Phil Maxwell on Wentworth St
Spitalfields Life Contributing Photographer Phil Maxwell is taking street photography back to the street – a vast wall of his photographs has been installed on Wentworth St and will be there for the next two years while a new housing development is constructed. Transforming the street, these enormous blow-ups of Phil’s pictures bring new life to this neglected location that is still home to the legendary Petticoat Lane Market and was once celebrated as the teeming focus of life for the Jewish community in the East End.
“Originally, we proposed putting up photocopies of my pictures, pasted up like flyposters, but after six months we heard they were going to do it to a high specification, like advertising hoardings.” Phil admitted to me, revealing the modest origins of his grand project.
All the pictures were taken in the neighbourhood over the last thirty years and include some of Phil’s most familiar images, reproduced larger than life. “The photographs I have shown are ones that have become friends to me over the years and I feel I know the people themselves, so it looks to me as if I have got all my pals here.” said Phil,“I think it’s good to see photographs of ordinary people on the street when we are so used to seeing pictures of celebrities and movie stars on billboards. Mike Myers, who is featured in one of my pictures, was born nearby in Goulston St and he says ‘If anyone wants my autograph, I’ll give it to them.'”
Offering a visual echo of the recent past, Phil’s pictures bring a soulful presence to the street, creating an interesting dynamic with the present tense of Wentworth St and inspiring him to take photographs of his own photographs in situ. “I like the empty market stalls, they frame my pictures beautifully, and there’s a synergy between people walking past and the photographs themselves.” he observed, ” And it looks good at night too, because they light them after dark – so it is as if friendly ghosts from the neighbourhood are occupying the street and it gives Wentworth St a special magic.”
Cheshire St 1985
Wentworth St 2013
Commercial St 1985
Brick Lane 1999
Wentworth St 2013
Brick Lane 1983
Holland Estate 1984
Whitechapel 1985
Wentworth St 2013
Middlesex St 1985
Brick Lane 1983
Commercial Rd 1999
Cheshire St 1988
Cheshire St 1984
Spitalfields Market 1997
Whitechapek Rd 1985
Spitalfields Market 1991
Brick Lane 1983
Photographs copyright © Phil Maxwell
Phil Maxwell’s installation was created with the support of East End Homes & Telford Homes
These pictures are featured in the new film EAST ONE by Phil Maxwell & Hazuan Hashim premiered at the East End Film Festival 2013
Follow Phil Maxwell’s blog Playground of an East End Photographer
See more of Phil Maxwell’s work here
Phil Maxwell’s Kids on the Street
Phil Maxwell & Sandra Esqulant, Photographer & Muse
More of Phil Maxwell’s Old Ladies
The Relics of Norton Folgate
James Frankcom holds the Beadle’s staff of Norton Folgate from 1672
For some time now, Spitalfields resident James Frankcom has been on a quest to find the lost relics of the Liberty of Norton Folgate and last week, with true magnanimous spirit, he invited me and Contributing Photographer Alex Pink to share in his glorious moment of discovery.
First recorded in the Domesday Book in 1086, the nine acres north of Spitalfields known today as Norton Folgate were once the manor of Nortune Foldweg – ‘Nortune’ meaning ‘northern estate’ and “Folweig’ meaning ‘highway,’ referring to Ermine St, the Roman road north from the City of London that passed through the territory. Irrigated by the spring in Holywell St, this fertile land was within the precincts of the Priory of St Mary Spital until 1547 when, after the Reformation, it achieved autonomy as the Liberty of Norton Folgate, ruled by a court of ten officers described as the “Ancient Inhabitants.”
These elected representatives – including women – took their authority from the people and they asserted their right to self-government without connection to any church, maintaining the poor, performing marriages and burials, and superintending their own watchmen and street lighting. The officers of the Liberty were the Head Borough, the Constable who supervised the Beadles, the Scavenger who dealt with night soil, and Overseers of the Poor. And thus were the essentials of social organisation and waste disposal effectively accomplished for centuries in Norton Folgate.
When James Frankcom discovered that he lived within the former Liberty, he began to explore the history and found an article in Home Counties Magazine of 1905 which illustrated the relics of Norton Folgate including a beadle’s staff, a sixteenth century muniment chest and an almsbox, held at that time in Stepney Central Library.
A year ago, James contacted Malcolm Barr-Hamilton, the Archivist, at Tower Hamlets Local History Library in Bancroft Rd which houses artifacts transferred from the Whitechapel Library in 2010. There he found the minute books of Norton Folgate from 1729 until 1900, detailing the activities of the court and nightly reports by the watchmen. Curiously, in spite of the rowdy reputation that this particular neighbourhood of theatres and alehouses enjoyed through the centuries, including the famous arrest of Christopher Marlowe in 1589, the nightwatchmen recorded an unbroken sequence of “All’s well.”
In the penultimate entry of the minute book, dated October 1900, when the Liberty was abolished at the time of the foundation of the London County Council, James found mention of “certain relics of the Liberty of no use to the new Metropolitan Borough of Stepney” which the board of trustees gave to Whitechapel Museum for safe keeping. Searching among hundreds of index cards recording material transferred from Whitechapel to the archive, he found three beadle’s rods and an almsbox from Norton Folgate. Disappointingly, the muniment box had gone missing at some point in the last century, possibly when the collection was moved for safety to an unknown location during World War II.
When James put in a request to see the almsbox and the beadles’ rods, they could not be found at first – but eventually they were located. And, last week, I met James outside the Bancroft Library, where the local history collection is held and, although it is closed for renovations, we were able to go in to see the relics. Upon a table in the vast library chamber was the battered seven-sided alms box cut from a single piece of oak in 1600 and secured by four separate locks. It was a relic from another world, the world of Shakespeare’s London, and three centuries of “alms for oblivion” had once been contained in this casket.
Yet equally remarkable was the staff of Norton Folgate with a tiny sculpture upon the top of a realistic four-bar gate complete with the pegs that held it together – an heraldic pun upon the name of Norton Folgate. Since the photograph of 1901, it had suffered some damage but the inscription “Norton Folgate 1672” was still visible. Bearing the distinction of being London’s oldest staff of office, it represents the authority of the people.
James Frankcom could not resist wielding this staff that was once of such significance in the place where he lives and and savouring the sense of power it imparted. It was as if James were embodying the spirit of one of the “Ancient Inhabitants” and not difficult to imagine that, if he had dwelt in Norton Folgate in an earlier century, he might have brandished it for real – apparelled in a suitably dignified coat and hat of office, of course.
Dating from 1672, this is the oldest Beadle’s staff in London and it represents the authority of the people in opposition to the power of the church. The gate is an heraldic pun upon the name of Norton Folgate.
The painted Beadles’ staffs date from the coronation of George IV in 1820.
Hewn from single piece of oak, the seven-sided almsbox of Norton Folgate made in 1600.
“This box was divised bi Frances Candell for THE pore 1600” is inscribed upon the top and upon the lid is this text – “My sonne defrayde not the pore of hys allmes and turne not awaie they eies from him that hath nede. Lete not they hande be strecched owte to relaue and shut when thou sholdest gewe.”
Title page of the earliest minute book of Norton Folgate 1729
In Norton Folgate, the watchmen recorded an unbroken sequence of “all’s well” night after night.
In the last minute book, on 24th October 1900, the Liberty of Norton Folgate was abolished with the establishment of the London County Council.
The relics of the Liberty of Norton Folgate as illustrated in Home Counties Magazine, 1905 – including the lost sixteenth century muniment chest and the former courthouse in Folgate St.
The extent of the Liberty of Norton Folgate, 1873
Photographs copyright © Alex Pink
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Homer Sykes in Spitalfields
At the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in Brick Lane
From the moment he first came to London as a student until the present day, Homer Sykes has been coming regularly to Spitalfields and taking photographs. “It was very different from suburban West London where I lived, in just a few tube stops the contrast was extraordinary,” he recalled, contemplating the dislocated world of slum clearance and racial conflict he encountered in the East End during the nineteen seventies when these eloquent pictures were taken.
Yet, within this fractured social landscape, Homer made a heartening discovery that resulted in one of the photographs below. “The National Front were demonstrating as usual on a Sunday at the top of Brick Lane.” he told me, “I was wandering around and I crossed the Bethnal Green Rd, and I looked into this minicab office where I saw this Asian boy and this Caucasian girl sitting happily together, just fifty yards from the demonstration. And I thought, ‘That’s the way it should be.'”
“I walked in like I was waiting for a taxi and made myself inconspicuous in order to take the photograph. It seemed to sum up what should be happening – they were in love, and in a taxi office.”
In Princelet St
In Durward St
In a minicab office, Bethnal Green Rd
Selling the National Front News on the corner of Bacon St
Photographs copyright © Homer Sykes
Click here to buy a copy of Homer Sykes’ new book of photographs, BRICK LANE & CO: WHITECHAPEL IN THE 1970’s published this week by Cafe Royal Books at £5
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Homer Sykes, Photographer
Ian Lowe, Blacksmith
“I am happy to be a blacksmith, it’s a noble trade”
Ian Lowe‘s forge is in the shadow of the ancient tower of St Dunstan’s, Stepney, and it is a singularly appropriate location for this line of work, since St Dunstan – who brought Christianity to Tower Hamlets over a thousand years ago and founded the church in 952 – was also a Blacksmith. When I saw Ian wield his red hot tongs, it reminded me of the stone carving over the church door illustrating the local legend of Dunstan catching the devil by the nose with a similar implement and, possessing the necessary phlegmatic temperament and brawny physique, it is not impossible to imagine his contemporary equivalent in the forge also undertaking such a feat.
“I’ve never met anyone that didn’t enjoy it,” Ian admitted to me with droll understatement, “You get to play with fire and hit things!” Yet even this quip revealed the age-old nature of his trade, since the word Smith derives from old English, ‘smyten’ – to hit, and the common surname ‘Smith’ reflects the former ubiquity and diversity of Smiths, whose skills were essential to our society even until the last century. There were once Blacksmiths (who worked iron, known as ‘the black’) and Whitesmiths (who did fullering and polishing to produce bright steel), not to mention Goldsmiths, Silversmiths, Tinsmiths and Coppersmiths.
Ian is a proud Yorkshireman from Pontefract and he told me that, when the Vikings ruled the north, the automatic penalty for killing a Smith was death because they were of such critical importance in making weapons for war, as well as tools for work, and he said it as if it were yesterday. “Vicars and Blacksmiths alone were able to perform weddings, exchanging the rings over the anvil,” Ian assured me, “Forges were at crossroads and became social centres where people gathered around the fire. If you wanted everyone to know something, you told the Smith.” And so it is in Stepney these days, I was reliably informed.
“During the late fifties through to the seventies, Blacksmithing was pretty much gone. It was down to a couple of lads who fought tooth and nail to keep it alive.” Ian explained, adopting an elegiac tone as he ignited in the fire, “Now in the UK, there are less than a thousand registered Blacksmiths and only one Grand Master Blacksmith.” Ian did an apprenticeship with Glen Moon, a Master Blacksmith in Bradmore near Sydney and then travelled Europe for two years, meeting more than four hundred Blacksmiths and working with more than a hundred. Before this, Ian studied English Literature at university. “I just fell into it,” he confessed, “My ex-wife was selling jewellery that she imported from the Far East and she asked me to repair it when it broke, so I thought I can make better stuff than this and I got to the point where I was semi-professional. But I got frustrated with making little things.”
“I’ve been a Blacksmith for eight years now,” he continued, holding a strip of iron in the fire with tongs,“Yet I think it will take fifty to sixty years before I master it. It’s the doing of it that I enjoy, it’s about making something beautiful and long-lasting. You see pieces in London from the fourteenth century and I hope my work will outlast my great-grandchildren.”
“People think the hammer is a crude tool, but it is capable of finesse, like a paint brush – I could make you a pair of earrings with my hammer” he declared, lifting the implement in question and making vigorous blows to the red hot steel upon the anvil, “After the hammer, the most important tool is the fire. Without heat, steel is not malleable but when it is hot it becomes like stiff clay – if your hands were fireproof, you could bend it.”
I watch mesmerised as Ian twisted the rod with his tongs, shaping it with the hammer and moulding it to his desire. “‘By hammer and hand, do all stand’ – that’s the Blacksmith’s creed,” he declared, holding up his creation in triumph.
“The Blacksmith is the king of trades.”
Photographs copyright © Alex Pink
You can visit Ian Lowe in his forge at Stepney City Farm
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At James Hoyle & Sons, Iron Founderers
Dr Margaret Clegg, Keeper of Human Remains
“They were once living, breathing people – they are you.”
In Spitalfields, people often talk of the human remains that were removed from the crypt – nearly a thousand bodies that were once packed in tight during the eighteenth century, safe from resurrectionists and on their way to eternal bliss.
During the nineteen eighties, they were exhumed and transferred to the Natural History Museum where they rest today under the supervision of Dr Margaret Clegg, Head of the Human Remains Unit, who guards them both with loving attention and scholarly rigour, unravelling the stories that these long-ago residents of Spitalfields have to tell us about the quality of their lives and the nature of the human species.
“From the very first lecture I attended on the subject as an undergraduate, I became fascinated by what human remains can tell us about ourselves,” Dr Clegg admitted to me enthusiastically, “You can’t help but feel some kind of relationship when you are working with them. They were once living, breathing people – they are you.”
Dr Clegg led me through the vast cathedral-like museum and we negotiated the swarming mass of humanity that crowded the galleries on that frosty morning, until we entered a private door into the dusty netherworld where the lights were dimmer and the atmosphere was calm. Next week, Dr Clegg is making the trip to Spitalfields to deliver a report on the human remains – a venerable message home from these ex-residents in the form of a lecture at Christ Church – and thus our brief conversation served as a modest preamble to set the scene for this hotly-anticipated event.
“Dr Theya Mollison did the original excavation of the remains in the nineteen-eighties. There were more than nine hundred and for about half we know their age, sex, and when they were born and when they died, from the coffin plates. After they were removed, the remains were brought here to the Natural History Museum for longer-term analysis and study of the effects of occupation and the types of diseases they suffered. We had a large amount of information and could tell who was related to who. We could also tell who died in childbirth, and we have juveniles so we got information on childhood mortality and the funerary practices for children and babies, for example.
We have a special store for human remains at the museum, where each individual is stored in a separate box – it’s primarily bones but some have fingernails and hair. Any bodies that had been preserved were cremated when they were exhumed. The museum applied for a faculty from the Diocese of London to store the bones, the remains are not part of our permanent collection. The first faculty was for ten years and over time a second and third faculty were granted, but this will be the final one during which a decision will be made about the final disposition of the bones. During these years, the bones have been studied intensively. They are quite rare, there are very few such collections in which we know the age and sex of so many. They are probably our most visited and most researched collection. We have our own internal research and visiting researchers come from all over the world – for a wide variety of research purposes, including important work in forensics and evolutionary studies.
I am by training a biological anthropologist, and I am interested in the study of human archaeological remains from the perspective of how they grew and developed and what that can tell us about them.
In Spitalfields, you can compare families of the same age – one that ages quickly and one that ages slowly, which tells us something about the variables when we try to calibrate the date of remains at other sites. You can’t always tell what they did but you can tell, for example, that they used their upper body or that they developed muscles in their arms or legs as a direct result of their occupation. My dad was a printer and when he started out he used a hand press and developed a muscle in his arm as a consequence of using it. He’s seventy-nine and it’s still there. In those days, people started work at twelve or thirteen while the muscles were still developing and these traits quickly became established based upon their occupation. They were the ordinary working people of eighteenth century Spitalfields.
We get half a dozen emails a year from families who want to know if their ancestor who was buried in Christ Church is in the collection, but often I can’t help because they were buried in the churchyard or another part of the church. Occasionally, relatives ask if they can come and see them.”
Bonnet collected during excavations at Christ Church.
Shroud collected during excavations at Christ Church.
Cotton winding sheet collected during excavations at Christ Church.
Gold lower denture formed from a sheet of gold which was cut and folded around the lower molars.
Medicine bottle found in a child’s coffin during excavations at Christ Church.
Archaeological excavations in the crypt of Christ Church, Spitalfields, London, 1984-1986.
Excavation images © Natural History Museum
Portrait of Dr Clegg © Sarah Ainslie
Tickets for Dr Clegg’s lecture “LIFE & DEATH IN SPITALFIELDS: The human remains from Christ Church Crypt” on Tuesday 16th April are available from the Huguenots of Spitalfields Festival
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Here’s Willy Moon
Celebrating the release of Willy Moon’s first album Here’s Willy Moon tomorrow, I republish my interview from 2010 as a testimony to the years of perseverance it has taken this talented songwriter to arrive at his auspicious recording debut at just twenty-three.
Let me introduce Willy Moon, who has been sitting alone in his room for more than a year to write songs. Before the world heard Willy Moon, I was familiar with his music because Willy Moon was my neighbour. Over all this time, I have heard him in the distance while I have been writing at my desk, as he sat at his keyboard singing to himself, exploring the emotional subtleties of his lyrics in the deliberate careful way you might feel your way into a new pair of gloves.
If I had not revealed that I took this photo of Willy Moon myself, you might think – perhaps – this was an old postcard I found somewhere, but this is how he actually looks. If you meet Willy Moon in the street in Spitalfields or even if you see him weeding his garden, this is how he will be. Like Gilbert & George, his flawless demeanour is reassuringly consistent. Fastidiousness is an under-rated virtue these days and Willy Moon has it in spades. One weekend, we spent a happy Sunday afternoon together taking hundreds of pictures in between cups of tea and animated chat, until we chose this single photograph to show you as the fruit of our collaboration.
Willy Moon’s songs interest me because they are irresistibly jangling pop tunes that persist in the mind vividly and then grow in emotional resonance upon further listening. They have the rare authority of nursery rhymes – even when you hear Willy Moon’s melodies for the first time, you feel you already know them, as if they had always been around. In November 2009, Willy Moon posted a recording of one song on MySpace and followed it in December with a second one, and he did not have to wait long before he received approaches from a whole series of major record companies, managers and music industry lawyers.
Millions of people sit in their bedrooms humming and strumming to themselves for years, hoping this might happen and knowing that it can only be a dream. But the attention Willy Moon drew was not accidental. Willy Moon knew what he is doing. Through his talent, tenacity and intelligent application, he brought this situation about. Willy Moon drew these people to him with the magnetic force that the silver orb in the sky controls the tides. Happening at twenty years old, it was a beautiful moment in the life of Willy Moon because the possibilities that dawned were infinite.
“I found it odd – unexpected – not that I don’t see the value of my work but I thought I would have to struggle for five years before I got any attention paid to me,” Willy Moon admitted to me in amused reflection, before revealing a characteristically rigorous attitude to the pursuit of songwriting. “I’m putting myself to the test, to see what I can do – it’s a challenge and a means to evolve. I am never happy with anything unless it is better than I did before.” he said.
The first song Willy Moon posted on MySpace was ‘Girl, I wanna to be your man.’“It took a long time to record because I was doing it all on my own and I had to work out how to use the recording software.” he confessed to me with amiable levity, introducing the song, as we sat and listened together. It appears to be a bright innocent song of unrequited love with a brittle sheen and a catchy melody that carries you through. But as the title lyric persists through repetition, accumulating emotional impact, the longing becomes frantic. With a vocal line balanced at the edge of optimism and self-deception, this is simultaneously the ballad of a hopeful extroverted young man and of an introverted secret obsessive too. And it is this tension that makes the number so compelling.
Willy Moon is a classical songwriter, powerfully aware of his predecessors, learning by immersing himself in the work of those he admires most, in particular the Beatles and those who influenced them, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Fats Domino, James Brown and the entire canon of early Motown artists. All Willy Moon’s songs are based upon dramatic progression, structured upon the essential poetic elements of bridge, verse and chorus, “I like to play with an idea and put the pieces together. I write parts of the song separately and combine them – different ideas that come together to form one whole.”
Next, Willy Moon posted a recording of ‘She says she loves me’ on MySpace, a delirious celebration of emotional fulfillment, in jubilant contrast to the earlier song and a work of greater musical ambition too. There is an authentic danceable exuberance here that affectionately declares its musical influences while refashioning them into something vibrantly contemporary. On consideration, it is no surprise that Willy Moon drew all this heat with his home-made recordings because they are an accomplished pair of love songs that anyone can relate to, counterpointing each other to create a complete emotional drama in microcosm.
What planet did Willy Moon come from that has endowed him with this singular charm and Bowie-esque other-worldliness? The answer is New Zealand. Growing up with parents who were both teachers, he was encouraged to be independent, read widely and think for himself from an early age. When his mother and father decided to travel the world, taking jobs as supply teachers in different capitals, Willy Moon and his elder sister came along too. Willy Moon remembers sharing a single room in the Rotherhithe YMCA years ago, when his parents slept in the bed, and he and his sister slept on the floor. “It was all very much on the cheap,” he recalled happily, telling me they lived on bread and cheese. “It was exciting – especially coming from Wellington, New Zealand – we went out and saw all the sights in London.” he added, explaining how when he was nine and his sister was twelve, they were free to explore the city by day while their parents where at work
As soon as he was old enough, Willy Moon came back to London and made Spitalfields his home. So now I have done the neighbourly thing and made the introductions, you can hear Willy Moon’s songs for yourself.
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Nicholas Borden’s East End View
Brick Lane, looking north
You may recall Nicholas Borden, the artist I came upon painting in the street last year in Bethnal Green. As a consequence of the tremendous response that his work received, Nicholas was offered his first exhibition which opens next week in Spitalfields, so I caught up with him recently to see how he was getting along. While the rest of London has spent the winter indoors, Nicholas braved the streets of the East End in all weathers – becoming a familiar sight, working discreetly with his easel or drawing board.
“At art college, they put me off painting altogether for more than ten years but now I’ve got the strength of character to know what I’m doing, and this is the direction I want to go.” Nicholas assured me,“I’ve been doing a lot of paintings and drawings of the streets of Spitalfields which has proved very fruitful, and there’s lots of historic architecture that I find appealing.”
Although he is softly spoken, it soon becomes apparent in conversation that Nicholas has a passion which drives him forward, making him impervious to the freezing temperatures. “It’s a blessing to be given this exhibition,” he confided to me with a grin, as we sat in his studio surrounded by piles of the streetscapes executed in paint and in pencil that are the outcome of this last extraordinarily productive winter.
Princelet St, looking east
Princelet St, looking west
Brushfield St, looking east
Sclater St, looking west
Fournier St, looking west
Commercial St, looking south
Elder St, looking south
Fleur de Lys St, looking north
Corner of Folgate St & Commercial St
Columbia Rd, looking west
Beck Rd, looking north
Nicholas Borden in his studio
Images copyright © Nicholas Borden
Nicholas Borden’s EAST END VIEW is at Townhouse, 5 Fournier St, until 21st April
You may like to read my original interview
