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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
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
