The Stepney Witch-Bottle
“After nearly eight hundred stories, it is my pleasure to welcome Matthew Sweet to take over for a week in celebration of his new publication The West End Front by Faber & Faber on Thursday 3rd November. Matthew’s witty and erudite books have always proved an inspiration to me, and I can happily recommend his writing to you in the knowledge that you are in safe hands until my return on Monday 7th November” – the Gentle Author
In March 1954, the mud of Stepney yielded a sinister piece of seventeenth-century treasure. Out it came, from under the earth of Pennington Street, on a plot where an orchard had once stood – a bulbous stoneware bottle, upon which had been carved the shape of a face: wide, goggling eyes, a prominent nose, a savage mouth, a devilish swoop of beard. The base of the bottle was in fragments. Not because it had been pulled from the ground too sharply, or smashed by its original owner – but because it had been cracked apart by forces it could not contain.
The contents of the bottle were also recovered: a small patch of cloth and the collection of objects that had once been wrapped and pinned inside. A twist of human hair, a handful of hand-made iron nails, a tangle of metal wire, and a small collection of fingernail clippings. These, according to the archaeology correspondent of The Times, revealed the true nature of the discovery. This was a “witch-bottle or Bellarmine jug … doubtless used to employ ‘sympathetic magic’ either to injure a victim or to ward off the supposed effects of witchcraft.”
In the popular imagination, witchcraft is rural. And yet, the record shows that belief in magic continued to thrive in East London as the cobbles advanced and the meadows and marshes retreated. In 1820, the American essayist Washington Irving reported that “an old woman that lives in Bull-and-Mouth Street makes a tolerable subsistence by detecting stolen goods, and promising the girls good husbands.”
In his essay Urbanisation and the Decline of Witchcraft, Owen Davies describes the case of Mary-Ann Gable, the wife of a coppersmith who lived on Russell Street in Stepney. In 1858 Gable told a court that she had ben so troubled with “frightful pains” that she suspected herself to be under some hostile supernatural influence. She sought the help of a Mrs McDonald of Cudworth Street, Bethnal Green, who confirmed her suspicions and sold her ten doses of powders at sixpence a twist. These Gable threw on the fire while reciting a prescribed incantation, with the intention of causing “torment” to her enemy. Gable took McDonald to court not because she had been sold a large amount of worthless remedies, but because she had discovered that the old woman was also in the employ of her antagonist, and was supplying that person with the same magical instruments.
The witch-bottle was, it seems, most often used as a counter-measure of this kind. According to Cotton Maher’s Late Memorable Providence (1691), those who felt themselves to be under attack by a witch could reverse the charm by filling a bottle with urine, into which would be dropped a little package of “Nails, Pins, and such instruments as carry a shew of Torture with them”. The sharp objects inside the symbolic body of the bottle would, if the magic worked, produce excruciating pain the corporeal body of the enchanter. The urine might be that of the witch, but it seems, more often and more pragmatically, to have been the urine of the bottle-maker. The reason being, according to Joseph Blagrave’s Astrological Practice of Physic (1671), that “there is part of the vital spirit of the Witch in it, for such is the subtlety of the Devil, that he will not suffer the witch to infuse any poysonous matter into the body of the man or beast, without some of the Witches blood mingled in with it.” If you wanted the witch to die of slow strangulation, you would then bury the bottle in the ground. If you preferred something more spectacular, you could throw it on the fire, though if the cork escaped before the stoneware exploded, then the charm would fail. The cocktail or urine an iron nails usually ensured that even those Bellarmine jugs buried under the earth would burst eventually – this is what happened to the Pennington Street specimen. Many such bottles have been disinterred, but so far only one has been found intact and stoppered.
One hundred and thirty of these objects have been recovered from sites all over Britain – though few of them are of British manufacture. Most were made in Germany, where the face carved on the neck of the bottle was held to represent a wild man figure from Teutonic folklore. The name Bellarmine is thought to derive from that of Cardinal Roberto Bellarmino, a hate-figure for Protestants across seventeenth-century Europe.
Are such objects still being fashioned? A modern Pagan whom I consulted for this article professed that she had used witch-bottles as part of her practice, though she stressed that unlike Mrs McDonald of Cudworth Street, she had never filled one for commercial gain. The fliers that come through the door from practitioners of African traditions, offering to improve my finances or cause trouble for my enemies suggest that sympathetic magic is alive in modern London.
In the 1950s, Ralph Merrifield, Assistant keeper of the Guildhall Museum in the City of London, bemoaned the lack of interest in discoveries such as the Pennington Street witch-bottle. “Unfortunately,” he reflected, “many archaeologists are curiously reluctant to show any interest in the less rational aspects of human behaviour, and finds of this nature are rarely publicised or discussed. It is not clear whether this is due to a modern superstition, contradicted by history, that man is a rational animal; or to the revival of an ancient one, that there is a risk of contagion in such studies, leading, if not to possession by the powers of darkness, at least to a collapse of scientific scepticism!”
My scientific scepticism is pretty robust. But I will concede to the believers on the question of sympathetic magic. The witch-bottle eased from the Stepney mud in 1954 is now housed, with many similar examples, in the Museum of London. You only have to gaze upon the strange, savage features of the faces that they bear to feel something of what they must have meant to the people who packed them, corked them, and bedded them in the earth.
Drawing of the Stepney Witch-Bottle by Joanna Moore
Montages by Sarah Ainslie using her photographs of skeletons exhumed during the rebuilding of the Spitalfields Market in 1999.
Drawing copyright © Joanna Moore
Montages copyright © Sarah Ainslie
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The Fly-Pitchers of Spitalfields
When I first came to Spitalfields, at dawn one Sunday morning in Winter long ago, I was amazed to find Brick Lane full of fly-pitchers – people selling a few items directly off the pavement. Yet as the years have gone by, these pavement traders have been pushed further and further out until they find themselves at the very edge of the territory now, crowded together along the Bethnal Green Rd upon a narrow strip of pavement beside the site of new a shopping mall. Literally at the margins, these people are suffering at the heavy hands of market inspectors constantly harassing and threatening them, causing them to pick up their things and flee – only to return later and do a little more trading before the next purge happens, in a tragic ongoing game of cat and mouse.
Commencing in the early hours and sometimes gone by first light, the existence of these traders in unknown to many visitors that come to Brick Lane on Sunday. So, for the last month, Spitalfields Life Contributing Photographer Colin O’Brien has been down there among the fly-pitchers and the result is this remarkable set of pictures which acknowledge the dignity of these people who are being subject to such unnecessary humiliation for sake of wanting to sell a little bric-a-brac.
“My name is Jason John, I’m writing you a damn good song” – these were the first words I heard when I came round the corner of the Bethnal Green Rd into Norton Folgate last Sunday morning, just as a street musician with curly dark locks appeared with theatrical aplomb from behind a telephone box, wielding his guitar and offering a tuneful accompaniment to the lively scene of pavement trading sheltered by the vast railway bridge arching over us. It can be a pitiful spectacle to witness the modest possessions that people are selling here, asking prices as little as 10p, and yet this market is remarkable for its vibrant life and sense of camaraderie that, ironically, has strengthened in the face of the current threat.
Over the weeks that Colin has taken his pictures, a stack of black sea-containers were put in place and the hoarding behind the fly-pitchers came down to reveal the pop-up shopping mall which will open here shortly. Now a fence with the logos of the international brands who will be selling their wares here in future serves as a backdrop to the fly-pitchers and the contrast between the two could not be more extreme. The developers who own the site are creating a temporary shopping mall to capitalise upon their investment whilst they raise the cash to construct a tower block for corporate clients and – for the sake of this – a few pensioners, the handicapped, those struggling on benefits and the dispossessed are being criminalised because they try to sell a few of their belongings to raise a little extra cash on a Sunday morning.
I spoke to a Jewish gentleman in his seventies as he arrived to place six worn shirts on the pavement for sale, casting glances nervously to either side. I bought one of his shirts for 50p in order to strike up a conversation with him, yet within minutes he was harshly moved on and my 50p proved to be his sole income for his effort that morning.“They’re trying to get rid of the poor people!” exclaimed one woman in grief, too scared to consent to a photograph by Colin.
The argument is used that the fly-pitchers are unlicensed and they are blocking the pavement. Yet the truth is that some have been coming to Brick Lane to trade for their entire lives, participating in the culture of unregulated pavement trading which has been in continuous existence in this corner of the East End on Sundays for centuries. And, if they are blocking the pavement now it is because they have been herded into this narrow space away from Brick Lane against their will.
Gina of Gina’s Restaurant in the Bethnal Green Rd, who started her first cafe in Brick Lane with her husband Philip Christou in 1961, opens each Sunday now to serve the same people who have been coming all these years. When they are ‘purged’ by the inspectors, they take refuge in her establishment and if the old people have failed to make enough money to pay for a Sunday lunch – which was their sole intent in getting up before dawn and coming down here – then Gina simply gives them a meal. It is a sombre experience to sit in Gina’s Restaurant among those who have taken flight and recognise that these spirited characters are the people who have been in the market longer than anyone.
The soul of the place resides with the fly-pitchers and their moral rights must be respected now – through the provision of a space where they can trade peacefully – rather than subjecting them to the current inhuman treatment which degrades us all.
Jason John, Street Musician
Mr Gil, Street Preacher
Photographs copyright © Colin O’Brien
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Colin O’Brien’s Brick Lane Market
Colin O’Brien’s Clerkenwell Car Crashes
Travellers’ Children in London Fields
At Prick Your Finger
“Why not start by falling in love with a yarn?”
You might not expect a knitting shop to be an exciting place – but when I arrived at Prick Your Finger at 260 Globe Rd and reached out to discover that the bridge of a guitar had been substituted for the door handle, I realised I was in for a rock and roll experience. You might assume that hand-knitting has been rendered obsolete by cheap mass-production – lost in the fast pace of contemporary life – but you would be wrong, it is enjoying a lively renaissance at present. Knitters of all ages and backgrounds are coming together to share their skills, tossing aside patterns to express their creativity in unconventional ways and transgressing the boundaries of a creative medium that was once a byword for mundanity.
Operating from their tiny shop which has become the focus of this culture in the East End, Rachel Matthews & Louise Harvey are exuberant evangelists of the revival, espousing needlecraft as a means of individual creative expression and even of personal liberation. And I was especially keen to pay a visit because this is the time of year to embark upon an ambitious knitting project to fill the long Winter nights ahead.
“‘Why not start by falling in love with a yarn?’ that’s what we say to people when they come in, because often they bring an idea of what they like based on something they may have seen in a magazine,” admitted Rachel who opened the shop with her college pal Louise four years ago,“Instead, we try to help people focus on their relationship with the material.”
“A lot of officeworkers are losing their dexterity and feel they can’t create anything, so we offer intensive support to people who want to become knitters.” continued Rachel with a sympathetic smile, “We try to teach people dexterity in their fingers, but what we’re actually teaching is that using your hands well through knitting can give you a confidence which stays with you your whole life.”
When Rachel found this shop, the building had been partially reconstructed internally by an errant architect, leaving a labyrinth of strangely-angled rooms resembling the interior of a house drawn by Dr Seuss. Downstairs, the shop is crammed to the roof with yarn and quirky details – including a knitted fish on a shelf, crocheted mushrooms in fairy rings on the ceiling and a woven stork’s nest complete with brood in a corner. Upstairs is a large studio where classes are held nightly, enabling customers to buy their yarn and needles below then seek tuition above, receiving all the necessary technical guidance and emotional encouragement to fulfil their dreams in knitwear.
Rachel & Louise met at St Martin’s School of Art where they both studied textiles, united in solidarity as the only students in the canteen to bring their lunch in thermos flasks. “There was no gallery even to display textile work because people were embarrassed by it,” revealed Louise with comic affront, sharing a glance of reminiscence with Rachel as she revealed the origins of their fervour,“We really suffered from that.” Dismayed at the high art sensibility which forbade them to use the phrase “wallhanging,” they left with a shared desire to express their appreciation for “low craft,” the domestic skills of knitting and needlework which had become disregarded and unfashionable. “You get fed up with knitting being a big joke!” declared Rachel, flashing her eyes and crossing her arms in mock outrage.
After college, Louise designed knitwear at a fashion house while Rachel worked as a community artist spearheading the KIP movement – Knitting In Public – which has been key in the resurgence of popular needlecraft. Then the duo opened Prick Your Finger, with a playful approach to the subject yet respecting the subtle emotional meanings and deep personal investment which knitters bring to their creations.
“When customers come in they tell us why they want to knit something, and it’s usually a rite of passage, having a baby, falling in love or children leaving home,” revealed Rachel, obviously savouring all these confidences exchanged over needles. “We welcome UFOs too,” added Louise helpfully, slipping it into the conversation in a way that left me speechless,“People can bring their UnFinished Objects to us for administration and then we pass them onto to someone else to complete before returning them to the owner. There is usually a story that reveals why they are not finished, and sometimes it might involve heartbreak or death.”
“When we started we had only twenty balls of wool,” recalled Louise, rolling her eyes to take in the walls of their shop, now lined with hanks, skeins and balls of fibre in an infinite variety of colours and textures, “We found there was nowhere in London you could buy British yarn, so we decided to become haberdashers and open our own place. Now we have over one hundred suppliers, all from this country.”
In the East End, Prick Your Finger is a place of which it may truly be said that you can always be guaranteed to find a good yarn.
Louise Harvey at her knitting machine.
Rachel Matthews & Louise Harvey
Rachel Matthews with the quilt her mother made.
At Richard & Cosmo Wise’s Shop
Cosmo Wise, proud of his collection of darned nineteenth century farmer’ socks
If you cannot get excited by the new styles in the stores this season, you might prefer to go along to Richard & Cosmo Wise’s shop at 68a Cheshire St where all the clothes are between seventy and one hundred and thirty years old. These are the raiment that your great-grandparents got dragged through a hedge backwards in and yet, miraculously, survived – through endless ingenious patching and artful darning – to fall into the hands of this father and son team who cherish these magnificently damaged old togs. Searching rural France and Japan, Cosmo & Richard have amassed an extraordinarily charismatic trove of glad rags and work clothes that have inspired them to pursue a tender aesthetic of loving repair, renewing these garments and giving them a fresh life, in which their histories and idiosyncrasies can be appreciated by aficionados.
“I learnt a huge amount from those anonymous people,” Cosmo admitted to me, producing a lovingly patched-up coat from a rail and stroking it,“I feel I have a symbiotic relationship with the seamstresses of a hundred years ago. They each had their own styles of darning and repair. More than utilitarian, there’s a real sensibility present.”
The garment in question appeared to be half-and-half, two different jackets joined laterally to create a new coat in which Cosmo’s repairs were indistinguishable from those done generations ago, and lined with vintage quilted French and Japanese fabric. This eye-catching collage of textiles was also undeniably contemporary in appearance, sewn together with superlative skill and possessing a certain charisma no mass-produced item could ever match. Cosmo is keen to emphasise that his interventions are always based upon precedents, such as – in this case – the half-and-half shirts of seventy years ago with extended tails in contrasting fabric to be worn over trousers like smocks.
For just a couple of weeks, until 20th November, you can try some of these fascinating clothes for yourself in an enchanted space full of Richard & Cosmo’s glorious paraphernalia. “It’s a place where people can come to find out what we are about – where everyone’s always welcome to come round for drink,” Cosmo declared to me with reckless abandon, both supremely excited about the new venture and lacking two nights’ sleep.
In the shop you will find fine specimens of their discoveries – examples that have been sympathetically renovated alongside clothes which have been newly-made from patterns based upon old designs using pre-war fabrics, sold under their own label, “De Rien.” “We live with this stuff,” Cosmo confessed, gesturing affectionately to the rails of the most characterful old clothes I ever saw,“this shop is a more ordered version of our home. Here you will find a lot of indigo, old French hunting gear, and plenty of exceedingly patched up workwear with a lot of life to it.”
In an age of mediocre disposable High St fashion, Richard & Cosmo are visionaries who recognise the rich poetry in patched-up old garb, respecting the tale these rags tell of the time when almost all had well-made clothes. By appreciating the dignity and restraint in modest garments tailored for working people, they honour the lives of those who for whom it was the custom to wear their clothes out, rather than simply dispensing with last year’s fashions.
Each item of clothing in Richard & Cosmo’s shop has a story, and every one speaks of a different life and another world.
Click to enlarge
Dating from 1879, this tricolore fireman’s uniform was created to celebrate the centenary of the French Revolution. Designed for a pageant or parade, it is a homemade garment of the finest glazed linen. At this time, the French often sewed tricolore ribbons inside the inner pockets of frock coats to remind them of their country’s liberty.
Dating from the late thirties or early forties, this cotton flannel shirt – where the bottom is lengthened by the addition of a contrasting fabric – represents a classic example of a certain style of repair where an aesthetic choice is apparent which transcends mere utility.
This chambray shirt from the same period has been extended with the addition of two layers of fabric, a flannel and a poplin – the stripes on the extension have even been aligned with those on the original shirt. This garment is also notable for the fine darning which complements the white stitching upon the seams.
A moleskin cycling jacket from the nineteen thirties in an attractively faded ochre, with extended sleeves and a high waist to suit the posture of a rider.
Manufactured of heavy duty cotton which is brushed on one side, this grey patched jacket dates from the nineteen forties and sports some attractive contrasted patching including a waist band that resembles a built-in cummerbund.
The survival of woollens is rare and this plaid specimen with a zip-up collar dates from the early forties.
This child’s sweater with a characteristic ‘gate’ motif is also from the nineteen forties and displays some spectacularly intricate darning, especially in the armpits.
An early twentieth century apron, from the period 1915 to 1930.
Garment photographs copyright © Sofiane Boukhari
The shop was styled by Marisa de la Lopez
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Richard & Cosmo Wise, Rag Dealers
Richard & Cosmo Wise’s Collection
At 68a Cheshire St daily from 11am to 7pm, seven days a week, until November 20th.
At Alexander Boyd’s Tailoring Workshop
Marek Tadeusz Markowski, Tailor
Within living memory, the rag trade was the primary industry in the East End and it was once said you could walk the entire length of the Whitechapel Rd going from one clothing factory to the next, but today it has all gone – apart from the tailoring workshop of Alexander Boyd in Bow. Yet this is no sweatshop, here – beneath a high ceiling with ample space and light – fourteen people work to the exacting standards of Marek Tadeusz Markowski, the Master Tailor, producing fine bespoke garments.
If you walk into the shop in Artillery Lane and order a suit from Clive Phythian, the Master Cutter, this is where it will be made, just few miles East of Spitalfields. To the uninitiated, it might appear that Clive is the tailor, but in fact he is the conductor of an orchestra comprising many different skills and of which Marek is the leader. And although I thought I had met tailors before, when I was introduced to Marek -a purist in the art of fine tailoring who presides with benign yet scrupulous authority over his minions – I discovered that I was meeting a tailor for the first time.
“Those people up in the West End may call themselves tailors but in fact they are coat makers, waistcoat makers or trouser makers – they are specialists. So if you ask them to make something else, they will say, “It’s not my cup of tea.” I call myself a tailor because I can do everything. If you want a suit, a shirt, breeches, a velvet smoking jacket, a pair of curtains or even your underwear darned, I can do it all because the training I had in Poland was magnificent.
My grandmother was a tailor and my grandfather was a shoemaker. I come from a family of shoemakers in Elblag, we are an old skills family. At fifteen years old, I finished school and trained as a tailor for three years. We had to learn to make everything, in three days a week of tailoring and three days at school. My teacher said to me, “You may learn this now but in the next three days you will forget,” so I worked twelve hours every day, working at tailoring before and after school, from six o’clock in the morning before classes and until eight o’clock afterwards. The system in Poland then was that the government took money off the tailor’s taxes for each apprentice, so it didn’t cost him anything. He was only paying me pocket money and the quicker I learnt, the quicker I could make money by making clothes for my friends and having my own customers.
At eighteen, I went to do an A level in tailoring and cutting at an evening college, and during the day I was opening my own business, after just three years of training. Then, in 1981, I came to visit my uncle in Bristol for a couple of months and found I couldn’t go back to Poland because the borders were closed when martial law was imposed. So I asked the Home Office to extend my visa for a few months and thought, “I’ll go back then,” but it didn’t happen. After four years, I learnt English and opened my own shop in Reigate, Surrey. I ran this until 1997, when I returned to Poland to open a tailoring shop with my brother but I discovered there was no demand there any more, those with money wanted mass-produced designer clothes like Versace.
When I returned to London in 2001, I started working for Huntsman’s in Savile Rowe and I stayed there a year and a half. Then I went to Maurice Sedwell, Gieves & Hawkes and Henry Poole, moving from one place to the next – by observing how other tailors work, you pick up little things that you can adapt to your own system. And that way you move forward because if you don’t move forward you start going back. Boyd of Alexander Boyd approached me when I was working for Wilkinson in St George St. It was Clive Phythian, Head Cutter who introduced me.“He’s a true tailor,” Clive said,“he’s got the knowledge of cutting and everything to do with tailoring.”
I am not a designer, I am a constructor. If you draw me a garment, then I can cut the pattern and make it. Sometimes I simply do a drawing from a customer’s description and then make it. I would say I am at the top of my profession. There is no secret for me as far as tailoring is concerned.
I have been in this job since July and have fourteen people working under me. We advertised in papers and on the internet, and they are from Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia and England. I can say that at the moment I have an “A team.” It’s not a big factory, it’s a small workshop. It gives me pleasure that I can pass on my knowledge and we can produce garments here that compete with the best companies in the world.”
While I was there, the skills of the workshop were focussed upon a few bespoke pieces – some fine linen jackets and a long tweed overcoat – as well as making new staff uniforms for the Boundary Hotel. A peaceful atmosphere of concentrated application presided, with the tailors constantly bringing things to refer to Marek who hovered around to offer support – in between returning to his stool that permitted him to oversee the entire workshop, as he sat with his long needle between his dexterous fingers, forming the living fabric to his will.
Marek Tadeusz Markowski
You may like to read my profile of Clive Phythian, Master Cutter at Alexander Boyd
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The Camp at Finsbury Square
Exactly a week after demonstrators first gathered upon the steps of St Paul’s and then pitched camp beside the cathedral, a second camp has appeared at Finsbury Sq. It is the same location in Moorfields where protestors gathered in the Summer of 1780, drawn together by many grievances including unemployment, rising prices and a government that was out of touch with the populace. Yet any similarity ends there because – in contrast to their eighteenth century predecessors – these people are committed to staging an entirely peaceful occupation.
When I visited the camp at St Paul’s, I could not tell whether it would last – but the arrival of a second camp in the City confirms growing support for this international movement, which began last Summer in Wall St, New York, and has now spread across the globe.
By mid-evening, once the commuters have piled out of the offices that surround Moorgate and disappeared into the tube, these streets are usually deserted with just a few stray drunks stumbling from the pub to hail a taxi home. All that changed this week, as orderly lines of tents appeared upon the green at the centre of Finsbury Sq, quickly establishing a small community and drawing the attention of crowds of passersby who linger upon the pavement in conversation with the tent dwellers .
Standing in the shadowy park sets you at one remove from the illuminated towers that surround it. Here I joined the evening’s general assembly and learned the language of hand signals that has become a unifying characteristic of this movement, enabling large groups of people to communicate efficiently. The primary gestures are – shaking your fingers to agree, crossing your hands to disagree, raising both your index fingers to make a point, making the letter ‘T” with your hands to make a technical comment and rolling your hands in a circular gesture which proposes that the meeting needs to move on.
In effect, one hundred people were gathered in parliament with a “facilitator” acting in a similar role to the Speaker in the House of Commons, directing who should talk next. In the half-light, one by one, various working groups of the residents reported to the assembly on the day’s developments in their collective efforts to establish the camp sustainably. A plan was mooted to join the striking electricians in Blackfriars next day and a message of support was read out from workers on the London Underground who are currently facing fifteen hundred job cuts. Just three days into the camp, the discussions moved from getting portaloos and keeping the park tidy, to T’ai Chi classes, organising a football team, arranging nightwatchmen and inviting musicians from the Guildhall School to come and play in the square.
“We are not here to make ourselves a luxury life, we are here to change this situation,” declared one resident, with noble understatement in regard to the living conditions. No one could fail to be touched by the courtesy that was paid to each speaker, however timid their contribution. There was no cynicism among this group of hardy souls gathered in the darkened park, who had put themselves on the line for the sake of daring to dream of a better world. It was a wide constituency, including students, nurses, ex-servicemen, teachers and old timer activitists. And it was a timeless spectacle, watching these individuals crouched together at such an intense conference in the gloom. In three days, this disparate group of people had created their own society with discrete codes of respect and shared responsibilities.
As rain began to fall in the darkness, we all took shelter and I found myself under an awning in conversation with a resident of Fitzrovia who had been here each night and over the weekend at St Paul’s, working in the media department, representing the protestors to journalists. Looking slightly at odds in his dark suit and tie, he revealed he was an investment banker who came to the park after finishing work. “This is an historic moment. We are on the precipice of what could easily become another great depression like the nineteen thirties,” he informed me, his eyes gleaming with agitation, “I am here because money does not mean much to me, I value people for what they do rather than their wealth.”
The rain was closing in and I was grateful to walk back to Spitalfields where my warm bed awaited, yet I shall be keeping the sleepers at these camps in mind, as the nights grow colder and Winter begins.
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Changes at Sandys Row Synagogue
Spitalfields Life contributing artist Lucinda Rogers began this picture of the interior of Sandys Row Synagogue almost a year ago – just a week before major structural renovations commenced – and it bears testimony both to the scrupulous nature of the restoration and also to the precision of Lucinda’s drawing that, to the untrained eye, if you were to stand at this spot in the women’s gallery and look down upon the view now there would appear to be have been no change.
Yet in the past year, the roof of the synagogue – built originally as a Huguenot chapel in 1766 – has been entirely reconstructed, following the alarming discovery that as a result of vibrations caused by exploding bombs in 1942, the timbers had shifted and the entire structure was resting upon no more than lathe and plaster, leaving it in danger of collapse at any moment.
As both the last synagogue operating in Spitalfields and the oldest Askhenazi synagogue in London, the meaning of the building is composed of the many layers of its usage, which means this was could never be one of those speculative renovations taking the structure back to how it might have been. This project was about preserving Sandys Row with all its history intact for the future. Consequently, once the roof had been secured, the former colours of gloss paintwork dating from the nineteen-fifties improvements were reinstated, and now the synagogue has regained its distinctive pink and coral paintwork, highlighted by touches of gold. For those who have been coming here their whole lives, like Henry Freedman, the synagogue is as it has always been – the soul of the place remains.
“My first visit to the shul was probably as a baby in 1956 when my parents lived in Petticoat Lane,” he told me when I went to take a look recently and we sat to enjoy a quiet chat in the peace of the empty synagogue. Henry’s ancestor’s were Dutch tobacco dealers and even though he is a fifth generation immigrant, Henry still has relatives living in Amsterdam who escaped the prison camps of World War II. “I was Bar Mitzvahed here and so was my father, grandfather and great-grandfather – and my ancestor was one of the founders,” he confided, casting his eyes around this charged space that carries so much signficance for his family.“It’s the only place I have ever felt any spiritual connection.” he continued, thinking out loud, “I’ve got memories of people, I can see their ghosts in the places where they used to sit.”
“My father was president of the shul for twelve years and when he was dying, I said, ‘What’s going to happen to the place when you’re not here?'” Henry revealed to me, “That generation were content to let things tick over.” Throughout the second half of the last century, Jewish people left Spitalfields and the synagogue went into decline but, after his father’s death, Henry decided to become involved as a Treasurer & Trustee, working alongside the other board members to secure a future for the shul. Undaunted when the surveyor revealed the potential collapse of the roof, whilst assessing the meaning of a large crack, they raised half a million pounds to address the problem, partly funded by one of the largest grants to a Jewish organisation from English Heritage and with the help of numerous private donations.
Meanwhile, an assessment of the contents of the building has thrown up some hidden treasures, including a two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old iron strong box, which had not been unlocked in living memory but opened first time when the genuine keyhole had been distinguished from the false ones. A mysterious object, evoking an unknown past, it reflects both aspects of the history of the building since it could equally have come to Spitalfields with the Huguenots as with the Askhenazi Jews. When Henry showed me the cellar, dominated by huge roof beams creating the atmosphere of being below deck in a eighteenth century man’o’war, I leaned against a timber which should have been supporting the floor above only to have it swing out of position. Clearly, there is both scope for further renovation and additional space here, offering the possibility of a gallery or centre for visitors.
Throughout the last year, services continued uninterrupted by the scaffolding that was finally removed from the building in time for a dinner on 28th September, the eve of Rosh Hasanah, the Jewish New Year. “We want to continue as a full-time shul, now that Jewish people are moving back into Spitalfields,” Henry confirmed for me, able to speak with an assured optimism, now that the largest renovation in its history has secured the future of Sandys Row.
The cellar, like the lower deck of an eighteenth century man’o’war.
The mysterious eighteenth century strongbox discovered in the cellar.
Eighteenth century ceiling rose before restoration…
…and after.
The scrolls are returned to the synagogue after the restoration.
Henry Freedman
Dinner at sundown on the eve of Rosh Hashanah.
Photographs copyright © Jeremy Freedman
Lucinda Rogers’ drawing of Sandys Row Synagogue is available as a limited edition print in support of the restoration fund from www.lucindarogers.co.uk. The synagogue is now open again and tours can be arranged by contacting www.sandysrow.org.uk
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