Lost Spitalfields
Looking towards Spitalfields from Aldgate East
London can be a grief-inducing city. Everyone loves the London they first knew, whether as the place they grew up or the city they arrived in, and everyone loses it. As the years pass, the city bound with your formative experience changes, bearing less and less resemblance to the place you discovered. Your London is taken from you. Your sense of loss grows until eventually your memory of the London you remember becomes more vivid than the London you see before you and you become a stranger in the place that you know best. This is what London can do to you.
In Spitalfields, the experience has been especially poignant in recent years with the redevelopment of the ancient market. Yet these photographs reveal another Spitalfields that only a few people remember, this is lost Spitalfields.
Spital Sq was an eighteenth century square linking Bishopsgate with the market that was destroyed within living memory, existing now only as a phantom presence in these murky old photographs and in the fond remembrance of senior East Enders. On the eastern side of Spitalfields, the nineteenth century terraces of Mile End New Town were erased in ‘slum clearances’ and replaced with blocks of social housing while, to the north, the vast Bishopsgate Goodsyard was burned to the ground in a fire that lasted for days in 1964.
Yet contemplating the history of loss in Spitalfields sets even these events within a sobering perspective. Only a feint pencil sketch of the tower records the Priory of St Mary which stood upon the site of Spital Sq until Henry VIII ‘dissolved’ it and turned the land into his artillery ground. Constructing the Eastern Counties Railway in the eighteen-thirties destroyed hundreds of homes and those residents who were displaced moved into Shoreditch, creating the overcrowded neighbourhood which became known as the Old Nichol. And it was a process that was repeated when the line was extended down to Liverpool St. Meanwhile, Commercial St was cut through Spitalfields from Aldgate to Shoreditch to transport traffic more swiftly from the docks, wreaking destruction through densely inhabited streets in the mid-nineteenth century.
So look back at these elegiac photos of what was lost in Spitalfields before your time, reconcile yourself to the loss of the past and brace yourself for the future that is arriving.
Spital Sq, only St Botolph’s Hall on the right survives today
Spital Sq photographed in 1909
Church Passage, Spital Sq, 1733, photographed in 1909 – only the market buildings survive.
17 Spital Sq, 1725
25 Spital Sq, 1733
23 Spital Sq, 1733
20 Spital Sq, 1723
20 Spital Sq, 1723
20 Spital Sq, 1732
32 Spital Sq, 1739
32 Spital Sq, 1739
5 Whites Row, 1714
6/7 Spring Walk, 1819
Buxton St, 1850
Buxton St, 1850
Former King Edward Institution, 1864, Deal St
36 Crispin St, 1713
7 Wilkes St, 1722
10 & 11 Norton Folgate, 1810 – photographed in 1909
Norton Folgate Court House, Folgate St, photographed in 1909
52 & 9a Artillery Passage, 1680s
Bishopsgate Goods Station, 1881
Shepherd’s Place arch, 1820, leading to Tenter St – photographed 1909
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The Gentle Author Needs Your Help
With your kind assistance, I plan to publish a beautiful album of my favourite pictures from Spitalfields Life on October 17th. Already, David Pearson who designed my first book Spitalfields Life has been at work preparing these elegant sample pages of the album to give you a flavour of what to expect.
Laying myself upon your goodwill, I am asking any of my readers who are willing – to invest a sum of no more and no less than £1000 each to fund the publication of The Gentle Author’s London Album. All those who wish to invest will be credited personally in the book and invited to bring a cheque along to a dinner hosted by yours truly later this month. In October, prior to publication, I will present you with an inscribed copy of the album and, six months later, your investment will be returned to you – unless you choose to offer it as a donation towards the publication of further titles by Spitalfields Life Books.
Whereas my book Spitalfields Life was a collection of stories about Spitalfields and the East End, The Gentle Author’s London Album is a picture book that gathers the most inspiring images I have discovered and widens its scope to include the entire capital. David Pearson and I have already drawn such delight from the wealth of possibilities available to us in selecting our favourites – and you may rely upon finding many of your best-loved picture stories from Spitalfields Life in the album.
At the core of of the book, will be the first publication in print of the glass lantern slides of a century ago from the Bishopsgate Institute, originally produced for the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society, arranged in themes such as The Pubs of Old London and The Fogs & Smogs of Old London. Yet, while you can guarantee a breathtaking array of unseen images of old London, there will be an equal number of contemporary photographs of the city today – reflecting the drama of life in our capital where new and old co-exist side by side.
Following Colin O’Brien’s Travellers’ Children in London Fields which we launched this week, The Gentle Author’s London Album is the second title from Spitalfields Life Books -and Faber Factory Plus (part of Faber & Faber) will distribute it to bookshops nationwide in the autumn.
If you are willing to be an investor and help me publish The Gentle Author’s London Album, please drop me a line at Spitalfieldslife@gmail.com and I will be delighted to send you further details.
To invest in The Gentle Author’s London Album please write to me The Gentle Author at Spitalfieldslife@gmail.com and I will send you further details.
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Lecture at The National Portrait Gallery
Gary Arber, Printer & Flying Ace
It is my great honour to give an illustrated lecture of portraits from the pages of Spitalfields Life at the National Portrait Gallery on July 25th at 7pm.
Complementing the current display of portraits of people from Tower Hamlets drawn from the National Portrait Gallery Archive as part of their Creative Connections project, I shall be showing portraits of more than one hundred East Enders selected from the thousands of pictures I have published.
I am delighted to present the work of Spitalfields Life Contributing Photographers Sarah Ainslie, John Claridge, Lucinda Douglas Menzies, Jeremy Freedman, Chris Kelly, Phil Maxwell, Simon Mooney, Patricia Niven, Colin O’Brien, Alex Pink and Martin Usborne.
Portrait by Sarah Ainslie
Portrait by John Claridge
Portrait by Jeremy Freedman
Portrait by Chris Kelly
Portrait by Colin O’Brien
Portrait by Phil Maxwell
Portrait by Patricia Niven
Portrait by Alex Pink
Portrait by Claudia Lesinger
Portrait by Simon Mooney
Portrait by Martin Usborne
Portrait by Lucinda Douglas Menzies
Portrait by Sarah Ainslie
Portrait by John Claridge
Portrait by Patricia Niven
Portrait by Jeremy Freedman
Portrait by Phil Maxwell
Portrait by Colin O’Brien
Portrait by Martin Usborne
Portrait by Simon Mooney
Portraits copyright of individual photographers ©
On Colin O’Brien’s Publication Day
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Click to buy a signed copy of Colin O’Brien’s book for £10!
Portrait of Colin O’Brien copyright © Alex Pink
Copies are available now at Bishopsgate Institute, Brick Lane Bookshop, Broadway Bookshop, InSpitalfields, Labour & Wait, Leila’s Shop, Newham Bookshop, Rough Trade, SCP and Townhouse Window in Fournier St.
Faber Factory Plus part of Faber & Faber are distributing Travellers’ Children in London Fields nationwide, so if you are a retailer and would like to sell copies in your shop please contact bridgetlj@faber.co.uk who deals with trade orders.
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At The E5 Bakehouse
Today, it is my pleasure to introduce you to our friends at the E5 Bakehouse (next to London Fields Station) where we shall be staging our book launch and exhibition tomorrow night between 6 and 9pm. They will be firing up the brick oven in the bakehouse yard to cook us some tasty fare, with refreshment kindly provided by Truman’s Beer and fiddler Dan Mayfield supplying the tunes.
Ben Mackinnon
Not so long ago, Ben Mackinnon started baking at home for his friends and making deliveries on his bicycle each Saturday. A few years later, you would have found him selling his bread from a table on the pavement outside Leila’s Shop. Quite recently, he was running his own wood-fired brick oven and baking organic bread in the yard at the Happy Kitchen.
But for the last two years, Ben has been running the E5 Bakehouse in two arches under London Fields Station, producing an endless supply of sourdough bread and a whole range of loaves, cakes and savouries to delight the residents of Hackney. And the outcome has been the spontaneous creation of a new social centre for the neighbourhood, where you can pick up your daily loaf, linger over coffee and cake or, if you wish, learn bread-making yourself at weekly classes. It is a working place, a meeting place and a creative place, uniting the local community.
When you walk into the Bakehouse everyone is busy, yet no-one seems to be in charge. It is a model of relaxed concentrated activity and the outcome is superlative baking. Many of these people were originally volunteers who came along to use Ben’s first brick oven under the railway arches and opening the Bakehouse allowed him to offer them a salary. Similarly, just as the famous wild Hackney yeast is kept alive from one batch of sourdough to the next, so profits are slowly reinvested in equipment and resources that permit the Bakehouse to grow.
“I was searching for something to get my teeth into,” Ben admitted to me, referring back to a significant spell of unemployment in his twenties,“and you can’t match the satisfaction of bread when it’s done really well.” Lanky and blonde, with an infectious youthful energy, Ben has conjured the Bakehouse into existence through his own hard work and persistence.
“In May 2011, we moved into this arch and we still deliver everything by bicycle – we are reinventing the wheel!” he declared, gesturing excitedly around at the flurry of life surrounding him, “Everything’s organic, the energy is from renewable sources and we are careful to buy from suppliers who farm in better ways. We really focus on quality and we have a great team of people.”
Curiously, most of the staff at the Bakehouse did not originally train as bakers. Many have impressive university qualifications in high-brow subjects, yet they all share a devotion to the elemental process of traditional bread-making in a slow labour-intensive way. This ardor, held in common, unites and inspires these zealous bakers. They are strongly engaged with their working practice and idealistic to discover a better quality of life for themselves and their customers – no less than pursuing a better world through kneading dough.
“We are passionate about sourdough and the lost traditions of our baking ancestors.” Ben assured me, quoting the phrase that is the heartfelt maxim of the E5 Bakehouse.
Lauren Gerstel, Baker
Gregoire Diqueliou, Baker
Hannah Gledhill, Cafe Manager
Ben Glazer, Baker
Despina Siahuli, Head Chef
Dan Cartwright, Barista
Franzi Thomczik, Pastry Chef
Souleymane Diarra, Barista
Ben Mackinnon, Entrepreneurial Baker
Photographs copyright © Colin O’Brien
E5 Bakehouse, 395 Railway Arches, Mentmore Terrace, London E8 3PH
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Bakery Sculptures in Widegate St
At The Aldgate Press
We are proud that the first title published by Spitalfields Life Books was printed here in Brick Lane by The Aldgate Press and, on the day we collect the copies in advance of publication on Wednesday, we want to introduce you to our friends who were responsible for producing it so magnificently.
Andrew Holmes – “I left to go to Australia but I came back because I like it here!”
Well hidden in a shambolic old shed among the warren of dingy narrow lanes between Whitechapel and Spitalfields, The Aldgate Press is a worker’s co-operative created thirty years ago as an offshoot of the The Freedom Press, founded by Charlotte Wilson and Peter Kroptkin in 1886. No wonder front man Steve Sorba introduces himself as “one of a long line of Italian Anarchists in the East End.”
“Vernon Richards’ father, who was implicated in an assassination attempt upon Mussolini, sued the Daily Telegraph and Vernon used the money to set up The Aldgate Press, ” Steve explained with alacrity, as if it were an obvious path to seek funding for a new business.“We were editing Freedom, the Anarchist newspaper, which was being printed in Margate because there was no longer a printing press here, so we decided to set up a printing company to print the newspaper and all the anarchist classics.”
“He raised £20,000, and helped us acquire the equipment and get training in how to to use it,” Steve continued, “We always took on jobs from outside and we printed for lots of like-minded organisations including Friends of the Earth, Shelter, Human Rights Watch, as well as the Whitechapel Gallery, the V&A, Serpentine Gallery and the ICA.”
“We wanted to work as a co-operative to prove that it was possible, and do work that we cared about for people who cared about what they were doing. Everybody gets paid the same here and we decide among ourselves what we should do.”
Thirty years later, The Aldgate Press is the cultural focus of publishing in the East End. Everyone that wants to get publications printed eventually climbs the rickety old metal stairs on the side of the building to talk with Steve Sorba. Characteristically to be seen sporting cycling gear and demonstrating admirable self-control, Steve retains a saintly calm while holding everything together at the print works – whatever unlikely deadlines or ambitious expectations are presented to him.
In the case of “Travellers’ Children in London Fields,’ Colin O’Brien wanted the pictures in his book to resemble his own photographic prints. So it was to the credit of The Aldgate Press that Colin was able to be there in the print shop with Ken the printer, adjusting the first runs of his pictures to his satisfaction and then checking every single page as it came off the press. The flexibility of the printing staff allowed us to create a photography book that is both true to Colin’s vision and an entirely distinctive publication.
When Colin and I returned to do portraits of the staff last week, we were surprised to discover that most people had been working there for twenty years or more and I asked Steve why this was. “People don’t leave because they’re having so much fun,” he admitted with a sly grin, “or maybe it’s because they realise that anywhere else would be worse?”
Steve Sorba, Frontman -“So many printers have left London but a lot of people like to deal with someone local.”
Kevin Fernandes, Pre-Press – “I am responsible for everything that goes on before the job goes to print, including artwork checking. It’s an interesting job and because it’s a co-operative we get a wide range of customers.”
Jem Kathrens, Platemaker – “It’s a computer-based job these days, I get pdfs and impose them on the plates. I’ve stayed here since 1990 because it’s a nice working environment, with no bosses!”
Suhel Uhmed, Printer, who printed the jacket for “Travellers’ Children in London Fields.”
Jill Rolfe, Printing and Accounts – “I do accounts and I do printing but I’ve been here longer as a printer. Twenty-three years is way too long – this is what happens, you get here and you never leave…”
Book designer Friederike Huber & Photographer Colin O’Brien with the jacket of Colin’s book.
Aldgate press photographs copyright © Colin O’Brien
Friederike Huber & Colin O’Brien photograph © Alex Pink
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The Gentle Author Turns Publisher
Chris Chappell, Master of Taoism
Turn right off Brick Lane into a narrow courtyard and there, in a long gallery above an old stable, you will find Chris Chappell, the Spitalfields Master of Taoism. Blessed with a sinuous grace in his movement, Chris appears possessed with a spirit of another world – as his bright eyes glisten and his limbs take on a directed life of their own – advancing step by step across the floor with superlative control like a warrior expecting ambush in a dark forest. He is a harbinger from ancient China, carrying age-old techniques of movement and physical control into the modern world, and teaching them to Londoners today as a means to overcome injury and ameliorate stress, and tackle the demons of contemporary life.
Slight of statue and with a gentle yet purposeful manner, Chris is a creature who exists in his stealthy movement. He teaches Tai Chi – not that slow moves-in-the-park variety but something swifter and more directed to a purpose. Travelling back and forth to China where he learns from his master Ma Bao Guo, Chris has conjured the atmosphere of the ‘hutong’ in his Spitalfields yard and, once you enter the sanctum of the long gallery, you find yourself in a charged space. Here, where the clamor of Brick Lane recedes, Chris told me his story.
“I’m from Durham originally but I came to London to the Ballet Rambert School in 1981 and I acquired a flat in Dalston – and I’ve been in the East End ever since. My first experience of Tai Chi was when I came out of ballet school. A lot of dancers force their bodies to perform in certain ways and they fall apart, but I got so much benefit from Tai Chi – it helped me in my professional work , it fulfilled something that I didn’t get from ballet and it led me in a different direction.
I came to Spitalfields in 1995 when I opened my first studio. It was a Tai Chi and Chigung studio in an underground part of the old market that’s been demolished now – a hundred yards from where they found the Roman cemetery, so there was me and two thousand dead bodies. Formerly, I was a professional dancer and kickboxer, and I decided to take the plunge and I got this space close to the City. I didn’t realise that the area was famous for it, that Daniel Mendoza had his boxing gym in Aldgate East in the nineteenth century and that mine was in the same spirit, of a private gym for one-to-one tuition.
It was my first shot at being self-employed and I used to chain my signboard to a lamppost in Bishopsgate close to where RBS is now, in the hope of drawing custom – I did it in the belief that if I built it they would come. Until then, I had only been teaching kickboxing in a room in my flat. It was slow at first, but it caught on yet it wasn’t how I envisaged, my clients included City people, artists and housewives – and they came from all over, as far away as Stirling in Scotland.
I like the challenge of working with people who want to realise and refine what they do, using a method that engages body and mind at the same time. I do a lot of work rehabilitating people after illness or injury. My work uses medieval Chinese folk practices which have passed down through generations. ‘Chigung’ was a term coined in 1956 as a catch-all to include all kinds of therapeutic exercise, body control and martial arts. I am a disciple of Master Ma Bao Guo of Zhengzhou in Henan Province, China. He is a classical Master of Chen style Tai Chi Chuan and Hsing-I-Chuan. I met him in 2005 when his son was studying at Newcastle University. He was like a throwback to the early twentieth century. He’s of the high performance ilk and I have a strong connection with him because of the nature of his style of movement. He has a strong internal power.
I am also the first disciple of Master Frank Allen of the infamous Wu tang Physical Culture Association of New York City in the Lineage of Cheng Ba Gua Zhang of Grandmaster Lui Jing Ru of Beijing. Ba Gua Zhang’s foundation is a circle-walking practice.
These last ten years, my work has been mostly private lessons. I have studied anatomy and human dissection, so that I can talk to people about their bones and ligaments in a practical way – and how these things effect the dynamic of their movement, as opposed to just talking about ‘Chi’! The masters they only talk about ‘Chi,’ they may say no more than ‘Gungfu is good.’
My reputation is for pragmatic internal training that you can actually use immediately to improve your health or improve your sport. I get to make a living by doing something I enjoy. I get the satisfaction of helping those who have been written off by giving them back a life. I get the opportunity to pursue my mind training and physical practice. I’m my own boss and I don’t have to ask when I want to go away to China. There is also the challenge of being on Brick Lane, moving amongst the frantic energy – but this is the best place to practice, because the real thrill is to be able to be present here in the midst of the chaos.”
Chris Chappell with his teacher, Master Ma Bao Guo
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Watch Chris in action.
Photographs copyright © Alex Pink
Real Taoism, 170 Brick Lane, E1 6RU
