Brick Lane Market 17
This is Ivan Tchoukouv from Bulgaria, who will shortly be making the thirty-five hour bus journey back to his home country for the Winter. “I only come over for the Summer now, working on building sites all week and trading here each Sunday,” he explained to me, “I came to United Kingdom first in 1995 in the back of a lorry.”
Since 2006, Ivan has been migrating annually, travelling back and forth with the seasons. “My wife is a teacher and, when it was time for our children to go to school, she took them back to Bulgaria because the education system is better there.” Ivan told me with a frown of regret, “Here they are allowed to do whatever they want but in my country the schools are tough on discipline.”
Ivan speaks to his family each night by Skype, missing his children who he has not seen since the Spring. “I live in a small town there, where I’ll be looking after my properties.” he revealed with a tender grin, “My house has a big garden where I keep honey bees and chickens.” In the meantime, Ivan will be making the best of crowded sleeping conditions in London for just one more week – confessing with dignified self-effacement, “In the tiny flat where I live there is a Bengali family who are Muslims, two youths from India who are Hindus and me, I am a Christian, yet we all get with no problem.”
This is Leigh Kelly and her niece Tina Allpress, two feisty East End females. “We are local,” declared Tina proudly, slipping an arm round her favourite aunt.“My dad worked as a Spitalfields market porter,” boasted Leigh, her bright eyes shining with nostalgic emotion to confide she was born in Columbia Rd and counts Mary Kelly – one of the Whitechapel murder victims – among her ancestors.
“I was here in Sclater St when I was three years old with my dad, selling chaffinches and Yorkshire terriers,” she continued, fondly recalling the days of the animal market, “we had chickens in the back yard, monkeys in the house and I used to watch the dogs giving birth to puppies on the kitchen table.”
Leigh worked in Maurice Ginsberg’s handbag shop in Petticoat Lane for over thirty years and her niece joined her there before it shut fifteen years ago.”We’re always been close,” admitted Tina, “and we can’t sleep the night before coming down to the market, we’re so excited.” Both women were feeling the heat of the October sunshine, swathed in layers of scarfs and furs against the cold. “I was up at three,” chirped Leigh breathlessly, clasping her hands adorned with rings and setting her bangles jangling, “It was dark and frosty then, but at the end of the day we go home sweaty and rosy-cheeked.”
Pictures copyright © Jeremy Freedman
Syed Monsur Uddin, Newspaper Editor
Syed Monsur Uddin is editor of Surma – Britain’s largest Bengali newspaper – operating from modest premises in Quaker St. Now in its thirty-first year of publication, Surma is distributed by mainstream outlets and available in hundreds of supermarkets and corner shops up and down the nation.
As editor of the most widely-read Bengali publication, it befalls to Syed to face the knotty dilemma of creating a weekly newspaper that reflects the nature of an increasingly diverse community, while remaining acceptable to the entire readership. Yet, in spite of this weighty responsibility, Syed presents a relaxed professional persona, displaying lively humour and carrying his status lightly.
“When I came to the United Kingdom in 1997, it was to work for Bangla TV and then in 2000 there was a vacancy as a news editor here at Surma. At first, I lived in Bethnal Green but now I live in Chigwell which Charles Dickens described as the greatest place in the world.
Previously, I worked at Daily Banglabazar, the primary newspaper in Bangladesh. Whilst I was a student at Dhaka University, I started working as a freelancer for them and then, when I graduated, they offered me a job as a full-time journalist.
As editor at Surma, it’s a mixture of reporting, translation and editorial work – it’s a varied job, and I have to do everything. I lead a team of seven, we go to print each Thursday, so Wednesday is our deadline and we can work many long hours, until two or three o’clock in the morning.We publish every Friday. I write an editorial each week and the paper is a mixture of stories from Bangladesh, stories from the UK and world news, all in Bengali. Surma is sold nationwide in every Bengali grocery store. It’s rewarding in terms of serving my community, they are immigrants, they left their country and they left their families. They want news from home in their own language. Quite a serious newspaper.
I am forty years old, so this is the peak of my career. My uncle was a journalist and he introduced me to this profession. It is a very serious occupation. In no other career do people judge you every day. You have to be careful. I find it a very tough job. You have to balance everything, find the middle ground and keep everyone happy. Sometimes it is very difficult. If you appear to support the Conservatives, the Labour supporters are unhappy and vice versa. Your reputation is always on the line.
We had a very bad experience in 2007, when we were all beaten up. We covered the suicide of a Bengali woman in a mental hospital. Suicide is a huge stigma amongst the Bengali community, so when we published the story – even though it was against the mental hospital – the relatives of that woman came and beat us. Her brothers and three or four other people, around eight of them, they arrived in three cars, parked outside here, came in and beat us severely. They broke a television remote control over my head! Yet our story was completely in support of the lady, criticising the negligence of the hospital which should should have supervised her twenty-four hours.
It can be a dangerous job, but this is one of the most civilised countries in the world. In Bangladesh, as a journalist you can get killed – if you upset a rich or powerful person, they can order it. There is no law and order, here you can get justice. The Metropolitan Police Commander came to help us and they tried to get the thugs. We had support. This is the beauty of this country, this is why Britain is great. You will not find this in any other country except perhaps the United States. Every language, colour and creed is welcomed here.
It was a real example of how people can overreact, but we are not just trying to make people happy, we are trying to tell the truth.”
When Syed told the story about being beaten up, he pointed outside into the street – indicating where the thugs had blocked the road with their cars – and he picked up the television remote control to indicate how they broke it in pieces over his head, illustrated by dramatic eye-rolling on his part. It was a shocking story in itself, and sobering to learn that, by contrast with Bangladesh, Syed regards the United Kingdom as a safe haven for journalists.
Syed Monsur Uddin can understand his readers because he has travelled their journey, from Bangladesh to the East End, and beyond – and he appreciates the human accommodations necessary upon such an odyssey across continents. His special quality – which qualifies him to edit Surma – is that instead of being doctrinaire, he has found a means to speak to his people by demonstrating generosity of spirit.
Syed is seen on the right, at three years old in 1975, in a studio portrait with his mother and aunty.
As a young student outside the house of Rabindranath Tagore in Kolkata.
Enjoying a boat trip as a student 1992/93.
Syed working for the TV news in Bangladesh.
Interviewing a victim of the Bangladesh cyclone for Banglabazaar.
A recent copy of Surma.
Syed Monsur Uddin, Editor of Surma, Britain’s largest Bengali newspaper.
Portraits copyright © Patricia Niven
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At Eel Pie Island
Even though Twickenham is a suburb of London these days, it still retains the quality of a small riverside town. The kind of place where a crowd forms to watch a crow eating a bag of crisps – as I observed in the High St, before I crossed the bowed footbridge over to Eel Pie Island.
This tiny haven in the Thames proposes a further remove from the metropolis, a leafy dominion of artists’ cabins, rustic bungalows and old boatyards where, at the overgrown end of the only path, I came upon the entrance to Eel Pie Island Slipway. Here, where there are no roads, and enfolded on three sides by trees and tumbledown shacks, a hundred-year-old boatshed over-arches a hidden slipway attended by a crowded workshop filled with an accretion of old tools and maritime paraphernalia.
For the past twenty years, this magnificent old yard has been run by Ken Dwan, where twelve men work – shipwrights, platers, welders, marine engineers and marine electricians – on the slipway and in the workshop. “We have all the skills here, “ Ken informed me, “and the older ones are passing it onto the younger ones. Everybody learns on the job.” One of just four yards left on the Thames, Ken has his order book full for the next year, busy converting barges into houseboats, and maintaining and repairing those already in existence which, by law, have to be surveyed every five years.
Like his brother John Dwan – the Lighterman I spent a day with in September – Ken has worked on the river his whole life, earning a living and becoming deeply engaged with the culture of the Thames. Ken makes no apology to describe himself as a riverman and, as I discovered, the currents of this great watercourse have taken him in some unexpected directions.
“I started as an apprentice Waterman & Lighterman at fifteen. When the Devlin Report came out in 1967, all Lightermen had to be fully employed by lighterage companies, and I joined F.T.Everard & Sons. You got your orders over the phone the night before, and they sent you to collect and deliver from any of the docks between Hammersmith and Gravesend. We used to drive and row barges of every conceivable cargo – lamp black, palm oil, molasses, wool, petrol, sugar – I even moved a church once!
The work moved East as the docks quietened down and companies closed. Because of the Devlin Report, we had a domino effect whereby, when one company shut, everybody would join the next but there wasn’t enough work and so they shut too. But, as freemen of the Thames, we Lightermen were able to work in civil engineering. I worked on the building of the Thames Flood Barrier, and a lot went into the construction of Canary Wharf and the redevelopment of the Pool of London.
After that, I worked on the passenger boats, and I decided to buy one with a partner and we formed Thames Cruises – doing trips from Westminster to Gravesend. We started by buying other people’s cast-offs and we needed to repair them, so then we bought this place and I came up here while my partner ran the passenger boats. They still run from Lambeth. I found that if you have the facility, a lot of people want repairs and now most of our work is for other people. We also do a small amount of boat building and we provide a service of scattering of ashes on the river for the Asian community.
I did a lot of rowing years ago, I went to two Olympics as a single sculler, in 1968 and 1972. I won my Doggett’s Coat & Barge and was made a Queen’s Waterman, becoming the Queen’s Bargemaster for three years. My job was to move the crown in the State Coach from Buckingham Palace to Westminster for the Opening of Parliament. It dates back to the time when the safest way to travel was by water. They do suggest that the London streets are safer now than years ago, but you may wish to question that. I was Master of the Watermen’s Company from 2007/8, and now both my sons have got their Doggett’s Coat & badge and work on the river too.
I loved working around the Pool of London years ago, and, sometimes after work, I used to walk through Billingsgate Market late at night. There’d be be fish and ice everywhere, the atmosphere in that place was incredible. When we were out of work, we could get a tanner there for pushing the barrows of fish up the hill. My favourite place in London then was Tower Hill in the early morning, the escapologist on the corner trying to get out of the bag, and the old coffee shops where you could get steak and kidney pudding. When the big old tomato boats moored on the West side of London Bridge, the bridge would be full of people watching what was being moved around – it didn’t matter what time of year, people lined the bridge because there was always something different being unloaded. All the cranes were still working then and the place was hive of industry. It was a privilege to be part of it. For a fifteen year old, the London Docks was an adventure playground.
It’s never been hard getting out of bed and going to work. I still love going on the river seven days a week. It was never a job. It was an absolute pleasure. It was a life.”
When Ken visited Eel Pie Island as a fifteen year old apprentice Lighterman, he did not know that one day he would come back as master of the boatyard here. Yet today, as custodian of the slipway, he is aware of the presence of his former self – indicating to me the hull of a lighter that he worked on when it carried cargo which now he is converting to a houseboat. His sequestered boatyard is one of the few unchanged places of industry on the Thames, where the business of repairing old vessels that no other boatyard will touch is pursued conscientiously, using the old trades – where all the knowledge, skills and expertise that Ken Dwan once learnt in the London Docks is kept alive.
Ken Dwan, Waterman & Lighterman
A nineteenth century Dutch barge and Thames lighter of a hundred years ago.
“This barge, I worked on it when it moved cargo and now we are converting it into a palace!”
Ken Dwan – the Queen’s Bargemaster – stands at the centre, surrounded by fellow Watermen.
Looking across to the mainland and Twickenham church.
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The Camp at St Paul’s Cathedral
Something extraordinary has happened at St Paul’s Cathedral. Inspired by the recent occupation of Wall St in New York, protestors gathered in the City of London to occupy the Royal Exchange on Saturday, yet the police made sure they never got beyond their rallying point on the steps of the Cathedral. But then – in an unexpected move – Canon Giles Fraser came out of St Paul’s to welcome them and ask the police to leave, effectively granting sanctuary to the protestors. And since Saturday, they have pitched a small encampment of tents beneath the towering West front of Wren’s great edifice, thus establishing a highly visible presence for themselves at the heart of Europe’s financial centre, with the blessing of the Cathedral authority.
In just a few days, this city within the City has established its own life, with a first aid post, legal advice centre, a cafeteria serving meals prepared from donations of food which are being received, a recycling centre and even a university offering seminars in alternative economics and a range of other relevant topics. “We all understand there’s something fundamentally wrong,” one of the tent occupants admitted to to me, citing the prolonged wars, global financial crisis and collapsing economies that are indicative of our time.
“Does the society we live in function to benefit the people who live in it, or for some other reason? – to benefit only the rich? – to benefit those in power?” he asked rhetorically, gesturing to the buildings of the City that surrounded us, “People are losing their homes, their jobs, they cannot pay their bills, and entire countries are going broke – that is why we are here.”
I stood among the sea of tents in the deep shadow of late afternoon with a bright October sky overhead and realised I had arrived in a different place, an intense emotional space, transformed by the presence of those camping there. Everywhere I looked, people were engaging in heated discussions about is right and what is wrong, and what should be done about it. City workers and other passersby had stopped to participate in debates, among the tents, those dwelling there were sitting in circles discussing their beliefs, and upon the steps of the Cathedral large crowds were gathering to participate in disputes filmed by television cameras. “This is not about Left or Right, it’s a human thing,” explained my host, recognising the wonder upon my face in reaction to the spectacle – “something needs to change.”
Yet to my eyes, a near miraculous change had already come about – because the presence of the camp gave everyone the opportunity to speak their minds publicly, to be heard and to listen. The combination of circumstances had delivered a rare moment of liberty, in which recognition of common humanity was uppermost as the basis for all interaction.
The quality of openness and mutual respect – and the possibility that complete strangers could open their hearts to share their beliefs about what kind of world they want to live in – was such that I can only describe this event as a spiritual one.
In front of the vast Cathedral, a man was reciting the sermon on the mount. All around, musicians were playing and the standard anonymity of the City streets was suspended. Normality was exposed as a charade because a group of ordinary decent people felt passionate enough to risk themselves, taking leave of their jobs and families and everyday lives, sleeping on concrete at the onset of Winter in Northern Europe to express their moral outrage at the direction our world has taken. And when you see this, it renews your hope.
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At Grenson’s Shoe Factory
Starting in 1866, a shoe factor by the name of William Green came regularly from Northamptonshire up to the City of London to get orders and then take them back to Rushden where, in 1874, he opened his first factory as William Green & Son, founding the company we know today as Grenson.
Now that Grenson have opened two shops in Spitalfields, I set out to follow William Green’s footsteps back to where it all started. In his time – and until quite recently – Northamptonshire was renowned as the centre of the British shoe industry. Yet although those days are gone, the red brick Grenson factory, turreted at one end, still stands majestic among the little terraced streets at the heart of Rushden, just as it did when William Green opened it in 1895.
The appealingly named Roger Tuffnail, pattern cutter, was my guide –“My grandparents were blacksmiths,” he explained by way of introducing himself,“and I always understood the surname originated from that.” I could not help admiring Roger’s venerable brogues, cut from his own patterns. “Because I work in a shoe factory, I do not polish my shoes,” he confessed with a blush and a shy smile in response to my compliment. In fact, Roger is a key employee at the Grenson factory where he has worked since 1981.“I cut the patterns that make the uppers of the shoe, creating the style from a drawing,” he explained.
“I just naturally do it,” Roger added – just in case I should get an inkling how skillful he is – opening an old ledger full of drawings of shoes as he cast his mind back, “I was seventeen when I joined the shoe trade – in the clicking department.” Minutes later, we stood in the clicking department where foreman Robert Taylor – who knows a trick or two with a knife – revealed that this name derives from the sound the blade makes when you pull it out from thick leather, once you have finished cutting round the patterns.
Here at the centre of the old factory, intoxicated by the smell of new leather, I took a moment to appreciate this extraordinary industrial structure, designed to admit Northern light from rows of windows in the roof, creating an interior space almost ecclesiastical in its luminosity. Ancient photographs, ledgers, racks for time cards and most importantly old machines – well-maintained and working as well as ever – attest to more than century of shoemaking within these walls.
Nearby, a bevy of local ladies manned sewing machines and other cunning devices, joining pieces of the uppers together and punching those wonderful patterns that characterise the brogues which are a speciality here. This is known as the closing department. On the floor below, these uppers are moulded around the last and attached to the sole using the famous Goodyear Welting process. Sewing a strip of leather around the upper to join it to the sole makes it more waterproof and permits the option of removing the entire sole in years to come which means the shoe can be refurbished almost endlessly. This takes place in the lasting and making department. Once the heel is attached, the “making” of the shoe is complete and then after careful finishing, trimming, stamping, waxing and buffing, it arrives in the boot room where Sharon Morris fits the laces and Mavis Glen gives it a good polish. The whole process has taken three weeks to make as beautiful a pair of shoes as you could wish, in the traditional manner.
Yet this magnificent factory is not, as you might assume, some arcane endeavour quietly fading into obsolescence, like so many of the other Northamptonshire shoe factories that have gone forever. Instead, Grenson is enjoying a renaissance. Breaking his customary reserve, Roger turned positively declamatory to assure me “The future is very good for us.”
Today, he works very closely with new proprietor Tim Little to create shoes he describes as “traditional footwear with a little bit of a twist – a livelier look,” and the result has been that Grenson shoes have become popular with a whole new generation of younger customers, alongside those who have always bought their classic English styles.
“We were the first to bring out platform shoes for men in the seventies,” Roger reminded me, just in case I had assumed he was complete fogey. In fact, the current evolution of Grenson has been achieved through more subtle means, retaining the integrity of Roger’s classic shoe patterns while introducing different colours and soles to make them contemporary.
From his modest office on the top floor, Tim Little is evangelical to uphold the Grenson tradition and make it relevant in the twenty-first century. “There’d be no point, if I didn’t love English shoes and the way they have evolved,” he confided to me, committed to keep William Green’s business alive in Rushden, and to be selling shoes in London where his predecessor took orders a hundred and fifty years ago.
Rachel Brice has been here ten years and Jane Norman thirty-two years.
Lainie Alcock has been here fourteen years.
Robert Taylor, Clicking Room Foreman, has worked at Grenson since 1969.
Peter Neagle in the lasting room.
Dave Alcock ( Lainey’s husband) has worked here thirteen years.
Sharon Morris and Mavis Glen in the boot room.
Roger Tuffnail, pattern cutter
Roger shows an old Grenson pattern book.
Archive photographs copyright © Grenson
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At the Regis Snack Bar, Leadenhall Market
These are the Rapacioli brothers – Sergio & Dinos – who run the celebrated Regis Snack Bar, nestling at the foot of the Lloyds Building beside the entrance to the Leadenhall Market in the City of London. As a point of reference, Sergio is the one who resembles George Clooney while Dinos has the rugged Bruce Willis features.
Now you know which is which, in the same manner that Sergio & Dinos like to keep tabs on their regular customers with nicknames such as Million Dollars, Queen Mum, Bill Clinton, Muscles, Lady Victoria, Carlos the Jackal, Kitten, Sir Robin, Black Eye, Mulder, Hovis, Dr Legg, Loophole and the Commander. And it is testament to the charisma of the Rapaciolis and the reputation of the Regis Snack Bar in the City that patrons delight to be addressed in this way when they come to buy their lunch – appreciating that the acquisition of a colloquial term of endearment here indicates they have truly arrived in the Square Mile. As Sergio proudly confirmed for me, “They all answer to their nicknames, they won’t answer to any other.”
“I’ve been here thirty-five years, since the mid-seventies, and Dinos – my younger brother – he’s been here a couple of years less. My father and mother, Guiseppe & Angela Rapacioli, they bought the place in 1968 from one of my father’s uncles who had it since the fifties. I think there has been a cafe here over eighty years.
I did a couple of things before I came here, I was a diamond cutter in Hatton Garden, and I worked at Browns in South Molton St, buying and selling fashion. At that time, we were the only people in London stocking Armani and Versace. I used to go the shows in Milan and Venice, and it was a great time – all the parties with models and the designers. I did it from twenty to twenty-four and I enjoyed that part of my life. But my father kept saying, “You’ve got a great business here,” and the pay wasn’t great, so I gave it up and came to work at the Regis Snack Bar. It was a sure thing and it’s what I’m good at, and it’s very satisfying when people come back again and again. We start at six and go home at four, five days a week. The customers here are pleasure to deal with, it’s a buzz, and the day goes by.
I was born in Holborn. When we were children, my parents had a restaurant in Theobalds Row but in 1969 we moved out to East London. When I started here in the City there were still a few old guys in bowler hats and we used to open until six because you’d get the Lloyds’ crowd in for tea and a slice of cake in the late afternoon. This market had two butchers then and a couple of fishmongers, they had been here for years but they all left because of the high rents. It was fabulous at Christmas with all the pheasants hanging up.
The boom was in the eighties, people stuck credit cards behind the counter and drank champagne all day. Now, there are some people don’t come in to buy sandwiches any more, they’re bringing packed lunches from home, but most of the people in the Square Mile, their spending hasn’t changed. It got quieter at one point because people got made redundant and a few regulars disappeared yet, for those who kept their jobs, it’s business as usual. It’s a busy little community here and we still have plenty of regulars who are keeping us going through the recession because we’ve been here such a long time. They all know us by our first names.
It’s hard, you’re up early and you’re on your feet all day, my knees and ankles have gone. After the years, it takes its toll on your legs. I have no regrets because it’s been good to us, but there are easier ways to make money nowadays.”
Sergio told me his grandmother, Domenica, was born in London but the family returned to Italy when war broke out. As the only English speakers in their remote rural community, any British or Allied soldiers and airmen who needed to hide were brought to them, and the family offered shelter until these men could escape to safety. A framed certificate of commendation hangs today in the Regis Snack Bar in remembrance of this extraordinary act of bravery and Domenica’s grandsons uphold the Rapacioli tradition in their own way by offering a refuge of civility in a very different world.
Around one o’clock, the men and women in suits come piling out of Richard Rogers’ stainless steel Lloyds building, escaping to cross Leadenhall Place into the cosy wood-panelled chalet-style Regis Snack Bar with its Gill typeface upon the fascia. Hungry for hot toasties and breaded escalopes in ciabatta, and hungry for the affectionate daily ritual of name-calling at the last classic cafe in the City of London.
“I should have been on stage, I’m wasted in here!”
Sergio & Dinos’ grandmother Domenica Rapacioli was a war hero, sheltering airmen shot down in Italy.
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Tom Ridge & the Jewish Maternity Hospital
For over twenty years, historian Tom Ridge has been fighting selflessly to save significant buildings that tell the story of the East End. A noble warrior who has single-handedly pursued a relentless campaign, writing letter after letter – waging what he terms “an endless battle” – Tom’s latest combat is to prevent the demolition of the former Jewish Maternity Hospital in Underwood Rd in Spitalfields.
Beyond its significance as part of the history of the Jewish East End, the edifice is important as the last example of its kind in the country. Operating from 1911 until 1940, this pioneering institution was the personal mission of Alice Model who started and ran the hospital to help the sick among the poor and women at home with babies. Popularly known as Mother Levy’s Nursing Home, it was the first organisation in this country to provide home helps and maternity nurses, and among the many generations of East Enders who came into the world within the walls of this dignified Arts & Crafts building were Alma Cogan, Arnold Wesker and Lionel Bart.
The possibility of converting the elegant structure – which resembles a painting by Vermeer upon its street frontage – has not been entertained, instead it may shortly be destroyed in a development by Peabody that is being hastened through without any significant consultation of the immediate residents, most of whom are entirely unaware of the plans. Meanwhile, Angela Brady of Brady Mallalieu – the architectural practise designing the new building – who is the current RIBA president, said in The Guardian on 5th October, “Let’s ask what people want,” emphasising that she is, “enthralled by the ‘rich mix’ of the capital’s culture.”
In harsh contrast to these sentiments, the developers have already sent a Prior Notification of Demolition to Tower Hamlets Council Planning Department and a decision whether or not to approve this will be made before this Wednesday 19th October. Obtaining this approval in advance of any public consultation in November will mean that Peabody can demolish the buildings irrespective of what the people of the East End have to say, and without any assessment of the historical importance of the existing structure or the environmental impact of a fourteen-storey block upon this quiet corner of Spitalfields. The only chance to stop this now is if readers write at once to Owen Whalley, Head of Planning at Tower Hamlets Council, to object to the demolition and request both heritage and environmental assessments: owen.whalley@towerhamlets.gov.uk
Regrettably, this alarming set of circumstances is a familiar story for Tom Ridge, just the latest episode in a conflict in which for too long he has been a lone warrior, chasing bureaucrats around and becoming expert at deciphering their game of weasel words, as large organisations pursue their own interests at the expense of the culture of the East End. Occasionally, Tom will confess the weight of emotional responsibility he carries for his “failures” – those instances where he has lost the battle against developers and part of our history has gone forever – but it almost impossible to get him to disclose his successes.
Yet we all owe Tom Ridge a debt of gratitude for those important facets of the East End that have survived thanks to his heroic campaigning. It was he who discovered that an old building by the canal had been used by Dr Barnardo and was responsible for saving it, and creating the Ragged School Museum there – “because there should be a museum of the East End in the East End.” It was he who led the successful campaign to save the Bancroft Rd Local History Library when the Council would have preferred to close it down and sell off the collection. It was he who prevented buildings being constructed upon the small public park at the heart of Bethnal Green, by ensuring it was listed as of historic importance.
When Tom arrived in the East End from Liverpool in 1965, at the age of twenty-three, and asked the way to St Saviour’s School where he had been employed to teach geography, he was told to go over Stinkhouse Bridge and the walk down to cross Gunmakers’ Arms Bridge. Entranced by the poetry of these names – dating from 1818 – Tom did not at first realise their significance as part of a six mile ring of waterways, originating from the time when, “London was the greatest industrial city in the world with the greatest port in the world.” Years later, Tom set up the East End Waterways group to preserve the canals and their attendant structures – “because the Waterways are the last places of peace and tranquillity in the East End.”
“I fell in love with the East End and its people – maybe it’s because I come from Liverpool which is also a port city.” Tom confided to me, tracing the origins of his passion, “I was born on a council estate in Everton, and my greatest excitement was travelling on the overhead railway along seven miles of dockland and looking into each of the docks, and seeing all the things there.”
Working in a post-war bomb-damaged East End as a young teacher, he witnessed the social effects of the closure of the London docks and the rebuilding of the territory. “I shall never forget the old cleaning ladies at the school saying to me, ‘Mr Ridge, we do miss our cottages. They took our cottages away.'” Tom recalled in sombre reminiscence, speaking of his days at St Saviour’s in Bow, –“what they were talking about were their terraced houses, that were almost entirely swept away.”
The Jewish Maternity Hospital in Underwood Rd. This elegant crow-stepped gabled building is reminiscent of a streetscape by Vermeer. Although it has lost its diamond-paned leaded windows, it retains its original doors and ironwork.
The Arts & Crafts style cottage in Underwood Rd designed by John Myers in 1911.
The three bay flat-roofed block designed by Messrs Joseph Architects in 1925.
The original coalhole glazed with prisms by Hayward Bros of Union St, Borough.
Portraits of Tom Ridge copyright © Lucinda Douglas Menzies
Sign the petition to save the Jewish Maternity Hospital by clicking here
You may also wish to write to Stephen Howlett, CEO of Peabody, to object to the demolition: stephen.howlett@peabody.org.uk
