Spitalfields Life

John Claridge’s Clowns (The Final Act)

March 2, 2013

by the gentle author

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.

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

Celebrating Joseph Grimaldi

Joseph Grimaldi, Clown

Soerditch by Dant

March 1, 2013

by the gentle author

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!

Adam Dant is represented by Hales Gallery

Winter Dawn At Bow Cemetery

February 28, 2013

by the gentle author

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.

You may also like to read these other cemetery stories

At Bow Cemetery

Snowfall at Bow Cemetery

Spring Bulbs at Bow Cemetery

Bluebells at Bow Cemetery

At the Cemetery With Barn the Spoon

Find out more at www.towerhamletscemetery.org

At St Clement’s Hospital

February 27, 2013

by the gentle author

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.

Roy Gardner’s Sales Tickets

February 26, 2013

by the gentle author

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

Paul Gardner’s Collection

At Gardners’ Market Sundriesmen

Joan Rose at Gardners’ Market Sundriesmen

James Brown at Gardners’ Market Sundriesmen

Vigil at Gardners’ Market Sundriesmen

Tony Bock At Watney Market

February 25, 2013

by the gentle author

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.

You may like to see these other photographs by Tony Bock

Tony Bock, Photographer

London Night

February 24, 2013

by the gentle author

East End Riverside

As you will have realised by now, I am a night bird. In the mornings, I stumble around in a bleary-eyed stupor of incomprehension and in the afternoons I wince at the sun. But as darkness falls my brain begins to focus and, by the time others are heading to their beds, then I am growing alert and settling down to write.

Once I used to go on night rambles – to the railway stations to watch them loading the mail, to the markets to gawp at the hullabaloo and to Fleet St to see the newspaper trucks rolling out with the early editions. These days, such nocturnal excursions are rare unless for the sake of writing a story, yet I still feel the magnetic pull of the dark city streets beckoning, and so it was with a deep pleasure of recognition that I first gazed upon this magnificent series of inky photogravures of “London Night” by Harold Burdekin from 1934 in the Bishopsgate Library.

For many years, it was a subject of wonder for me – as I lay awake in the small hours – to puzzle over the notion of whether the colours which the eye perceives in the night might be rendered in paint. This mystery was resolved when I saw Rembrandt’s “Rest on the Flight into Egypt” in the National Gallery of Ireland, perhaps finest nightscape in Western art.

Almost from the beginning of the medium, night became a subject for photography with John Adams Whipple taking a daguerrotype of the moon through a telescope in 1839, but it was not until the invention of the dry plate negative process in the eighteen eighties that night photography really became possible. Alfred Stieglitz was the first to attempt this in New York in the eighteen nineties, producing atmospheric nocturnal scenes of the city streets under snow.

In Europe, night photography as an idiom in its own right begins with George Brassaï who depicted the sleazy after-hours life of the Paris streets, publishing “Paris de Nuit” in 1932. These pictures influenced British photographers Harold Burdekin and Bill Brandt, creating “London Night” in 1934 and “A Night in London” in 1938, respectively. Harold Burdekin’s work is almost unknown today, though his total eclipse by Bill Brandt may in part be explained by the fact that Burdekin was killed by a flying bomb in Reigate in 1944 and never survived to contribute to the post-war movement in photography.

More painterly and romantic than Brandt, Burdekin’s nightscapes propose an irresistibly soulful vision of the mythic city enfolded within an eternal indigo night. How I long to wander into the frame and lose myself in these ravishing blue nocturnes.