John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Five)
Photographer and Ex-Boxer John Claridge has been making regular trips to the East End to take on members of London Ex-Boxers Association. John distinguished himself with some fine shots in Round One, proved a class act with a bravura display of his singular talent in Round Two, commanded the ring in Round Three with spirit blazing, showed himself as a potential champion in Round Four, and continues his astonishing performance in Round Five.
Len Bateman (First fight 1956 – Last fight 1978)
John Kramer (First fight 1959 – Last fight 1970)
Danny Wells (First fight 1960 – Last fight 1966)
Mark Delaney (First fight 1993 – Last fight 2000)
Peter McCann (Time Keeper, British Boxing Board of Control)
Ivor “The Engine” Jones (First fight 1980 – Last fight 1986)
Teddy Lewis (First fight 1947 – Last fight 1952)
Charlie Pryor (First fight 1947 – Last fight 1950)
Fred Botham (First fight 1950 – Last fight 1960)
Johnny Oliver (First fight 1955 – Last fight 1970)
Pat Thompson (First fight 1972 – Last fight 1981)
Bill Nankeville (Champion Runner, won AAA mile title four times between 1948 and 1952)
Photographs copyright © John Claridge
Take a look at
John Claridge’s Boxers (Round One)
John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Two)
John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Three)
John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Four)
and these other pictures by John Claridge
Along the Thames with John Claridge
At the Salvation Army with John Claridge
A Few Diversions by John Claridge
Signs, Posters, Typography & Graphics
Views from a Dinghy by John Claridge
In Another World with John Claridge
A Few Pints with John Claridge
Some East End Portraits by John Claridge
Sunday Morning Stroll with John Claridge
The Founding of The East End Trades Guild
Tonight at Christ Church, Spitalfields, more than two hundred small businesses, shopkeepers and independent traders meet in an historic assembly to found The East End Trades Guild.
Spitalfields Life Contributing Photographers Sarah Ainslie, Lucinda Douglas Menzies, Jeremy Freedman, Phil Maxwell, Simon Mooney, Patricia Niven, Colin O’Brien, Alex Pink & Agnese Sanvito have been out taking portraits of every single one of the Founder Members. All these pictures will be shown tonight on a screen with live musical accompaniment and today I publish this selection of fifty to illustrate the wonderful range of traders that have come together to launch this new initiative.
Sebastian Sharples’ film, “We Are The Beating Heart of The East End,” will be premiered. Nevio Pellicci of E.Pellicci will be Master of Ceremonies for the evening. The opening speech will be by Paul Gardner, proprietor of Spitalfields oldest family business and the Founder of the Guild, who will describe how it all came about. Then, Henry Jones of Jones Dairy and Shanaz Khan of Chaat Restarant will introduce the Guild, outlining its purpose and intentions, before a group photograph of the two hundred Founding Members is taken as the culmination of the evening.
Members of the public are welcome to attend tonight as witnesses but must arrive at 6:30pm. And there is still time for traders to become Founder Members of the Guild by contacting organiser Krissie Nicolson today – krissie@eastendtradesguild.co.uk 07910 966738
Carol Burns, C.E. Burns Waste Paper Merchants
Sarfaraz Loonat, M& G Ironmongery & Building Supplies
Matthew Reynolds, The Duke of Uke
Violet Cake Shop
Citywear
Caroline Bousfield Studio
Jason Burley, Camden Lock Books
Robert Boyd Bowman, Alexander Boyd Tailors
Tip Tap Appliances
Margaret, Vintage Heaven
Tatty Devine
Shanaz Khan, Chaat
Hash, Urban Species
Ally Capellino
Ainsworth Broughton Upholstery
Mar Mar Co
Shamim Ali, Miraz Cafe
Labour & Wait
Tracey Neuls
Saeed Malik, Bina Shoes
Rosebud Trading
Campania
Henry Jones, Jones Bros Dairy
Lillie O’Brien, London Borough of Jam
Charlie Amarnath, Bethnal Green Post Office
John Shore, Shoe Care
Tyrone Walker-Hebborn, Genesis Cinema
Ben, E5 Bakery
Leila’s Shop
Jay, Manji Beads
Angela Flanders
SNAP
Herrick Gallery
Sarah Marks & Sarah Duchars, Buttonbag
Liam Kelleher, Noble Fine Liquor
www.agnesesanvito.com/
Christiane Victorin, La Vie Boutique
Michael-George Hemus & James Morgan, Truman’s Beer
Ryantown
James Brown
Jonathan Norris Ltd
Stephen Godfroy, Rough Trade
Philip & Paulo, A.Gold
Denise Jones, Brick Lane Bookshop
Muhibur Rahman, Fruit & Veg
Hitcham, Painter & Decorator
Buddug, J&B Fashion
Chrome & Black
Newmans Stationery
Deli Downstairs
Sandra Esqulant, The Golden Heart
You may like to read about the origin of the East End Trades Guild
Gadsdons of Brushfield St
Peter Gadsdon
If you look carefully, can you decipher the words “H.Gadsdon & Sons Established 1835” on this wall in Crispin St ? This feint sign – painted out a generation ago yet still just legible if you know what you are looking for – constitutes the last visible evidence in Spitalfields of the five generations of Gadsdons who lived and worked here over three centuries as silk dyers, coach platers and ironmongers. It was pointed out to me by Peter Gadsdon, who came back recently to see how life has been ticking over in the old neighbourhood since his last relative departed, more than half a century ago.
Working from the starting point of a family tree in an old bible and, by writing to every Gadsdon in the telephone directory, Peter Gadsdon has worked conscientiously, reconstructing the history of his ancestors, over the past ten years. “I wouldn’t say they lived in poverty, but some of the streets they inhabited – where Liverpool St Station is today – were classified as slums, and learning about their lives has made realise how lucky I am,” he admitted to me.
The return of descendants of former residents is a regular and welcome occurrence in Spitalfields. Commonly, I am the one to greet them and often they speak so vividly and with such knowledge that it feels – as it does in Peter’s case – as if they are the actual embodiments of their forebears returning from the past.
“I have always had an interest in the East End since I visited Club Row, Brick Lane and Petticoat Lane when I was a teenager. And although I knew that my father was born in Hoxton, I did not know about the connection with Spitalfields until I started to research my family history.
Henry, my great, great, great grandfather was born in City of London in 1774 and baptised in All Hallows, Lombard St. His father, also Henry, was a framework knitter who had three children and found it “difficult to maintain and educate them without assistance.” So he applied to have his son admitted to Christ’s Hospital charity school in Newgate St in the City of London, where young Henry was accepted. Christ’s Hospital was known as the Blue Coat School and his first year was at their preparatory school based in Hertford before progressing to the senior school in Newgate St where he stayed until his fourteenth birthday
On leaving in 1790, the charity school paid for Henry’s five year apprenticeship as a silk dyer at the cost of five pounds and then he set up his own business in Spitalfields, the centre of the silk industry. The first date we know for his business is 1805 in Holden’s Triennial Directory at 26 Paternoster Row, now known as Brushfield St. On a map from 1799, Brushfield St is shown divided in two – from Bishopsgate to Crispin St was named Union St, and from Crispin St to Christ Church was Paternoster Row. In the eighteen twenties, Henry formed a partnership with a Richard Harmer, listed as Gadsdon & Harmer, dyers, scowerers and calenders in Pigots 1828/1829 Directory.
The next we learn of Henry is in the Old Bailey records when a coat is stolen from his business premises in 1830. On retirement, he moved across the Thames to Deptford and his first wife Elizabeth, née Harvey, passed away shortly afterwards. The custom in those days was commonly to return the body to the parish where they had lived and she was buried in Christ Church, Spitalfields, where eight of her nine children had been baptised and one infant was buried.
In 1839, little more than a year later, Henry married for a second time to Charlotte Benskin and moved out to the hamlet of Hatcham, New Cross. He died in 1849 and is buried in Nunhead Cemetery nearby.
Of Henry’s children two of his sons followed him to Christ’s Hospital School and on the application it states “A wife and eight children, one already at Christ’s, six under the age of fourteen years old, income under one hundred pounds per annum.” They were supported at the school by the Skinners’ Livery Guild of which Henry was a member. Another of his sons followed Henry into the silk dying trade, but by now the silk industry in Spitalfields was in its last throes.
Henry had a younger brother, Richard, who also had a business in Union St. Richard trained as a coachplater, making ironmongery for horse drawn carriages. A description from an encyclopaedia of Carriage Driving is as follows – “His job was to make such parts of the carriage as the door handles. He also prepared metal furniture for the harness. The average wage in the first half of the eighteen hundreds, for a plater, was thirty shillings a week.” Another brother, George. was also a coachplater who lived in nearby Gun St and I would assume that he worked with Richard when he set up his business in the early eighteen hundreds.
Advertisements show that they sold American wheels for carriages, and varnishes, japan and colours for the carriage trade. As the years progressed, they also moved into the motor car business and an advert from the turn of the century announces Gadsdons selling foot warmers suitable for both carriages and motor cars. Today, there is still a premises with the Gadsdon name on it in Spitalfields at number 49 Crispin St, though I am not sure if this is the carriage firm or if it is another part of the extended family. In 1926, a new Gadsdon premises of four storeys was built at the corner of Brushfield St and Duke St.
Most of Richard’s offspring went into the business of coachplating and saddle-making. One of his grandchildren was fearful of being buried alive – no doubt influenced by sensationalist press reports of the time – starting his will with “In the first place, I direct that my medical attendant at the time of my decease shall sever my jugular vein as soon as he is of opinion that I have ceased to exist, so that there may be an absolute certainty as to my death having taken place.”
My direct Gadsdon ancestors lived in the area in nearby Bishopsgate up and into the nineteen hundreds. When my grandfather, in the third year of his upholstery apprenticeship, married his pregnant wife in Christ Church, Spitalfields they did not use the usual family church of St Botolph’s in the City. So did they marry in Christ Church to avoid prying eyes? He started his own upholstery business in Hoxton and, in 1907, he moved to the expanding hamlet of Highams Park, near Chingford. Living just down the road to the station, he was able to travel to Liverpool St Station to his business each day.”
Peter Gadson would be delighted to hear from anyone connected to his family and you can contact him direct at pgadsdon@yahoo.co.uk
Christ’s Hospital where Henry Gadsdon, Peter’s great, great, great grandfather was a pupil at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
The entry in Christ’s Hospital register recording the admission of Henry Gadsdon’s son George of Spitalfields in 1820.
From the Old Bailey records, recording the theft of Henry Gadsdon’s coat in Spitalfields in 1830
This map of Spitalfields by John Horwood (1794-99) shows the street we know as Brushfield St divided in two and named Union St and Paternoster Row.
Plans for the construction of Gadsdons on the corner of Brushfield St and Duke St in 1926.
A Gadsdon’s drill at the Museum of East Anglian Life
Wholesale Coach Ironmongers, C & B Gadsdon, 11 Brushfield St, London E1.
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The Shops of Old London
Butcher, Hoxton St, Shoreditch, c.1910
Are you setting out to do your Saturday shopping? For a change, why not consider visiting the shops of old London? There are no supermarkets or malls, but plenty of other diversions to captivate the eager shopper.
These glass slides once used for magic lantern shows by the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society at the Bishopsgate Institute offer the ideal consumer experience for a reluctant browser such as myself since, as this crowd outside a butcher in Hoxton a century ago illustrates, shopping in London has always been a fiercely competitive sport.
Instead of braving the crowds and emptying our wallets, we can enjoy window shopping in old London safe from the temptation to pop inside and buy anything – because most of these shops do not exist anymore.
Towering over the shopping landscape of a century ago were monumental department stores, beloved destinations for the passionate shopper just as the City churches were once spiritual landmarks to pilgrims and the devout. Of particular interest to me are the two huge posters for Yardley that you can see in the Strand and on Shaftesbury Avenue, incorporating the Lavender Seller from Francis Wheatley’s Cries of London, originally painted in the seventeen nineties. There is an intriguing paradox in this romanticised image of a street seller of two centuries earlier, used to promote a brand of twentieth century cosmetics that were manufactured in a factory in Stratford and sold through a sleek modernist flagship store, Yardley House, in the West End.
Wych St, lined with medieval shambles that predated the Fire of London and famous for its dusty old bookshops and printsellers is my kind of shopping street, demolished in 1901 to construct the Aldwych. Equally, I am fascinated by the notion of cramming commerce into church porches, such as the C. Burrell, the Dealer in Pickled Tongues & Sweetbreads who used to operate from the gatehouse of St Bartholomew the Great in Smithfield and E.H. Robinson, the optician, through whose premises you once entered St Ethelburga’s in Bishopsgate. Note that a toilet saloon was conveniently placed next door for those were nervous at the prospect of getting their eyes tested.
So let us set out together to explore the shops of old London. We do not need a shopping basket. We do not need a list. We do not even need money. We are shopping for wonders and delights. And we shall not have to carry anything home. This is my kind of shopping.
Optician built into St Ethelburga’s, Bishopsgate, c.1910
Decorators and Pencil Works, Great Queen St, c.1910
Newsagent and Hairdresser at 152 Strand, c.1930
Dairy and ‘Sacks, bags, ropes, twines, tents, canvas, etc.’ Shop, c. 1940
Liberty of London, c.1910
Regent St, c.1920.
Harrods of Knightsbridge, c.1910
The Fashion Shoe Shop, c.1920 “Repetiton is the soul of advertising”
Evsns Tabacconist, Haymarket, c.1910
F. W. Woolworth & Co. Ltd. 3d and 6d store, c.1910
Finnigan’s of New Bond St, gold- & silversmiths, c.1910
Achille Serre,Cleaner & Dyers, c. 1920
Old Bond St. c. 1910
W.H.Daniel, Cow Keeper, White Hart Yard, c.1910
John Barker & Co. Ltd., High St Kensington, c.1910
Tobacconist, Glovers and Shoe Shop, c.1910
Ford Showroom, c.1925
Civil Service Supply Association, c. 1930
Swears & Wells Ltd, Ladies Modes, c. 1925
Glave’s Hosiery, c 1920
Shopping in Wych St, c. 1910 – note the sign of the crescent moon.
Horne Brothers Ltd, c. 1920
Tobacconist, High Holborn, c. 1910
Yardley House, c. 1930
Peter Jones, Oxford St, c. 1920
Confectionery Shop, corner of Greek St and Shaftesbury Ave, c. 1930
Bookseller, Wych St, c. 1890
Pawnbroker, 201 Seven Sisters Rd, Finsbury Park, c. 1910
Bookseller & Tobacconist and Dealer in Pickled Tongues at the entrance to St Bartholomew’s, Smithfield, c. 1910
Oxford Circus, c. 1920
Glass slides copyright © Bishopsgate Institute
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The New Truman Brewery
James Morgan & Michael-George Hemus at the threshold of the new Truman Brewery
It gives me great pleasure to be the one to announce the site of the new Truman Brewery – due to start brewing early next year – in Stour Rd, Hackney Wick, sandwiched between Forman & Sons, the East End’s oldest salmon smoker, and the Algha Works, where spectacles have been made by hand for over a century. The New Truman Brewery will be London’s third biggest brewery and this is the largest investment in brewing in the East End in twenty-five years. Most excitingly, it is the beginning of a new chapter in the story of Truman’s that began in Spitalfields in 1666.
I first met Michael-George & James two years ago, when they began their bold quest to bring Truman’s Beer back, after the three-hundred-year-old brewery closed in Brick Lane in 1989. “When we first spoke, there were only a handful of pubs selling our beer but now we have one hundred and fifty in London,” James informed me enthusiastically, “Our great success has been Truman’s Runner, and by the end of March we will be brewing in our new brewery.”
In the midst of the economic crisis, it has been an extraordinary feat of perseverance that this duo have pulled off, raising entirely private investment, negotiating the purchase of the Truman’s name, launching the beer back into pubs successfully, finding for the site for a new brewery in the East End and buying it too. Within the shell of two vast industrial units, there will be cold storage for a thousand casks, a laboratory, offices and a series of massive brewing vessels, a mash tun and a copper – essentially a giant kettle containing 1600 litres (forty barrels) of beer at a time. Once it is operating, this new brewery will be sufficient to satisfy the thirst of the East End for years to come.
“Our challenge is to find a balance between being the inheritors of a seventeenth century brewing tradition and being a contemporary brewer,” admitted Michael-George, “It is of paramount importance to us to produce a beer that is worthy of Truman’s name.” Now the search is on to raise the final investment necessary and find a head brewer. Amazingly, Truman’s yeast from 1955 is preserved in the National Yeast Bank in Norwich which makes it possible to brew a Truman’s beer today that contains an ingredient which connects directly to the three centuries of Truman’s in the East End. Operating on a larger scale than the microbreweries that have sprung up in recent years, Michael-George & James are passionate to bring manufacturing back to the East End, employing local people and training them in skills which can sustain the future of an industry here over the long-term.
James Morgan’s ancestors were Huguenot refugees who came to Spitalfields at the end of the seventeenth century after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. “Sometimes, I smile to myself when I am skint and walking around the streets of Spitalfields and I imagine them here walking these same streets three hundred years ago,” he confided to me, “and maybe they even drank some of the first Truman’s beer?”
Michael-George & James are driven by a shared passion, recognising that Truman’s is an integral part of the cultural identity of the East End, and it will be an inspiration to us all when the most famous brewer is back brewing on home ground next year. Cheers everybody!
Truman’s is back on the road again.
If you would like to invest in Truman’s Beer or apply for the post of Brewer at the New Truman Brewery contact trumans@trumansbeer.co.uk
Read my other Truman’s stories
Norman Riley, Metalworker
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.
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Les Bobrow, Wood ‘N’ Things
One of the most popular shops in the Spitalfields Market is Les Bobrow’s Wood ‘N’ Things where you can buy traditional wooden toys, fancy dress and all kinds of party tricks and novelties. Of all the shops in the market, his is the one that serves the widest range of people – locals, City types and tourists – as well as appealing to children as much as to adults.
Universally appreciated for the playfulness he brings, in contrast to the mundanity of the chains that surround him, Les Bobrow is one of the last of the originals from when these shops first opened after the Fruit & Vegetable Market moved out and one of the few independent businesses to bring a distinctive quality to these former market buildings today.
Yet in spite of the success and drawing power of Wood ‘N’ Things, Ballymore, who manage the building, want to kick Les out when his lease expires in February and replace him with another High St chain store selling women’s fashion, in a further move towards rendering the market as generic any shopping mall. Naturally, Les is disappointed – after building up his business in the market over all these years – to be told he is no longer wanted. He is frustrated at the obtuseness of his landlords.
“My idea of a market is bit of everything,” he suggested to me,“We have a very busy website and a third of my customers come that way, so my shop brings people to the market. They come out of here and they go into the other shops, but nobody comes to Spitalfields to go to a chainstore – they can do that where they live.” Les told me that he believes the management want to maximize the number of High St brands in the market in order to increase the value of their asset for a potential sale of the building. The short-term nature of this thinking denies the economic reality – when Les’ business is thriving, enabling him to pay the inflated rent of £85,000 per annum, while many of the multiples have little turnover but are supported by their corporate owners who want to maintain a brand presence in the area.
A proud East Ender, Les revealed that his grandfather arrived from Poland as a refugee in the nineteenth century and opened a shop selling furniture in Fashion St in the eighteen eighties, just a hundred yards from Les’ current shop in Brushfield St. “I came down here as a child with my father to Club Row and then we used to walk through Spitalfields to Petticoat Lane, and I watched them loading up the trucks here in the market” Les recalled, “So when I heard that the Fruit & Vegetable Market had moved out, I thought this was the place to come. It was just eighteen months after they left and I started one Sunday selling seven items I had made out of wood, there was a key box, an egg box and a towel holder, and I never took a penny the first week. The stall cost me twenty pounds.”
Unemployed at the time, Les determined to persevere in Spitalfields and he made a few more items for the next Sunday, and he sold them. “Being on the stall gave me less and less time to make things, so I started buying handmade wooden toys. And it really took off because there was a niche in the market, so then I started looking around for a shop.” he explained, “But they were all out of my reach until a small one became available in 2001. Then, in 2004, I moved in here and I never looked back.”
The appeal of Wood ‘N’ Things derives from Les’s personal taste and idiosyncrasy, and reflects his cultural heritage too. He lives a mile from his shop and all his staff are local people, which means that they have a personal relationship with many of the customers and the profits stay within the local economy. The same is true of plenty of other independent shops, underlining the significance of these small businesses to the East End.
The London markets have always been an arena of possibility where people can create a living out of nothing but their own ingenuity, and the story of Les Bobrow’s shop is a classic example of a success story born of ingenuity and hard work. It is obvious that even the multiples require a vibrant culture of markets and distinctive independent shops surrounding them if they are to succeed, which makes Ballymore’s short-sightedness in the case of Wood ‘N’ Things especially frustrating.
Wood ‘N’ Things, Old Spitalfields Market, 57 Brushfield St, E1 6AA
Portraits copyright © Phil Maxwell
