Spitalfields Life

The frontage at 493-495 Hackney Rd is unchanged to this day

The factory at the rear of the shop remains just as in this engraving

London’s oldest ironmongers opened for business in 1797 as Presland & Sons, became W.H. Clark Ltd in the eighteen-nineties and still trades from the same location, over two hundred years later, as Daniel Lewis & Son Ltd – The One Stop Metal Shop. Operating at first from a wooden shack built around 1760, they constructed their own purpose-built shop and factory at the beginning of the nineteenth century, which suited their needs so perfectly that – in an astonishing and rare survival – it stands almost unaltered today.

This is architecture of such a utilitarian elegance and lack of ostentation that it does not draw attention to itself. I had no idea there was a complete Georgian shopfront in the Hackney Rd until David Lewis, the proprietor, pointed it out to me and I compared it to the illustration above. Remarkably, even the decorative coloured-glass lozenge above the door is there today exactly as in the engraving.

When contributing photographer Simon Mooney & I went along to explore, we were amazed to discover a unique complex of buildings that carries two centuries of history of industry in the East End, with many original items of nineteenth century hardware still in stock.

“We were here before the canal, the railway and the docks,” David Lewis informed us proudly,“When the Prince Regent banned horses from being stabled in the city, this area became the centre of the carriage and coach-building industry.” An ironmonger with a lyrical tendency, David will remind you that Cambridge Heath Rd was once a heath, that Bishop Bonnar once built his mansion on this land before the Reformation and that an oval duckpond once existed where the Oval industrial estate stands today behind his premises – all in introduction to the wonders of his personal domain which has been here longer than anything else around.

You enter from the street into the double-height shop, glazed with floor-to-ceiling windows and lined to the roof with meticulously-labelled wooden pigeon-holes, built-in as part of the original architecture. A winding stair leads you into the private offices and you discover beautiful bow-fronted rooms, distinguishing the rear of the terrace that extends two storeys above, offering ample staff quarters.  On one side, is an eccentric, suspended office extension built in 1927 and constructed with panelling and paint supplied by the Great Western Railway, who were customers. This eyrie serves as David’s private den, where he sits smoking at a vast nineteenth century desk surrounded by his collection of custom number plates, all spelling Lewis in different configurations of numbers and letters.

A ramp down from the shop leads to the rear, past cellars lined with pigeon-holes constructed of the flexo-metal plywood that was the source of the company’s wealth for decades. At the back, is a long factory building with three forges for manufacturing ironwork where you can feel the presence of many people in the richness of patina created by all the those who worked here through the last two centuries. Occasionally, David paused and, in delight, pulled out boxes full of brass fixtures and iron bolts necessary for nineteenth century carriage building. Upstairs, he showed us an arcane machine for attaching metal rims to wagon wheels, essential when the streets of London went from dirt to cobbles in the nineteenth century.

To the left of the factory, stands a long cobbled shed where the carriages came in for repair, and beneath a slab flows a stream and there are stones of the Roman road that ran through here. In the layers of gloss paint and the accumulation of old things, in the signs and the ancient graffiti, in the all the original fixtures and fittings, these wonderful buildings speak eloquently of their industrial past. Yet for David they contain his family history too.

“My dad was Lewis Daniel John Lewis, he was known as Lewis Lewis and his father was also known as Lewis Lewis. It went back to my great-great-great-great- grandfather and my father wanted me to be Lewis Lewis too but my mum wasn’t having it, so I am David Richard Lewis. I first came here with my dad as a nipper, when I was four or five years old, on Saturday mornings while he did the books. I played with all the nuts and bolts, and I was curious to see what was in all the boxes. And I used to run up and down the ramp, I was fascinated by it. I’ve learnt that it’s there because the Hackney Rd follows a natural ridge and there were once mushroom fields on either side at a lower level.

My dad started at W.H.Clark in 1948 as a young boy of fifteen, he had already studied book-keeping and he was taken on as an office junior. At eight years old, it was discovered he was diabetic when he was found lying on the pavement here in Hackney Rd, where my grandparents had a grocer and dairy. He always had to have insulin injections after that. He was tall, six foot one, and a little skinny because he didn’t have much of an appetite – except for chocolate biscuits which he shouldn’t have had, but he enjoyed them with a cup of tea.

He learnt the trade and he worked his way up to office manager. Then, in 1970, one of the partners retired and the other suffered a tragedy and turned to drink and became unsteady. So my grandfather bought the business for my father in 1971 and he took over the directorship of the company. He already knew how to run the business and he set out to build the company up with new customers – he got St Paul’s Cathedral as a customer and we still supply them.

Our biggest selling product was flexo-metal plywood, we had the exclusive distribution contract and we supplied it to the coach-building industry across the entire South-East of England for the construction of buses, coaches, lorries and trucks. They used to pull up outside with vehicles that had no body, no cab – just the engine and a chassis with the driver sitting on a tin bucket. They bought flexo-metal plywood to build the body and we could supply them with a windscreen, lights, chains for tailboards, everything – all the components. Any time I see a van in a fifties or sixties film, it is one of ours. At that time, we employed eighteen people.

I joined in 1992. I went to college and did business studies and I wanted to prove to my dad that I could do it on my own. I became a trademark lawyer, working for the Trademarks Consortium in Pall Mall that protected the trademarking for brands like Cadburys, Bass, Tesco and Schweppes. I’ve always been fascinated by labels because of looking at all the different trademarks on the boxes of screws here and I collect custom number plates.

When the business that supplied flexo-metal plywood went to the wall, my father employed Peter Sandrock who used to run it. He was approached by many global companies because he was a genius mathematician who could do figures in his head, but he wanted to work for my dad because they always got on well and would help each other. He worked for my dad for ten years until 1992 and that’s when I came in, just after I got married.

I started as an office junior like my dad but I found it boring because I had already done other things. So I said, ‘Can I go down and serve behind the counter?’ but he said, ‘You haven’t got the build to carry steel.’ I surprised him by developing muscles and soon I could do it with ease – I’ve got broad shoulders now when I didn’t use to have.

When I was made a director, all the carriage-building trade was moving up north, so I refocused the company towards aluminium and steel supply to metal fabricators, architects and sculptors. But in recent years, due to installation of cctv cameras and the council issuing £130 fines to our customers while picking up orders, our trade has dropped by fifty per cent. We have two to three hundred customers a day and I reckon the council have earned £63,000 a year in fines out of them and so, in a few months, after two centuries of business in this location, we are going to move from here .

It was in 2002, I changed the name of the company from W.H.Clark Ltd, who had been a Mayor of Hackney in the nineteenth century, to Daniel Lewis & Son Ltd, in memory of my father. I am the son.”

Nineteenth century storage filled with nineteenth century carriage fittings in the factory.

The enamel sign that was taken down from the frontage in 2002.

This is the cobbled workshop where the carriages were wheeled in for repair.

The ceiling in the storeroom is lined with timber painted with nineteenth century sign-writing.

Carriage bolts are still in stock.

The wooden pigeon-holes stretch to the ceiling in the double-height shop and are contemporary with the building.

Daniel Lewis & Son Ltd has collets in stock – pins used for attaching cartwheels to the shaft.

David in the factory building.

Bert left to in 1962 Good By

Machine for applying metal rims to cartwheels in the factory.

A threading machine in the factory.

This brick was laid by “Ole Bill” 1927 RIP

 

View towards the bonded warehouse of the Chandlers & Wiltshire Brewery – burnt out in World War II, it is London’s last bombsite and a memorial to the Blitz in the East End.

A display of Nettlefolds screws wired to a board in a gilt-crested frame that was displayed at the Great Exhibition of 1851.

The glass over the entrance is part of the original design of the building, dating from the early nineteenth century

Packaging for hinged metal indicator lights, still in stock.

 

Keep this door shut.

The crackle on the office wall is authentic, achieved by age, not a paint effect.

The name of W.H.Clark impressed upon a carriage shaft manufactured in the forge.

Before 1920, no road vehicle was permitted to travel at more than 20mph and had a plate attached to this effect – Daniel Lewis & Son Ltd has them in stock today.

The Ascot water heater in David’s office is fully-functional.

The shop with the ramp going down towards the factory at the back.

The steps from the shop going up to the office.

David Lewis at his desk in the rear office lined with panelling and paint supplied by the Great Western Railway.

Photographs copyright © Simon Mooney

The One Stop Metal Shop, Daniel Lewis & Son Ltd, 493-495 Hackney Rd, E2 9ED

You may like to read about these other East End hardware shops

At General Woodwork Supplies

At M&G Ironmongery & Hardware

At KTS, The Corner

At Embassy Electrical Supplies

The shoes worn by the world’s leading ballerinas are made in Hackney by Freed of London the pre-eminent shoemaker to the theatrical profession, producing more than one hundred and fifty thousand pairs a year to supply companies scattered around the globe.

Founded in 1920 by Frederick Freed, a sample shoemaker, and his wife Dora, a milliner, in St Martin’s Lane in a shop where the company still trades today, Freed’s introduced the notion of fitting ballet shoes to individual dancers’ feet where once only standard sizes were available. This simple decision revolutionised the production of ballet shoes, brought international success to Freed and delivered their first celebrity endorsement, when Moira Shearer wore a pair manufactured by Freed in “The Red Shoes.”

As you catch sight of the nondescript frontage of Freed of London’s factory in Well St, going past on the bus, you might not think twice about what lies inside. Yet there is a certain point within the building where you turn a corner and confront a breathtaking vision of more pink satin shoes than you ever dreamed of, piled up in various stages of manufacture. In the shimmering blend of daylight filtering through the skylights and the glow of the fluorescent tubes, the lustrous satin glistens with a radiant life of its own as if you were gazing upon seashells lit by sunlight refracted through crystal Caribbean waters. Even before they reach the dancers, the magic of the shoemakers’ art has imbued these shoes with a certain living charge just waiting to be released.

Until the eighties, Hackney was the centre of shoe manufacture in London with Cordwainers’ College training students in the necessary skills to work in the local factories. But the college and almost all the factories have gone, except Freed. Yet the most talented veterans gravitated to Freed and when Contributing Photographer Patricia Niven & I visited them yesterday, we encountered a proud workforce who are collectively responsible for the phenomenal success of Freed as the world’s leading maker of ballet and theatrical shoes.

We started in the Theatrical Department where shoes for musical theatre are made, overseen by Supervisor Ozel Ahmed who has worked here twenty years. At one end, designer and pattern cutter Jimmy Fenn worked in his cabin designing, next to the clickers who cut out the leather – and beyond them were a handful of people sitting at machines, sewing the pieces together with meticulous attention to detail. Ozel explained they only made five to seven hundred pairs of shoes a week in her department, as opposed to the three to four thousand which would get manufactured by the same number of people producing shoes for the fashion market. And then she took one of those shiny, strappy, diamanted confections that are barely-there, for which she is responsible, and bent it in half to show how soft and flexible it was. The shoe was a discreet masterpiece of elegant structure and subtly judged tension, strongly manufactured to suit the needs of a dancer performing nightly in musical theatre. “There is no single West End show without a pair of our shoes,” Ozel assured me confidently.

Next door in the Lasting Room where the different elements were assembled to complete the shoe, large machines dominated yet there were also plenty of people in evidence with pots and brushes, applying glue strategically. “Everyone in this room, you’re talking a minimum of thirty years’ experience,” revealed Ronny Taylor, the Lasting Room Foreman. Gazing around this room, there was a startling contrast between the battered industrial equipment and the perfectly glossy delicate little shoes, and I was fascinated by the long line of distinctive skills each applied to different aspects of the construction of them.

In the Ballet Department where pointe shoes were made, a different atmosphere reigned. There was no machinery at all and we had gone back more than hundred years to the working practices of the lone artisan using just three tools to make ballet shoes. I discovered the pointe shoe makers are a class apart within the factory – they work at separate personal benches, their employment is piecework and they are their own men, identified by the symbols they impress upon the shoes they make – such as Crown or Wine Glass or Fish.“There’s no wood in the block of a pointe shoe,” explained the shoe maker known as Crown, “just paper, card, hessian and flour and water paste.”

Every ballerina chooses a maker who makes her shoes according to her personal specifications and then will wear no other. I learnt of cases where ballerinas had refused to go on stage if a pair of shoes by their maker was not available. “They order thirty pairs at a time and a lot will only use them once, so they will be destroyed after a single performance,” admitted Crown who has been making pointe shoes for twenty-four years, whose daily output is forty-one pairs and whose clients include some of the most famous ballerinas alive. “It’s not how fast you go,” he told me, speaking of his productivity, “You must learn how to make the shoes and build up your rhythm before you can pick up the speed, because you’ve got to keep the quality of the shoes consistent.”

The nature of the specialised production process at Freed of London means that the contribution of every member of the team is crucial to the success of the company. It is a rare place where skills and old trades are prized, and wedded happily to the glamour of show business, ensuring that the artistry of the shoemakers of Hackney earns applause on stages throughout the world.

The theatrical shoe department at Freed.

Sanjay Sanjawah, panel trimmer

Ken Manu, heel moulder

Ozel Ahmed, supervisor in the theatrical shoes department – “Most of us have been here a long time. I work here because I love making shoes, it’s not about the money – it’s about the love of the trade.”

Shoe lasts numbered with sizes.

Jerry Kelly, Production Director

“one of those shiny, strappy, diamanted confections that are barely-there”

Worral Thomas, Hand Laster

Charlie Johnson, Side Laster

Four thousand pounds of pressure is exerted to join the sole to the shoe.

Ali Aksar, Sole Presser Operator

Jimmy Fenn, Designer & Pattern Cutter with some recent designs – “I’ve been in the trade thirty-five years. My job is fantastic because you never know what you are going to come in to in the morning. You can never get bored because you can always design a shoe. And when you spot them on television it’s really exciting.”

Once a week, flour and water is mixed to make the paste used to create the blocks for pointe shoes. A little insecticide is included in the blend to prevent weevils eating the shoes.

Satin and calico blanks at the start of the manufacturing process.

Ballet shoes are manufactured inside-out and then turned upon completion.

“Crown” has ballerinas who have been his exclusive customers for twenty-four years.

The maker’s mark of “Crown” upon the sole of one of his pointe-shoes.

Pointe shoes are baked overnight in the oven to dry out the flour glue.

Tony Collins, Machine operator has been with Freed for forty years. “The best thing about working here is that the people who are here stay here. We’ve got new ones but old lads too.”

Luthu Miah, Supervisor of the Binding Room.

Varsha Bahen, Finisher

Rashimi Patel, Pairing

Sheila (Pointe Shoe Finisher) & Philip Goodman (Chargehand) met on their first day work at Freed, forty years ago, and have been together ever since.

Frederick Freed and his wife Dora who founded Freed in 1920.

Dora in the factory in the seventies.

Frederick & Dora Freed outside their shop in St Martin’s Lane.

After the workers have left and the lights are switched out, the shoes lie waiting ….

Photographs copyright © Patricia Niven

Freed of London Ltd, 94 St Martins Lane, London, WC2N 4AT

You may also like to read these other stories about manufacturing in the East End

At James Ince & Sons Ltd, Umbrella Makers

At Drakes of London, Tiemakers

At Persauds’ Handbag Factory

At Alexander Boyd’s Tailoring Workshop

At the Algha Spectacle Works

Drawing of 37 Spital Sq by Joanna Moore

What could be a better showcase for the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings than the fine eighteenth century house they restored in Spital Sq which serves as their headquarters?  This magnificent tottering pile is the last surviving Georgian mansion of the entire square once lined with such dwellings, which traced the outline of the former Priory of St Mary Spital that was established in 1187. Indeed, pieces of Medieval stonework from the old Priory buildings are still visible, tucked into the foundations of 37 Spital Sq.

Originally constructed in the seventeen-forties as the home of Peter Ogier, a wealthy Huguenot silk merchant, the house has been through many incarnations both as dwelling and workplace until the Society took it on in a rundown state in 1981 and brought it back to life. As a Society that counted William Morris, John Ruskin, Thomas Hardy, Beatrix Potter, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and John Betjeman among its members, the SPAB is irresistible to any writer with a passion for old buildings, and 37 Spital Sq certainly does not disappoint.

Neither museum or showhouse, the building has preserved its shabby charm as a working environment where people sit absorbed at their desks in elegantly proportioned rooms, surrounded by all the clutter of their activities and a few well-chosen paintings and pieces of old furniture. With staircases that seem to ascend forever, plenty of hidden corners and architectural idiosyncrasies, 37 Spital Sq is a house that invites you to ramble around – which is exactly what I did yesterday, matching up pictures in the Society’s archives of the building in 1981 with the same spaces as they are now.

1981

2013

Huguenot silk weaver Peter Ogier is believed to have built 37 Spital Square in the seventeen-forties.

You may also like to read about

Philip Venning, former Director of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings

Bill Crome, the Window Cleaner who sees Ghosts in Spital Sq

and these other renovations in Spitalfields

The Last Derelict House in Spitalfields

Before & After in Fournier St

A Renovation on Fournier St

All Change at 15 & 17 Fournier St