Chris Skaife & Merlin
Every day at first light, Chris Skaife, Master Raven Keeper at the Tower of London, awakens the ravens from their slumbers and feeds them breakfast. It is one of the lesser known rituals at the Tower, so Spitalfields Life Contributing Photographer Martin Usborne & I decided to pay an early morning call upon London’s most pampered birds last week and send you a report.
The keeping of ravens at the Tower is a serious business, since legend has it that, ‘If the ravens leave the Tower, the kingdom will fall…’ Fortunately, we can all rest assured thanks to Chris Skaife who undertakes his breakfast duties conscientiously, delivering bloody morsels to the ravens each dawn and thereby ensuring their continued residence at this most favoured of accommodations.“We keep them in night boxes for their own safety,” Chris explained to me, just in case I should think the ravens were incarcerated at the Tower like those monarchs of yore, “because we have quite a lot of foxes that get in through the sewers at night.”
First thing, Chris unlocks the bird boxes built into the ancient wall at the base of the Wakefield Tower and, as soon as he opens each door, a raven shoots out blindly like a bullet from a gun, before lurching around drunkenly on the lawn as its eyes accustom to the daylight, brought to consciousness by the smell of fresh meat. Next, Chris feeds the greedy brother ravens Gripp – named after Charles Dickens’ pet raven – & Jubilee – a gift to the Queen on her Diamond Anniversary – who share a cage in the shadow of the White Tower.
Once this is accomplished, Chris walks over to Tower Green where Merlin the lone raven lives apart from her fellows. He undertakes this part of the breakfast service last, because there is little doubt that Merlin is the primary focus of Chris’ emotional engagement. She has night quarters within the Queen’s House, once Anne Boleyn’s dwelling, and it suits her imperious nature very well. Ravens are monogamous creatures that mate for life but, like Elizabeth I, Merlin has no consort. “She chose her partner, it’s me,” Chris assured me in a whisper, eager to confide his infatuation with the top bird, before he opened the door to wake her. Then, “It’s me!” he announced cheerily to Merlin but, with suitably aristocratic disdain, she took her dead mouse from him and flounced off across the lawn where she pecked at her breakfast a little before burying it under a piece of turf to finish later, as is her custom.
“The other birds watch her bury the food, then lift up the turf and steal it,” Chris revealed to me as he watched his charge with proprietorial concern, “They are scavengers by nature, and will hunt in packs to kill – not for fun but to eat. They’ll attack a seagull and swing it round but they won’t kill it, gulls are too big. They’ll take sweets, crisps and sandwiches off children, and cigarettes off adults. They’ll steal a purse from a small child, empty it out and bury the money. They’ll play dead, sun-bathing, and a member of the public will say, ‘There’s a dead raven,’ and then the bird will get up and walk away. But I would not advise any members of the public to touch them, they have the capacity to take off a small child’s finger – not that they have done, yet.”
We walked around to the other side of the lawn where Merlin perched upon a low rail. Close up, these elegant birds are sleek as seals, glossy black, gleaming blue and green, with a disconcerting black eye and a deep rasping voice. Chris sat down next to Merlin and extended his finger to stroke her beak affectionately, while she gave him some playful pecks upon the wrist.
“Students from Queen Mary University are going to study the ravens’ behaviour all day long for three years.” he informed me, “There’s going to be problem-solving for ravens, they’re trying to prove ravens are ‘feathered apes.’ We believe that crows, ravens and magpies have the same brain capacity as great apes. If they are a pair, ravens will mimic each other’s movements for satisfaction. They all have their own personalities, their moods, and their foibles, just like people.”
Then Merlin hopped off her perch onto the lawn where Chris followed and, to my surprise, she untied one of Chris’s shoelaces with her beak, tugging upon it affectionately and causing him to chuckle in great delight. While he was thus entrammelled, I asked Chris how he came to this role in life. “Derrick Coyle, the previous Master Raven Keeper, said to me, ‘I think the birds will like you.’ He introduced me to it and I’ve been taking care of them ever since.“ Chris admitted plainly, opening his heart, “The ravens are continually on your mind. It takes a lot of dedication, it’s early starts and late nights – I have a secret whistle which brings them to bed.”
It was apparent then that Merlin had Chris on a leash which was only as long as his shoelace. “If one of the other birds comes into her territory, she will come and sit by me for protection,” he confessed, confirming his Royal romance with a blush of tender recollection, “She sees me as one of her own.”
“Alright you lot, up you get!”
“A pigeon flew into the cage the other day and the two boys got it, that was a mess.”
“It’s me!”
“She chose her partner, it’s me.”
“She sees me as one of her own.”
Chris Skaife & Merlin
Charles Dickens’ Raven “Grip” – favourite expression, “Halloa old girl!”
Tower photographs copyright © Martin Usborne
Residents of Spitalfields and any of the Tower Hamlets may gain admission to the Tower of London for one pound upon production of an Idea Store card.
Read Martin Usborne’s blog A Year to Help
You may also like to take a look at these other Tower of London stories
Alan Kingshott, Yeoman Gaoler at the Tower of London
Graffiti at the Tower of London
Beating the Bounds at the Tower of London
Ceremony of the Lilies & Roses at the Tower of London
Bloody Romance of the Tower with pictures by George Cruickshank
John Keohane, Chief Yeoman Warder at the Tower of London
Constables Dues at the Tower of London
The Oldest Ceremony in the World
A Day in the Life of the Chief Yeoman Warder at the Tower of London
John Claridge’s Clowns (The Final Act)
So this is where we bring down the curtain on John Claridge‘s Clowns photographed at the 67th Annual Grimaldi Service at Holy Trinity Dalston last month, courtesy of our friends at Clowns International. Being startled or even alarmed by their curious appearances, their gurning and their dopey japes, we recognise ourselves. This is the corrective that clowns deliver with a cheesey grin, confronting us with the ridiculous in life.
Chuckles the Clown (The Clown with 1000 Faces) – Clowning for sixty-three years. “I am the last one that was taught by Coco the Clown!”
Lady Bird – Performer for many years and mother of Pippa the Clown.
Jake – Clowning for three years, son of Mr Mudge and grandson of Mr Jingles.
Stephen – On a visit from Adelaide.
Gadget – Clowning for fifteen years and husband of Pippa the Clown.
Zaz – Clowning since the age of eight, now thirty-three.
Mr Mudge – Performer for fourteen years, son of Mr Jingles.
Susie Oddball – Clowning for thirty-five years. “I left my nose behind in Brighton!”
Bluebottle – Clowning for ten years, Secretary of Clowns International.
Photographs copyright © John Claridge
You might like to take a look at
John Claridge’s Clowns (Act One)
John Claridge’s Clowns (Act Two)
and read my account
At the 65th Annual Grimaldi Service
or read these other Grimaldi stories
Soerditch by Dant
Working under the assumed identity of Dant, Spitalfields Life Contributing Artist Adam Dant has drawn one hundred and twenty-five cartoons, satirising the culture of our dearly-beloved Shoreditch, all comprising beautifully rendered views of the neighbourhood and captioned with clueless things overheard on the streets.
“Oh my God! This is the place where that Tracey Ermine told me to ‘fark orf’!”
“It’s all www this & dot com that today … I’d tell people what I think of it all … if they weren’t on the phone all the time!”
“Ere, Luv! Do you want to pet my dog? He likes long legs & nice tits …”
“There’s that Rupa … I can’t believe I lent her all my Henry Miller revision notes, she gets an A & can’t even be arsed to give them back, let alone say ‘thanks’ or anything! “
“Sorry Love – Scrub that … He just texted again, says he wants a ‘flat white’ instead …”
“I love the whole cobbley, Jack the Rippery feel of this area …”
“I’m, like sooo Anti. How about you? Oh Ya! Absolutely.”
“Well I wanted to rent ‘Dodgeball’ but the guy who runs your video store said I wasn’t allowed to see it. He made me watch this Polish film about organ trafficking instead, which I didn’t really enjoy.”
“This is the shop where the Huguenots invented the Donut …”
“Another one of those ‘Pop-up Shops’ seems to have gone & ‘popped-off’…”
“Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great lido & all, it’s just, once you’ve seen something like that floating in it … puts you off your stroke!”
“Mum …can I have an ‘ipod touch,’ can I, can I, will you get one for me, can I have one, can we use my pocket money, can I have one, can I …?”
Drawing from a pair of unlikely inspirations, namely Giles‘ cartoons for the Daily Express and Hiroshige‘s ‘One Hundred Famous Views of Edo,’ Adam Dant pulls off an astonishing sleight of hand – simultaneously portraying the urban landscape of Shoreditch with spare lines and flat tones that evoke the woodcuts of Hiroshige, while also satirising the manners and mores of the people through witty social observations in the manner of Giles.
Soerditch is the old name for Shoreditch, quoted by the historian John Stowe in his Survey of London 1598, as “so called more than four hundred yeares.” It means the Sewer Ditch, in reference to the spring beside Shoreditch Church, once the source of the lost River Walbrook which flowed from there towards the City of London.
The exhibition runs at Eleven Spitalfields Gallery from 7th March – 26th April and all one hundred and twenty-five cartoons are published in a limited edition album with an introduction by Jarvis Cocker, produced in the style of Giles’ celebrated annuals and available to buy online from Spitalfields Life Shop.
Click here to buy your copy of SOERDITCH by DANT – Diary of a Neighbourhood (125 Views of Shoreditch) – while stocks last!
Cartoons copyright © Adam Dant
Adam Dant is represented by Hales Gallery
Winter Dawn At Bow Cemetery
Photographer Duncan George sent me these pictures of Bow Cemetery at dawn, inspiring me to pay a visit at first light yesterday.
With the passing years, each winter seems to present a greater challenge to my resilience and – sometimes – as I lie in bed pulling the covers closer to keep warm in the cold of the old house, I can almost feel the chill gathering around me at night. Yet rather than cower behind my feeble defences any longer, I decided to venture out before dawn into the freezing mist in the hope of ameliorating my aversion to the grim weather.
A generation ago, Brick Lane would have been alive at six in the morning with people going to work in the clothing factories, and at the brewery and the market, but yesterday no-one was stirring except me. There was an artificial glow to the west from the lights of the City as I set out to walk down the Mile End Rd, but otherwise the low cloud which obscured the sky was grey – turning uniformly luminous by the time I turned into Southern Grove.
Passing between the high walls of Bow Cemetery, I encountered moisture in the air and a pang deep in my stomach. Even at this hour, the trees and the natural life of the place overwhelmed the presence of the tombs, and my first impressions were of wild cherry blossom glowing in the half-light and the first catkins of the year hanging from bare branches. Nevertheless, I could not help myself scanning the gravestones for any signs of movement and, spying a moving figure that I assumed to be an early dog-walker, I turned in the opposite direction walking deeper into the maze of overgrown paths.
Above my head, birds were singing in chorus from the forest canopy, yet it only served to emphasise the stillness at ground level, where I stood among funerary statues that were poised as if ready to spring into movement. Overhead, a subtle balance was shifting as the streetlights, which I saw in every direction, were losing their dominance over the cool gloom of the cemetery where snowdrops sprang luminous in the shadowy haze. In the distance, a disinterested fox barely adjusted his pace upon registering my existence.
In my fantasy, it was the coldest, chillest place – the locus of winter. In reality, there was life there, ticking over and marking the slow advance towards spring. I stood in a clearing, slowly lifting my gaze to the tree tops as the day broke. Once upon a time, I could never have been there to see this. Even well into adulthood, I could not walk into a dark room without switching on the light for fear of unknown horrors. One summer, I lived in a cottage at the end of a wooded lane and, if I returned at night down the dark road through the trees, it would always be with my heart in my mouth. Experiences that are absurd in retrospect as, through the intervening years, these irrational terrors have – inexplicably – receded and vanished from my psyche.
Yet I did not linger that morning and, as I walked, night faded from the cemetery. In spite of the Gothic statuary, I was relieved that my experience was not of the Gothic variety, save the mysterious lone figure moving amidst the stones, that I did not see again. There was no unholy chill. Neither were there dog-walkers or joggers, as I had expected. On such a morning they had stayed at home. I wondered if I was alone, until I reminded myself that you are never alone in a cemetery.
In the Mile End Rd, street lights were flickering out and the first commuters were to be seen upon the glossy damp pavements, making steps to towards the tube. In Vallance Rd, I passed Kevin the Milkman and arrived home to discover his delivery on my doorstep, and thus I was grateful to return to my warm bed again.
Photographs copyright © Duncan George
You may also like to read these other cemetery stories
At the Cemetery With Barn the Spoon
Find out more at www.towerhamletscemetery.org
At St Clement’s Hospital
Members of City of London & Cripplegate Photographic Society were invited to record the interior of the disused St Clement’s Hospital in Mile End last year. Originally opened as the City of London Union Workhouse in 1849, it was converted to an Infirmary in 1874 and renamed St Clement’s Hospital in 1936, being used as a psychiatric unit in recent years, before closing finally in 2005.
An initiative is being launched by East London Community Land Trust to convert the building to affordable housing, but in the meantime it lies in magnificent dereliction and an exhibition of these other-wordly photographs opens tomorrow, Thursday 28th February, at the Genesis Cinema.
© Hilary Barton
© Hilary Barton
© Pat Mooring
© Jean Jameson
© Bill Gilliam
© Jean Jameson
© Pat Mooring
© Pat Mooring
© Pat Mooring
© Pat Mooring
© Pat Mooring
© Pat Mooring
© Jean Jameson
© Pat Mooring
© Pat Mooring
© Jean Jameson
© Pat Mooring
© Pat Mooring
© Pat Mooring
© Pat Mooring
© Bill Gilliam
© Pat Mooring
© Jean Jameson
Roy Gardner’s Sales Tickets
One shilling by Roy Gardner
Paul Gardner, the current incumbent and fourth generation in Spitalfields oldest family business, Gardners’ Market Sundriesmen in Commercial St, was just thirteen when his father Roy died in 1968. So Paul’s mother ran the shop for four years until 1972 when Paul left school and he took over next day – running the business until now without a day off.
In the shop, Paul found these intricate designs of numbers and lettering that his father made for sales tickets and grocers’ signs which, in their accomplishment, express something of his father’s well-balanced and painstaking nature.
At one time, Roy bought small blackboard signs, that were used by greengrocers to price their stock in chalk, from Mr Patson in Artillery Lane. Mr Patson sliced the tickets out of hardboard, cut up motorcycle spokes to make the pins and then riveted the pins to the boards before painting them with blackboard paint.
In the same practical spirit of do-it-yourself, Roy bought a machine for silk-screen printing his own sales tickets from designs that he worked up in the shop in his spare time, while waiting for customers. Numbers were drawn freehand onto pencil grids and words were carefully stencilled onto card. From these original designs, Roy made screens and printed onto blank “Ivorine” plastic tickets from Norman Pendred Ltd who also supplied more elaborate styles of sales tickets if customers required.
Blessed with a strong sense of design, Roy was self-critical – cutting the over-statement of his one shilling and its flourish down to size to create the perfectly balanced numeral. The exuberant curves of his five and nine are particular favourites of mine. Elsewhere, Roy was inspired to more ambitious effects, such as the curved text for “Golden Glory Toffee Apples,” and to humour, savouring the innuendo of “Don’t squeeze me until I’m yours.” Today, Paul keeps these designs along with the incomplete invoice book for 1968 which is dated to when Roy died.
No doubt knocking up these sales tickets was all in day’s work to Roy Gardner – just one of the myriad skills required by a Market Sundriesman – yet a close examination of his elegant graphic designs reveals he was also a discriminating and creative typographer.
Designs for silk-screen by Roy Gardner
The finished silk-screened signs by Roy Gardner
Pages from the Ivorine products catalogue who could supply Roy’s customers with more complex designs of sales tickets than he was able to produce.
Roy Gardner stands outside Gardners’ Market Sundriesmen in the nineteen forties – note the sales tickets on display inside the shop.
Gardners’ Market Sundriesmen, 149 Commercial St, London E1 6BJ (6:30am – 2:30pm, Monday to Friday)
You may like to read these other stories about Gardners Market Sundriesmen
Paul Gardner, Paper Bag Seller
At Gardners’ Market Sundriesmen
Joan Rose at Gardners’ Market Sundriesmen
Tony Bock At Watney Market
Tony Bock took these pictures of Watney Market – published here for the first time today – while working as a photographer on the East London Advertiser between 1973 and 1978. Within living memory, there had been a thriving street market in Watney St, yet by the late seventies it was blighted by redevelopment and Tony recorded the last stalwarts trading amidst the ruins.
In the nineteenth century, Watney Market had been one of London’s largest markets, rivalling Petticoat Lane. By the turn of the century, there were two hundred stalls and one hundred shops, including an early branch of J.Sainsbury. As a new initiative to revive Watney Market is launched this spring, Tony’s poignant photographs offer a timely reminder of the life of the market before the concrete precinct.
Born in Paddington yet brought up in Canada, Tony Bock came back to London after being thrown out of photography school and lived in the East End where his mother’s family originated, before returning to embark on a thirty-year career as a photojournalist at The Toronto Star. Recalling his sojourn in the East End and contemplating his candid portraits of the traders, Tony described the Watney Market he knew.
“I photographed the shopkeepers and market traders in Watney St in the final year, before the last of it was torn down. Joe the Grocer is shown sitting in his shop, which can be seen in a later photograph, being demolished.
In the late seventies, when Lyn – my wife to be – and I, were living in Wapping, Watney Market was our closest street market, just one stop away on the old East London Line. It was already clear that ‘the end was nigh,’ but there were still some stallholders hanging on. My memory is that there were maybe dozen old-timers, but I don’t think I ever counted.
The north end of Watney St had been demolished in the late sixties when a large redevelopment was promised. Yet, not only did it take longer to build than the Olympic Park in Stratford, but a massive tin fence had been erected around the site which cut off access to Commercial Rd. So foot and road traffic was down, as only those living nearby came to the market any more. The neighbourhood had always been closely tied to the river until 1969 when the shutting of the London Docks signalled the change that was coming.
The remaining buildings in Watney St were badly neglected and it was clear they had no future. Most of the flats above the shops were abandoned and there were derelict lots in the terrace which had been there since the blitz. The market stalls were mostly on the north side of what was then a half-abandoned railway viaduct. This was the old London & Blackwall Railway that would be reborn ten years later as the Docklands Light Railway and prompt the redevelopment we see today.
So the traders were trapped. The new shopping precinct had been under construction for years. But where could they go in the meantime? The new precinct would take several more years before it was ready and business on what was left of the street was fading.
Walking through Watney St last year, apart from a few stalls in the precinct, I could see little evidence there was once a great market there. In the seventies, there were a couple of pubs, The Old House At Home and The Lord Nelson, in the midst of the market. Today there are still a few old shops left on the Cable St end of Watney St, but the only remnant I could spot of the market I knew was the sign from The Old House At Home rendered onto the wall of an Asian grocer.
I remember one day Lyn came home, upset about a cat living on the market that had its whiskers cut off. I went straight back to Watney St and found the beautiful tortoiseshell cat hiding under a parked car. When I called her, she came to me without any hesitation and made herself right at home in our flat. Of course, she was pregnant, giving us five lovely kittens and we kept one of them, taking him to Toronto with us.”
Eileen Armstrong, trader in fruit and vegetables
Joe the Grocer
Gladys McGee, poet and member of the Basement Writers’ group, who wrote eloquently of her life in Wapping and Shadwell. Gladys was living around the corner from the market in Cable St at this time.
Joe the Grocer under demolition.
Frames from a contact sheet showing the new shopping precinct.
Photographs copyright © Tony Bock
You may like to see these other photographs by Tony Bock
