Spitalfields Life

Click to enlarge Martin Usborne’s photograph

These are the founder members of The East End Trades Guild who gathered at Christ Church, Spitalfields, on Monday night to summon their new organisation into being and speak collectively on behalf of all independent and proprietor-run businesses in the East End.

The church was full and the sense of anticipation immense as trumpets sounded in a fanfare from the gallery, resounding throughout Nicholas Hawksmoor’s masterpiece of English baroque, to announce the arrival of this bold endeavour.

Nevio Pellicci, the East End’s most celebrated host, his dark eyes shining with eagerness and looking flash in a three-piece suit, stepped up to the microphone to welcome everyone by revealing that among the many things the small traders had in common, they could be proud of the fact that none were registered in Luxembourg. He was greeted by a cheer worthy of a rock star.

Then came a slide show of the members’ portraits – the work of the Spitalfields Life Contributing Photographers – projected onto a big screen and accompanied by a ukulele orchestra courtesy of the Duke of Uke. As the sequence accumulated, spontaneous cheers and applause broke out among the audience when favourites came up, with the loudest cheer reserved for Paul Gardner of Gardners’ Market Sundriesmen. The cumulative effect of so many pictures was quite overwhelming, to observe the infinite variety of small businesses in the East End. And in the premiere of Sebastian Sharples’ eloquent film “We are the Beating Heart of the East End” that followed, we saw members in their work places speaking of their hopes for the Guild.

As the opening speaker of the evening, Paul Gardner brought the house down by suggesting to the assembly,“I’m sure most of you are here just for the novelty of seeing me in a suit!” The Founder of the Guild, Paul had been shaking hands with guests as they arrived and now he recounted the history of his family business in Spitalfields commencing with his great-grandfather James, a Scalemaker, in 1870.

Two years ago, an unrealistic rent demand threatened to put Paul out of business yet the public outcry after my story about this – which caused the landlord to reconsider – became the catalyst for the formation of the Guild. Paul spoke candidly of his own sense of vulnerability as a sole trader and of the struggles experienced by his devoted customers who are all small businesses. In speaking of the Guild, Paul described the elation he felt after attending the first meetings this year and many in the audience nodded their heads in recognition, acknowledging the camaraderie which the Guild has already fostered among the traders.

Next, Henry Jones of Jones Brothers’ Dairy and Shanaz Khan of Chaat Bangladeshi Tea House shared the platform. Born above the shop, Henry Jones told how his great grandfather and namesake drove the cattle from Aberystwyth in 1877 to start the dairy in Middlesex St. Surviving two World Wars and the bombings in the City of London, Henry had to reinvent Jones Bros as a wholesale supplier when supermarkets and chainstores took away his domestic business, and he spoke of the need for independents to share information and to speak with the authority of a collective voice.

Shanaz Khan had a slightly different story to tell. Like Henry, she grew up above the family business which in her case was an Indian restaurant. Yet, although she only came to the East End ten years ago, she was equally enthusiastic about the opportunity she has found here, and spoke of her commitment to use local suppliers and employ local people. When Shanaz opened up Chaat away from the curry houses of Brick Lane, it seemed a pioneering move, but the fashionability of Redchurch St in recent years – bringing in luxury brands – has led to a punishing rent increase which is, in effect, a penalty for her hard work and success.

Drawing from these personal experiences, it fell to Shanaz to outline the intentions of the Guild – developing campaigns, giving voice to small businesses, creating a network for the members to share information and trade, offering advice, and building the local economy. Her passionate speech was the heartfelt climax of proceedings, and then it was time for Martin Usborne to climb up his step ladder and take the formal group photo that signified the founding of the Guild.

Afterwards, we quaffed Truman’s Beer accompanied by food from Leila’s Cafe, and cakes by Violet Cakes and Morena Bakery, and beigels from Brick Lane Beigel Bakery, and there was euphoria in the air. As I walked through the excited throng where many traders were meeting each other for the first time,  I could hear snatches of conversation. There was a lively discussion of the issues that need to be addressed, especially rents and council tax, but I also heard them saying, “I could supply you with that,” and “If you need those I’ve got them in stock.” There was a collective dynamic at work in the room as the traders followed their instincts, discovering ways they could help each other and – in that moment – I realised the Guild existed and had its own life.

Event photographs © Simon Mooney

Group photograph © Martin Usborne

Archive photograph courtesy Bishopsgate Institute

Norman Riley

If you are looking for a corner of the old East End, head over to Stepney where –  just south of St Dunstan’s – you will find a few streets lined with neat terraces of brick cottages and a cluster of traditional businesses occupying the crumbling railway arches. This neglected enclave is a fragment that constitutes a reminder of how the entire territory used to be before the bombing and the slum clearances. And, at the heart of it, you will discover seventy-four year old Norman Riley, presiding over the family metal work business that he began under an arch forty years ago in a street that he has known his whole working life.

A notice in flamboyant fairground script, hanging beneath a wrought iron bracket which once suspended the pawnbroker’s sign in the Commercial Rd, announces “Riley & Sons, Metal Work,” and you step through a pillar-box-red metal door of Norman’s own construction to enter his world. “I thought I was going to be downtrodden,” Norman admitted to me later, once he had shown me round the beautiful metal works, “but I’ve come through.”

Energetic and brimming with generous sentiment, Norman occasionally had to break off his monologue whenever the intensity of emotion overcame him. From the stained glass windows that once adorned the bar at Baker St Station now gracing the kitchen, the vast collection of  old tools and machines all maintained in working order and cherished, the crisp paint work in colours popular half a century ago and the overall satisfying sense of order and organisation, it was clear that Norman loves his workshop.

Yet I soon discovered that Norman is passionate about everything, eager to wring the utmost from all experiences, as revealed by his constant mantra during our conversation, “It’s part of life isn’t it?” This simple phrase, capable of infinite nuance and proposing a question that can only be answered in the affirmative, has become Norman’s philosophy and his consolation.

“I’m a Walthamstow boy and, although I was born in 1939, I was born lucky. When I go on holiday, people always ask, ‘What’s Norman been up to?’ because things happen to me. My father was a window cleaner but nobody wanted their windows cleaned during the war. I remember my mum said, ‘We’ve got to have some money for the kids,’ and she gave me and my brother an Oxo cube for dinner. The school I went to was rough and ready, but the policemen’s kids, they had lots of pocket money, and if a kind one was eating an apple, you’d say, ‘Two’s up?’ and they’d give you the core to eat. The only thing I had was football, we made a ball out of rags and bits of string. I was always filthy because we had no bath. I feel five hunded years old when I talk like this. Those were cup of sugar days.

We left and went to Nazeing to a live in a derelict cottage. We just put straw down on the floor with sacks and slept on it. I remember the first time I tasted an orange. The Italian Prisoners-of-War were allotted certain amount of fruit and  big Tony, he cut his orange in half and gave it to me and my brother. When I was six, I drove up the cows up the lane to be milked and back again. I lay there feeding a lamb in the straw once and cried my eyes out at the beauty of it. I went to school at Bumble’s Green. I went back ten years ago to see the duck pond and they still had the register with me and my brothers name in it and I cried my eyes out again.

My first job, at fifteen years old, was just down the road from here at Bromley Sheet Metal in Lowell Rd. I was in a team of guys and we worked all over the East End, and lagging the gasometers down at Purfleet. We lagged asbestos with metal and we smeared asbestos on our heads to look like Geoff Chandler. I worked in six to eight different power stations in London.

We used to watch Sammy McCarthy box, he was the dockers’ boxer. The docks were going strong then and Sally who lived along the road, she decided to make a cafe in her house for the dockers. You went downstairs to the kitchen to get your food and then ate it upstairs in the living room. Only I never got to eat anything because there was all these dockers slinging it about, they made me laugh so much I couldn’t eat my lunch.

I did National Service and it changed my life. It took me out of my world and into a different arena. I’m still in touch with the guys I was in my tent with in Nicosia. I made friends with Martin Bell, he’s a smashing bloke. I’d never spoken to a kid from a posh school before and he’d never spoken to anyone like me.‘Up to those days, I’d always looked over the fence at real people,’ he said to me, ‘But when they told me to fuck off, I knew I was one of them.’ I met my wife after I came back but I had some problems staying indoors because I’d lived in a tent so long.

We got married the same day as my mother-in-law, she got married in the old church in Stoke Newington and we got married in the one opposite. We flew over to Majorca and took my bivouac with us. It was completely dark there and we were lighting matches to see, so we got over a wall and pitched the tent on the green with broom handles as poles. When we woke up, we were on a building site with four workmen looking down at us. But they let us stay, and we went down to the sea each day. And that’s how I started my married life. We lived on cornflakes we took with us because we had no spending money.

How I got this arch? It was for rent and I was here for a year and a half, and I loved it. After two years, I wanted to give the lady who owned it some flowers because I was so happy here. But they said, ‘She’s just passed away.’ I asked if it would be possible to buy it, and they said you pay seven years rent and I bought it. It touched me when I got the deeds because they were written on parchment and it was a stable with five stalls and a hayloft, 1849. There were two bombed cottages next door that were derelict because nobody wanted them so I was able to buy them and expand. My two boys came over and did welding when they were twelve years old, and now my son Chris works here with me.

I was always shy but the army opened me up, that and going to all different places. I never wanted to go out because I didn’t know what life held for me. I never thought I’d own a car, I never thought I’d own a house. I’m so lucky, I’m two pound less now than when I come out the army fifty-five years ago – I’m fit, because I’m here every day working.”

This bracket once suspended the pawnbrokers’ sign in Commercial Rd.

Norman in his office with his work book.

Norman demonstrates his pressing machine

Norman shows off his flipper and his copper hammer.

Norman demonstrates his antique jemmy.

Norman’s son Chris and his drills.

Norman’s anvil.

Norman with one of his creations.

The former cork factory across the road.

You may also like to read about

At Hoyle & Sons Ltd Foundry