she works today at the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings in Spitalfields. And thus I leave you in her safe hands until my return on Monday 15th July.
In St Anne St, Limehouse
Both my grandmother and my grandfather on my mum’s side of the family were born in Limehouse. To be precise, Hannah and Timo (as we always called my grandfather, Michael) were born in St Anne St, in the brooding shadow of Hawksmoor’s great pale church which bears more than a passing resemblance to Christ Church, Spitalfields.
Born in the final decade of the nineteenth century, they were both children of immigrant families. My grandfather’s side – the Kellys – were surprisingly jolly refugees from the Irish potato famine while my grandmother’s side – the Becks – admitted to Irish and Scottish antecedents, although given the name I sometimes wonder if there was a German/Jewish lineage too?
Any delusions of grandeur I ever harboured about my family – on my mum’s side at least – were firmly dispelled a decade or so ago when a distant Beck cousin discovered this photograph of the residents of St Anne St taken about 1909. The smiling faces and bold postures presented to the camera cannot hide the fact that these people were poor.
In ‘Down in Limehouse,’ a highly moralised account of life in and around the Docks published in 1925, the Rev George H. Mitchell wrote, “Slums of the worst possible kind are here – back alleys and dead ends, wherein whole families are herded together in less space than is given to tramps of the road roosted together in a common lodging house.”
I am not sure if conditions in St Anne St were quite that grim, but my family were definitely lodgers like every other person in the photograph. In the front row to the right, dressed in a severe black dress and sitting (you might almost say “enthroned”) my Kelly great-grandmother, Kit, is clearly the queen of the street. While over to the right, just visible in the crowd, you can make out the faded, sad-eyed, exhausted face of great-granny Beck. It is no surprise she looks defeated, because even though she was probably in her mid-forties when the photograph was taken, her life had been almost unbearably hard.
My great-grandfather Beck was employed as a regular in the docks. In his late thirties, he developed what was probably throat cancer and was no longer able to work. Family lore has it that a friend persuaded him that if he died, a pension would be provided for his widow and children. In pain and aware that his condition was incurable, my great-grandfather killed himself – comforted by the knowledge that his family would be provided for.
He was wrong. Faced with no other options, in the closing days of Queen Victoria’s reign, my tiny great-granny (women are not tall in my family, I am only four foot ten inches and she was even smaller) queued at the docks for casual work every morning alongside men who were twice her size and half her age. No wonder she looks like a shadowy wraith in the photograph – she was literally wearing away.
It is an odd thing, but when I remember the stories told to me by my grandparents about their childhood in St Anne St, tales from the Kelly side of the street seem to be full of fun and laughter. Unsurprisingly, my grandmother Hannah’s memories were darker. I have never liked New Year. I have always had the instinctive feeling that there is something dark and dangerous about it – and I think that is entirely down to her. While most grannies tell children tales of youthful escapades, mine had a taste for the gothic. “My sister and me used to lie in our bed in the attic,” she told me once, “and we’d pull the blanket tight up over our heads because we didn’t like to hear fog horns out on the Thames. The worst time was New Year. At the stroke of midnight, every ship in the docks would sound its horns or sirens. It seemed to go on for ever – a horrible, mournful wailing sound it was, coming up from the river like a monster rising up from the water to get us.” I think of that story without fail every New Year’s Eve.
Today, London’s Chinatown is in Soho but Chinatown was in Limehouse at the end of the nineteenth century. The Docks were where the world arrived in London and sometimes ‘the world’ stayed.
When Hannah looked after me as child and I was being particularly fractious, she often warned me that she would send “the men with the pigtails and fingernails after me.” This was a disturbing reference to the Chinese men she remembered from the streets of her own childhood.
There is more than an echo of my grandmother’s memories of the Chinese in Limehouse in my book ‘Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders,’ but recently when I visited the Bishopsgate Institute to research further, I became fascinated by their collection of books, pamphlets and memoirs relating to the area and its immigrant communities.
In’ Limehouse Through the Centuries,’ Rev John Godfrey Birch (another vicar on an improving mission) wrote, “On any day of the week one may meet strangers whose home address is in any corner of the seven seas – Lascars with slipshod gait, Malays and Chinese, turbanned Indians, full-blooded Africans, Scandinavians and West Indians and curious composite creatures in frock coats and fezzes or dungarees and umbrellas. To thousands and thousands of foreigners the word London means West India Dock Rd.”
Among the many incomers from all parts of the globe, my grandmother was fascinated by the Chinese people. “They always used to walk in single file down the street,” she told me, “All dressed in long dark coats, and some of them had plaits all the way down their backs. They didn’t look at us and they didn’t speak a word. Sometimes they carried bundles on poles balanced across their shoulders. Us kids were scared of them.”
I do not believe my grandmother was racist – the friends she made throughout her life proved that – but I think she responded to the Chinese presence in Limehouse with an innocent child’s love of the mysterious. Yet racism does play a part in this story, because many Limehouse commentators whose work is preserved the Bishopsgate archive display a jaw-dropping tone of casual distaste and mistrust.
Rev Mitchell wrote that opium dens were “raided periodically, while Chinamen stealthily carry on their Oriental orgies behind closed doors.”And if that is not enough, he adds, in a sensational passage guaranteed to thrill the socks off the most devout campaigner for social reform – “Every house in what is known as Pennyfields and Limehouse Causeway is either a gambling hell or a drug and opium depot. Chinatown is the seat of the white slave traffic, the home of Oriental vice and the rendezvous for the international trade of deadly drugs. There are streets too where every house is a standing menace to morals and where, also, the sacrilegious rites of Oriental black magic are practised.”
If that all sounds enticingly melodramatic to you, you are in good company because Rev Mitchell’s lurid accounts are the finely-laundered cousins of the gaudy, thrilling fictions by the likes of Sax Rohmer, Thomas Burke and even Conan Doyle.
Chinese Limehouse lives on in the popular imagination as the shadowy lair of Rohmer’s evil genius Fu Manchu. This is how Rohmer imagined his arch-villain, “Tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan… one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present. Imagine that awful being and you have a mental picture of Dr Fu Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man.” Reprinted today, Rohmer’s Fu Manchu books are still ripping yarns, although hopefully these days the enlightened reader will recognise their unequivocal racial stereotypes.
Thomas Burke’s more complex ‘Limehouse Nights,’ published to instant notoriety in 1916 with its pioneering theme of inter-racial love, was an evocative portrayal of dangerous glamour of Stepney (not a phrase you get to write very often!). At the prompting of Mary Pickford, D.W. Griffiths paid £1,000 for the film rights to ‘Limehouse Nights.’ The foggy back streets, musty opium dens and Fan Tan gambling parlours of Burke’s world – the stomping ground of ringletted Cockney waifs and mysterious Chinamen – were so vividly portrayed in ‘Broken Blossoms,’ Griffiths’screen adaptation of the book starring Lillian Gish, that it set the iconic template for how Limehouse would be viewed in literature and through the lens. And even the recent, blisteringly successful, Sherlock, pays homage.
Look again at that photo of the residents of St Anne St back in 1909. They are untouched by the romance and glitter of Limehouse seen through the prism of Hollywood, but I do find it curiously satisfying to know my own family walked the streets that inspired such an enduring genre. As Karl Brown writes in ‘Adventures with D.W. Griffiths,’ “The whole English-reading world knew every dark and dangerous alley of Limehouse as well as they knew their way to the corner grocery.”
It still does.
The Kelly family lived at number 8 St Anne St, Limehouse
Kate Griffin’s forebears – the Beck family in St Anne St, 1938
St Anne St today
St Anne’s, Limehouse
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‘Broken Blossoms,’ D.W. Griffith’s ‘adaptation of ‘Limehouse Nights.’
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Myrna Loy and Boris Karloff in “The Mask of Fu Manchu”
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When Beryl Happe of the Old Girls of the Central Foundation School (which was in Spital Sq from 1892 until 1975) contacted me to write about them, I asked if I could come to one of their gatherings. When Beryl explained that the Old Girls existed only as a group on the internet, I suggested we collaborate to stage a reunion.
Thus it was that Beryl and I went along to Spital Sq to speak with the management of the Galvin Restaurant, which now occupies the building that was once the school assembly hall, and we organised a joyous reunion of more than seventy Old Girls which took place recently – where Spitalfields Life Contributing Photographer Patricia Niven took the portraits published here today.
Senior guest of honour was Zena Yorke who had been a pupil in the thirties and returned as a teacher of Domestic Science in the post-war era. “What is it like returning to your old school after all these years?” I ventured tentatively. “Whenever I’ve got a lot of money I come here for lunch,” she declared, gazing around the swanky restaurant with bright-eyed enthusiasm, “The food is excellent.”
I could not resist savouring a certain irony in the occasion, discovering that the school cultivated an Eliza Doolittle tendency in its pupils, teaching deportment, elocution and which fork to use for fish. A prophecy was being fulfilled before my eyes as these pupils, once from modest backgrounds, were now shown to be supremely comfortable in such elevated surroundings – especially as they all appeared to have done rather well in life, thanks to the classy education they received at the Central Foundation School.
“Do you remember Jesse Cash?” enquired Zena of the assembled throng, “She did very well, she sang the Queen of the Night at the Royal Opera House. They wouldn’t give her a grant to train as a singer, only as a teacher of singing. But now she has retired and teaches singing.”
Zena nodded to herself in private acknowledgement at the poetry of life. She and a few other Old Girls still live in the East End, but for most it was an emotional return. As the top grammar school for girls in the territory, Central Foundation School encouraged class mobility and very few of the Old Girls would consider themselves East Enders anymore.
There was plenty of laughter and a few tears too. One Old Girl told me how they were permitted to choose the hymns they sang on their last day at school, half a century ago in that very room, yet they were unable to sing because they cried so much – and, subsequently, she and her friends all had the same hymns at their weddings.
There were differing opinions on whether the school encouraged enough ambition or imposed limitations upon girls’ expectations, though Mrs Dunford, the progressive head mistress, was remembered fondly by everyone. In particular, her introduction of sex education was applauded, as was her court appearance defending the “little red book’ that was used to teach the ‘facts of life’ to girls.
The guest speaker was Fiona Skrine, one of those brave individuals who locked themselves into the hall to stop its demolition in 1981, speaking with eloquent passion and startling everyone with the tale of how Dan Cruickshank fought to stop a workman who wanted to strip the architectural features for salvage.
In sum, there was a collective sense of euphoria engendered by the discovery that something which had been lost could so elegantly be restored to life, simply by gathering the Old Girls in the former school hall for a fancy tea party – and it was generally agreed that an annual reunion had been inaugurated.
Central Foundation School for Girls, Spital Sq
Zena Yorke, pupil in the thirties and Domestic Science teacher in the post-war era – “Whenever I’ve got a lot of money, I come here for lunch! It was a brilliant school and many of us were East End girls who came from poverty. I was born in the East End, but people say to me, ‘You don’t talk like a cockney.’ I say, ‘I’ve been educated to speak correctly, not everyone in E1 is ignorant!’ I’ve always lived in the East End, it’s such a friendly place to be.”
Beryl Happe – inspired organiser of the reunion.
Beverley Marling (1968-74) – “I’m from Stepney and I had a very good education here, learning loads of languages, French, Spanish, German, Russian, and sciences, Physics, Chemistry and Biology. We were taught that whatever you wanted to do it was possible. If you had ideas, Mrs Dunford was always interested, I’ve swapped careers several times, I worked for the Bank Of England for a while, I had my children and I ran a pub, and now I’m managing Chelmsford City Football Club.”
Beverly as a pupil
Sheila Norman (1948-56) – “We were all East End girls from deprived backgrounds and this school was the making of us. They had a box of knives and taught us how to eat properly if we were taken out. I’m in the school livery, we used to wear all green – even our knickers!”
Barbara Marling (1965-72) – “Miss Idison had a go at me for not being good at Maths, but then I went to the London College of Fashion and worked in the rag trade for thirteen years.”
Mary Hanbidge, Head Mistress, 1898 – 1929
Barbara Jezewska (1965- 72) – “I was very happy here.”
Barbara as a pupil
Valerie Noble (1967-74) – “I grew up in Shoreditch and people said it was deprived but I never felt deprived. There were no black girls at the school when I arrived. When I came for my interview, my mother showed me the roll of honour with names of pupils on it and said, ‘If you work hard you can go to university and get your name on this board.’ And I went to the school and I did get my name on that board. Years later, I showed my daughter and, last week, she got her own degree. I’ve been a teacher for thirty years and a head for six.”
Lisa Jarvis (1962-68) – “I found it difficult coming from a poor East End background, though it was a fantastic school and I still have some of the knowledge I acquired here – Miss Yorke taught me to cook, and I passed it onto my son and now he does all the cooking! But it was the sixties and we all wanted to be out enjoying ourselves.”
Pinning the corsage on the Lady Mayoress.
Carol Green (1965-72) – “We were all poor East End girls who managed to pass our Eleven Plus exam. We all came here and did well. We all got in to University. My seven years here were the best years of my life, just saying it makes me cry! It was the camaraderie of the girls, we became friends for life and still see each other regularly nearly fifty years later.”
Josette Hill (1968-73) – “Looking back, it was a lot of fun – but I didn’t think so at the time.”
Textbook used from 1913 to 1962
Josephine Collins (1968-73) – “We were considered special, but there was a limit to what was expected of us – either a nurse, or a teacher or secretary to an important man in the City.”
Josephine as a pupil
Francs Robertson (1951-57) – “I wasn’t the best student but I loved being a City of London girl, and it gave me a sense of purpose. We always used to clap for anyone who achieved something good, when girls got into teacher training, or nursing, or Oxford & Cambridge.”
Miss Roberts says goodbye.
Susan Goldman (1968-73) – “I’m from Roman Rd. It was a really good school and I got a career at Lloyds, before I married and had four daughters.”
Susan as a pupil
Susan Brencher – “We used to go out at lunchtime down the market and visit Bert’s Photography Studio in Wentworth St, when we probably shouldn’t have. We were supposed to be nice girls. At school dances, we were told not to sit on the boys’ laps but we weren’t interested in those spotty kids. I lived near the ‘Ready Steady Go’ studio and afterwards we’d wait for the stars like Freddie & the Dreamers to come out.”
Susan as a pupil
“We were all boy mad. One of our friends got pregnant and married the school coach driver”
“All the porters used to whistle as we walked through the market.”
Sheree Ashley (1969-75) – “I grew up in Whitechapel and it was quite a prestigious thing being here. It was a bit too academic for me, I spent all my time in the Art Room. I wanted to do Art but Mrs Dunsford said, ‘Not as a career?’ I tried to give up Chemistry to do Art but Mrs Dunsford said, ‘As an artist, you’ll need Chemistry to mix pigments.’ I went to Chelsea School of Art and I became a textile designer, and my parents were very supportive, but Chemistry never figured.”
Netta Bloomfield (1948-53) – “I worked hard and liked school. I used to come on the bus with my friend Sheila. I remember, when it arrived, people going to work used to elbow us schoolgirls out of the way.”
Rosemary Hoffman (1956-62) – “Subsequently, I’ve become a food technologist.”
Rosemary as a pupil, stands central in this photograph
Verinda Osborne (1965-72) -“Mrs Dunford was very progressive and she encouraged me to have confidence in myself.”
Form IIX, 1960 submitted by Jane Hart (née Silvester)
Portraits copyright © Patricia Niven
The Bishopsgate Institute is collecting a digital archive of memorabilia from Central Foundation School for Girls. If you have photographs, reports, magazines or any other material that the Institute can copy for the archive, please contact the Archivist Stefan.Dickers@bishopsgate.org.uk
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The Return of Parmiters School
