At Simpsons Chop House
Occasionally I make forays into the City of London to visit some of my favourite old dining places there, and Simpsons Chop House – in a narrow courtyard off Cornhill since 1757 – is one of the few establishments remaining today where the atmosphere of previous centuries still lingers. Thomas Simpson opened his “Fish Ordinary Restaurant” in 1723 in Bell Alley, Billingsgate, serving meals to fish porters, before moving to the current site in Ball Court, serving the City gents who have been the customers ever since.
Once you pass through the shadowy passage tapering from Cornhill and emerge into the sunlight descending upon Ball Court, you feel transported into a different era, as if you might catch a glimpse of Charles Dickens and William Thackeray arriving for one of their customary lunches from the office of the Cornhill Magazine next door. Ahead of you are the two seventeenth century dwellings combined by Thomas Simpson, where a menu unchanged in two hundred and fifty years is still served upon each of the three floors, in rooms that are domestic in scale, linked by the narrow staircases of a private house.
The lunchtime rush comes late, around one, which makes midday the ideal time to arrive – permitting the opportunity to climb the stairs and explore before the City gents arrive to claim their territory with high spirits worthy of schoolboys, and, most importantly, it affords a chance to introduce yourself to the noble ladies of Simpsons, who gather in the grill room on the ground floor from around eleven thirty for a light snack and a lively chat to brace themselves before meeting their admirers.
These fine waitresses preside with such regal authority and character, they welcome customers as if they were old friends come to pay court at their personal salon or boudoir. And it is only appropriate that it should be so, since Simpsons was the first establishment to employ waitresses at the beginning of the twentieth century, even though women were not admitted as diners until 1916 – which licences the current females, making up for more than two centuries of lost time.
The redoubtable leading ladies among the coterie of Simpsons’ chop house goddesses are Jean Churcher and Maureen Thompson, who have both been here over thirty years, know all the regular customers, and carry between them the stories and the spirit of this eminent landmark, which has an atmosphere closer to that of a private lunch club than a restaurant. “I do feel like I’ve been here since the eighteenth century,” admitted Maureen, chuckling with self-effacing humour, “I’ve served three Prime Minister’s grandsons, Macmillan, Lloyd George and Churchill.”
“Midday was the bankers, one o’clock was the insurance people from Lloyds and two o’clock was the metal exchange brokers, and then they’d all mix up,” recalled Jean, waving her hands in a gesture of crazed hilarity to communicate the innumerable long afternoons of merrymaking she has seen here, in the days when banks allowed their staff to drink at lunchtime. Let them tell you tales of the old days when the chops were grilled on an ancient contraption which set the chimney on fire with such regularity that patrons would simply take up their lunch plates and copies of the Financial Times, and step out into the courtyard until the fire brigade appeared.
Before too long, the first diners arrived to interrupt our tête à tête, and I was despatched to the nether regions of the basement to meet the object of all the ladies’ affections, Scotsman Jimmy Morgan, still lithe and limber at seventy-eight, and cycling twenty miles every day thanks to a pacemaker and an artificial hip. I found Jimmy in his tiny burrow of an office deep beneath the chop house, sorting out paperwork. “I worked as a waiter at the George & Vulture next door for three years and E.J.Rose & Co, the company who were reopening Simpsons in 1978, after a two year closure, offered me the job as manager.” he explained to me politely in his lilting Glaswegian cadence, “It was a success right away, people were waiting for it to reopen. We did a free day on the first day to get in touch with all our old customers who worked around the corner.”
“I think my name’s still above the door and it’s gone all brown, it needs a wash. I was going to retire fifteen years ago but they asked me to stay on and , as my assistant manager was a friend, a waiter from the George & Vulture days, I asked if we could swap wages because I wanted him to get more money. I come in two days now. I live in New Eltham. I bicycle, I used to come by train but I’ve been coming by bike for nigh on twenty years. It takes me an hour, I tie it up on the railings and that’s it. It’s not too bad in this heat, I take my jacket off and put it in the saddle bag.”
Down in the cellar bar, the customers had not begun to arrive yet and, since we were alone, Jean took this discreet opportunity to bring out her calendar from under the counter, featuring all the staff in their birthday suits. My eyes popped at the impressive pairs of stiltons and jugs of ale placed strategically in these images, while Jean confided that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007 at the age of fifty-seven and that Clive Ward the current manager had lost his wife to cancer. Consequently, the staff got together and decided, as an act of solidarity, to bare all for this calendar which sold out within six weeks to their customers, raising more than ten thousand pounds for charity. It was indicative of the unique sense of community that exists at Simpsons chop house, where diners return, even long after they have retired, to maintain friendships with those they have known all their working lives.
Climbing the stairs again up to the sunlight in Ball Court, I found it full of City gents chattering like a flock of birds. There I met Alex who has been coming since 1972. “The menu hasn’t changed since then,” he reassured me, ‘The stewed cheese is still a favourite.”
Awaiting the lunchtime rush at Simpsons, the oldest tavern in the City of London.
Jimmy Morgan, manager since 1978, cycles ten miles from Eltham to Cornhill and back.
Jean Churcher, Queen of the basement bar.
In the Grill Room.
Maureen Thompson, Queen of the Grill Room.
The brass rails were installed for the top hats of the gentlemen of the stock exchange and the bowler hats worn by the brokers.
In Ball Court.
Clive Ward, current manager.
Emerge into the sunlight descending upon Ball Court and you feel transported into a different era.
Maureen with a lovely couple of plates of eggs and ham for April
Kiri shows off her stiltons in February.
Maureen brings out her finest brandies in June
Sheila’s got a delicious pair of starters for October.
The staff of Simpsons in 1922.
Calendar photographs copyright © Jan Lilly
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Vera Hullyer, Parishioner of St Dunstan’s
This is Vera Hullyer sitting in front of the cupboard in the parish room where she keeps the vases and other paraphernalia she uses for creating the spectacular floral displays at St Dunstan’s – just one of myriad ways she has been involved with this ancient East End church since she first came here in 1945. Vera’s life has been interwoven with that of St Dunstan’s and its community over all these years, and she has become its devoted custodian, captivated by its mythic history and speaking of the distant past as vividly as she describes events of recent years.
Older in origin even than the Tower of London, St Dunstan’s once served the entire area now defined by the Borough of Tower Hamlets, which means that until Christ Church was built in the eighteenth century it was the parish church for Spitalfields. A wooden church dedicated to All Saints was built in Stepney after St Augustine’s conversion of the English in the sixth century and St Dunstan himself built the first stone church here in 952. A rough hewn stone relief from his time survives today, set into the wall behind the altar.
Along Fieldgate St from Whitechapel, I followed the route of the former path across the fields to visit this low-set medieval ragstone church that for centuries stood among orchards and farms until the modern East End grew up around it, spawning no less that sixty-seven “daughter” parishes out of the former rural parish of St Dunstan’s. Stepping in from the August rain and placing my umbrella in the stand, I was greeted by that distinctive silence which is unique to old stone buildings, and standing there in the gloom to survey the scene beneath the vast wooden roof, like a great upturned ship, I realised could have been in a country church almost anywhere in England.
A door opened at the far end of the chancel, spilling illumination into the half-light, and Vera came out of the shadows with nimble steps to greet me, shepherding me kindly to the octagonal parish room, where she made me a cup of tea and I was able to dry out my raincoat while she told her story.
I had an aunt that lived nearby in Stepney, she stayed here all through the war and had her roof blown off seven times. And my mother promised me that when the war ended we could come up from Fordingbridge, where we lived, to visit her for a holiday. So we came in August 1945 for VJ night, and I remember the church bells and the hooters on the river. Next day, we went up to Buckingham Palace and joined the crowd up against the railings.
I came to stay with my aunt every year after that for holidays, until 1953 when I came to London to work at the Air Ministry and I lived with her for the first two years. I was young and impecunious and seventeen and three quarters – people didn’t really go away from home then as they do now.
I’m half a Londoner, on my father’s side – he was born in Lambeth – and that bit came through. I’m a very different person now than if I had stayed down in Fordingbridge. Because I had been up to London for holidays, I knew my way around and I enjoyed it. I worked for several officers who had been in the war and Spitfire pilots who had been promoted – for a young girl it was very exciting. I was responsible for ordering and making sure that all the radio parts were in stock. From the Air Ministry, I went to be PA to a senior officer in Whitehall and I was there all through the Suez crisis and when Cyprus was partitioned.
I moved into a hostel in Queensgate, Kensington, in Spring 1955. It was a nice area, but there were four of us to a room. You got bed, breakfast and an evening meal, and the food was terrible. This was before fridges, and I acquired an ability to drink black Nescafe and toast made on the gas fire. At twenty-two, I moved out to Chiswick because we could afford a shared flat. But I still kept on coming to St Dunstans, and when I got married I came to live here and never moved again.
From when I first came to London, I joined the church badminton club to get to meet people. I met my husband, Charlie Hullyer, through the club, we were members of a big group of people there and I knew him for quite a while before we got married. He worked at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry as a carpenter. He made the frames for the bells and his last job, before he died in 1981, was to make a frame for the bells at Canterbury Cathedral. We got married at St Dunstan’s in 1965 and my son was baptised here. Charlie had a flat because he was the last child to leave home and he took it over after his parents died. So when we got married, we had somewhere to live – we didn’t have to move out like most people did. It was very difficult for the children of families to find homes locally and stay here, that’s why many East End families are split.
When I first came to the Ocean Estate, it was a bomb site and we used to walk my aunt’s dog there and there was this smell I will never forget. Then the flats went up. Most people were living in two-up two-downs, with no bathroom and a toilet in the backyard. Some were still living in bomb damaged homes. People were worn out, they had been evacuated and come back, and many had lost family in the bombing. So they were delighted with the new flats, it was real step up and it was luxurious.
The population then was old East Enders and Jewish people, but it’s changed a lot since 1953 and now it’s changing again. The Jewish people have all gone, and West Indians and Bangladeshis came in. It was all social housing then and people were poor. But the new housing is a mixture of some to buy and some to rent, so we have young professionals today who work in the City or at Canary Wharf. Whereas before it was just secretaries and machinists in the garment trade, while the men all worked in the docks.
Yet all the changes that Vera has seen are set in perspective by her relationship with St Dunstan’s. “We fly the red duster,” she announced to me with raffish glee, referring to red merchant navy flag fluttering from the tower, “That’s because before the registrar at Trinity House was established, all births and marriages at sea wherever they took place in the world were registered here in St Dunstan’s parish register and those people were parishioners of St Dunstan’s.”
Over more than sixty years now, Vera has pursued a constant involvement with St Dunstan’s, as member of the parish church council, as a church warden, as a sidesperson and as member of the congregation too. She has read the lesson. She has raised money to replace the magnificent wooden roof and to renovate the elaborate churchyard railings. She has headed the 17th Stepney Cub Scouts and she has done the church flowers for the last twenty years. When her husband Charlie brought his carpentry skills to the construction of crosses for elaborate performances of the Stations of the Cross performed upon the streets of Stepney in the seventies, Vera was stitching costumes.
It all adds up to a rich existence for Vera Hullyer at the centre of her chosen community in this remarkable building – a charismatic meeting place with a long history of devotion, offering an endless source of tales of those who have gone before to inspire the imagination.
Vera at the Tower of London when she first moved to London to work at the Air Ministry in the Winter of 1953, aged seventeen and three quarters, in the bottle green coat that she bought with her first earnings.
This tenth century stone relief carving is a relic of the church built by St Dunstan in 952.
St Dunstans on a map of 1615.
Honest Abraham Zouch, Ropemaker of Wapping, died 16th July 1648.
The Carthage stone, a souvenir of a sailor’s visit to Tunis.
Spandrel over the West door – legend has it that the devil came to tempt St Dunstan when he was working at his anvil, and the saint tweaked the devil’s nose with his red-hot pincers.
Vera Hullyer first came to St Dunstan’s on VJ day in the Summer of 1945.
At H. Forman & Son, Salmon Smokers
Smoked salmon is serious business at H. Forman & Son, the East End’s last smoke house, founded by Harry Forman in Stepney in 1905 and run today by his great-grandson Lance Forman at Fish Island in Hackney Wick.
This gleaming enterprise in a snazzy new building on the River Lee – designed in the shape of a salmon and overlooking the 2012 Olympic park – might seem a million miles away from the East End of a century ago, yet Lance, now the fourth generation in the business, is resolute to uphold his family name as synonymous with the finest smoked salmon you could ever taste. Consequently, it is a matter of personal honour for him to ensure that the culture and artisan methods of fish smoking are preserved without compromise. And thus, keeping it alive here in the East End has become Lance’s personal mission, sustaining him with moral courage through an extraordinary sequence of challenges to the family business posed by fire, flood and the shameful caprices of the Olympic authorities.
Harry Forman came originally from Odessa at the very beginning of the twentieth century, one of several who brought the technique and expertise of fish smoking from Eastern Europe to the East End of London and set up factories to provide smoked salmon for the Jewish population. In the early days, salmon was imported from the Baltic and arrived pickled in barrels of salt which gave it a pungent flavour and limited appeal, but then supplies of native Scottish Salmon were discovered through the Billingsgate market and smoked salmon took off, becoming one of the most popular gourmet foods of the twentieth century. Crucial to this success was the development of a mild cure that enhanced the natural flavour of the fish, known as the London Cure.
Over the course of the century, Harry’s son Louis took over and then Louis’ son Marcel, Lance’s father, superceded Louis who died just before Lance was born. When Marcel took charge in 1960, the business had moved to Dalston where Lance recalls visiting as a child. “I remember the Ridley Rd days from when I was six.” he mused, sitting in his modern glass office atop the new smoke house and gazing out over the rooftops of Hackney Wick, “My dad brought home a side of smoked salmon every week, and from the age of fourteen I would be working at the smoke house in my school holidays – I lived it and breathed it. We had to buy all the wild salmon when they were in season then, during the Summer months, and put them in cold storage for the rest of the year, and I remember the excitement of breaking open the crates of fish.”
For twelve years, Lance, a born entrepreneur, pursued other careers with tenacity and ambition, as an accountant, as a political adviser, and negotiating real estate deals in Eastern Europe. Yet he could not have known then that these occupations were developing exactly the skills he would later require to face the three tests that fate had in store for him when he joined the family business in 1996. “I thought I’d get a clearer view by listening to the manager who ran the company for my father, and he said to me, ‘There’s no longer any future in this, but I’ll manage the decline for the family.'” Lance confided with a sardonic grin, “I realised I had to come in – I knew there was a future because we had this wonderful product. Everybody loves smoked salmon!”
It all started well enough. Lance went out on the road as salesman and increased business by twenty five per cent each year, but then in 1998 when he took charge, the factory burnt down. The premises were in Queens Yard, Hackney Wick, where his father had moved Formans in 1981. After struggling for six months in the remains of the building, Lance had the entire structure refurbished. Then in 2000, the River Lee overflowed and put the factory under three feet of water, contaminating it. But, undiscouraged by fire and flood, Lance chose this moment to build a fine new factory across the river on the Hackney Marshes, completed in 2002, barely a year before the possibility of the Olympics was announced, placing Formans squarely at the centre of the proposed athletic stadium.
For the sake of three weeks of sport, two hundred and seventy businesses were displaced from East London, only seventy of which have yet re-established themselves. “You gave up the will to live,” exclaimed Lance, thinking back to that moment and placing a hand on his brow for effect, “Fire, flood and then a compulsory purchase order in five years!” Yet there was so much to play for. Smoked salmon in Britain began in the East End, before the Scots also began producing it, and Formans was the last company left here and Lance had Harry, Louis and Marcel standing behind him who had all worked their entire lives to carry the tradition forward. “You do feel the weight of history,” Lance admitted to me in a rare moment of vulnerability.
“There was a real mix of dishonesty and incompetence from the London Development Agency, they said they would help people move but they did nothing because they expected Paris to win the bid.” revealed Lance, his eyes shining as he became visibly emotional.“A lot of people don’t have the will to fight, but I am fired by a challenge. I became their worst nightmare, I had six years experience in accountancy, two years as a political adviser and three years in real estate. I realised I couldn’t win through the courts, so I appointed a high flying media lawyer. And then, on the day before I was to cross examine Sebastian Coe at a public enquiry, I got the message, ‘If you abandon your cross examination, we’ll do a deal with you.’ I sent a message back to Seb Coe, ‘You can run but you can’t hide.'”
The outcome was that the authority paid for Formans new smoke house, with a restaurant, an art gallery and a party venue overlooking the Olympic site. And, in what Lance Forman now happily describes a “one hundred and eighty degree turn,” the Olympic authority have adopted Formans as a venue of choice for corporate entertainment, even going so far as to claim the entire endeavour as a prime example of the legacy they hope to bequeath to London.
Lance Forman is one of the happiest people you could wish to meet these days, with more schemes underway than the British government and, above all, proud to show off his shining new smoke house kitchen that his great-grandfather Harry Forman would be proud to see. Family honour has been restored, and Lance exports his salmon around the world and supplies London’s top chefs and restaurants.
“People don’t realise what smoked salmon is any more,” he informed me in a whisper of dismay, returning to the core of his passion, clasping his hands evangelically in his eagerness to expose the smelly, slimy varieties done on the cheap, sprayed with smoky flavouring and injected with water, which create the widespread perception of this subtle delicacy. In Lance’s kitchen at Formans, I was able to witness the making of smoked salmon done entirely by hand, in time honoured method, by a highly skilled and self-respecting team of artisans. On the first day, the salmon is gutted, boned and filleted before being left overnight with salt to cure. Next day it is washed to remove almost all the salt and then hung in the smokebox to acquire its flavouring from the smoke of oak chips. The staff are in at four each morning to slice up the smoked salmon so that it can despatched to restaurants and eaten fresh that day because, contrary to popular belief, it is at its very best when fresh.
It was an extraordinary story, illustrating the tenacity and ingenuity that can be required to keep a family business alive. Lance Forman fascinates me as a lone business man who took on a war for the sake of culture and tradition, and thanks to his courage and cunning, the noble art of salmon smoking flourishes here in the East End.
H. Forman & Son’s smokehouse and restaurant, facing the site of the 2012 Olympics.
At the former H. Forman & Son smokehouse in Ridley Rd, Dalston.
The largest salmon ever sold at Billingsgate Market was bought by Louis Forman in 1934, pictured here in a Homburg hat showing off his 74lb Norwegian trophy fish.
So long, Dino’s Restaurant & Grill
Dino’s Restaurant & Grill in Commercial St mysteriously closed “for refurbishment” this Summer never to reopen. This was the last of the traditional cafes that once served the Spitalfields Fruit & Vegetable Market and it was the scene of innumerable Spitalfields Life interviews. I am republishing this feature from March last year as tribute to a beloved Spitalfields institution – Dino’s boasted the distinction of possessing the widest range of clientele, where builders sat at one table with bankers at the next table, all gathered there as equals to enjoy an honest breakfast.
This swaggering Italian with the Fred Flintstone stubble and the Antonio Banderas hair is Matthew Ribeiro of Dino’s Grill & Restaurant in Commercial St. Often to be seen delivering a bacon sandwich to Jimmy Cuba, the music dealer in the market, and always up for the rough and tumble that is Jimmy’s chosen expression of affection.
If you are weary, and the howling gale is blowing down Commercial St and you need a bolt hole, Dino’s is the cafe to escape to for a quiet cup of tea.The unremarkable frontage and the wholesale clothing stores on either side ensure it is a place where nobody goes to be seen and thank goodness for that. Once you get inside and take your place in one of the snug Formica booths, no-one can see you from the street and you can let the world recede. There is a pleasant geometry and sense of order which is calming, the honey-coloured interior induces repose and posters around the walls introduce sufficient gentle diversion, should you require it.
Quite simply, in Dino’s Grill you can relax because you are not on show, it is an unreconstructed place where everyone is a regular and tourists never stray. The clientele comprises office workers, tradesmen, and builders. Dare I say it? It possesses an exotic quality that only true connoisseurs can fully appreciate, it is not fashionable – in fact, this cafe is almost unique in Spitalfields because it is completely unpretentious.
Opening in 1958 as Nando’s Cafe, it was run by Peggy Bragoli and her husband Nando Bragoli who was the chef. The couple lived upstairs above the cafe where they brought up their son Dino who was also born in 1958. Such was their pride in their boy that in 1972 when he began to work there at the age of fourteen, they renamed it Dino’s in his honour.
Innumerable stories confirm that Peggy was the leading light, even if she never got her name on the front of the cafe. You can see the only picture of her below, taken in 1996 with Matthew, who is the current proprietor. He remembers Peggy fondly, evoking her spirit by raising his eyebrows, waving his hands and deepening his voice for dramatic effect,“She was like the devil, she would do everything, run here, come back – a small woman but a very hard-working person! To begin with, they used to open at four in the morning and shut at seven in the evening. In 1993 once she retired, she would come and work for free. She wouldn’t accept anything from me because it was her life to be here, she’d say ‘No, no please!’ when I tried to pay her. And in 2003 when she returned to Piacenta in Italy, she cried because she didn’t want to go, it was her husband who wanted to leave.”
“I started working here in 1992 and I worked very hard, and they loved me like I was family, I was the only employee and I used to go to them for Christmas.” continued Matthew in an open-hearted spirit, in explanation of how he came to take on the running of the cafe.“Business is steady now,” he confirmed, adopting a professional tone before admitting,” I had a very bad year in 2009. Many of my lunch customers are from RBS and about fifty got the sack last year, now they have other jobs they come back to me. I am lucky because Dino is my landlord and he understands. The rent increases around here are crazy, every year my office customers change because companies move in and out as the rents rise. If you have the freehold you can survive in Spitalfields but otherwise forget it.”
For years, Gilbert & George dined at The Market Cafe in Fournier St. Then, when it closed, they transferred their patronage to Rossi’s Cafe in Hanbury St and now that is also gone they come to Dino’s Grill twice a week. There was a brief limbo after Rossi’s shut when I spotted them dining at The Luxe but it just did not seem right. Now they can now be reassured that no further accommodations on the catering front will be necessary because the Bragoli family bought the freehold of 76 Commercial St in 1964 for £4,000 which means that the future for Dino’s Grill is secure.
I followed Matthew as he sprinted up the stairs to the first floor kitchen with a familiar ease that I could not quite match. There I met Enzo, the head chef, who works here with his assistant preparing full English breakfasts, liver and bacon, steak pies and pasta sauces made fresh every day, all ready to be winched down in the dumb-waiter and served piping hot to hungry customers. “Spaghetti Al Dino” is the popular house speciality, spaghetti with Bolognese and a Bechamel sauce with cheeses, topped with ham, eggs and mushrooms, and baked to perfection in a metal dish.
I was touched when Matthew handed over the photograph of him and Peggy behind the counter in 1996. Even here, working three years after her retirement, Peggy doesn’t spare a moment to look up to the camera to show us her full face because the coffee machine is a more crucial object of attention. There is something all-consuming about running these small cafes, providing a loyal service to regular customers, and now Matthew is gripped too, as he confessed to me, “I couldn’t stay at home, even if I chose. I don’t think of myself as coming to work – I love it!”
Matthew Ribeiro in 1996 with Peggy Bragoli.
Jimmy Cuba, Music Dealer, at Dino’s
Molly the Swagman at Dino’s
“Where builders sat at one table with bankers at the next table, all gathered there as equals to enjoy an honest breakfast…”
Jimmy Cuba and Molly the Swagman with her friend Ellen outside Dino’s
Joanna Moore’s portrait of Dino’s in 2010
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At Itchy Park with Jack London
The churchyard of Christ Church, Spitalfields, was once known as “Itchy Park,” a nickname that may derive from the long-term presence of the homeless sleeping there and the lice that afflicted them. In 1902, at the age of twenty-six, the American novelist Jack London came to Itchy Park as part of seven weeks he spent wandering around the East End that Summer, talking to people and learning as much as he could of their lives. The result was a masterpiece, “The People of the Abyss,” in which London used his talent as a novelist to draw his readers into sympathy with those he described, creating a humane portrayal of a world that had previously been the preserve of social campaigners.
The shadow of Christ Church falls across Spitalfields Garden, and in the shadow of Christ’s Church, at three o’clock in the afternoon, I saw a sight which I never wish to see again. There are no flowers in this garden, which is smaller than my own rose garden at home. Grass only grows here, and it is surrounded by sharp-spiked iron iron fencing, as are all the parks of London town, so that homeless men and women may not come in at night and sleep upon it.
As we entered the garden, an old woman between fifty and sixty, passed us, striding with sturdy intention if somewhat rickety action, with two bulky bundles, covered with sacking, slung fore and aft upon her. She was a woman tramp, a houseless soul, too independent to drag her falling carcass through the workhouse door. Like the snail, she carries her home with her. In two sacking-covered bundles were her household goods, her wardrobe, linen, and dear feminine possessions.
We went up the narrow gravelled walk. On the benches on either side arrayed a mass of miserable and distorted humanity, the sight of which would have impelled Doré to more diabolical flights of fancy than he ever succeeded in achieving. It was a welter of rags and filth, of all manner of loathsome skin diseases, open sores, bruises, grossness, indecency, leering monstrosities and bestial faces. A chill, raw wind was blowing, and these creatures huddled there in their rags, sleeping for the most part of trying to sleep.
Here were a dozen women, ranging in age from twenty to seventy. Next a babe, possibly of nine months, lying asleep, flat on the hard bench, with neither pillow nor covering, nor with anyone looking after it. Next half-a-dozen men, sleeping bolt upright or leaning against one another in their sleep.In one place a family group, a child asleep in its mother’s arms, and the husband (or male mate) clumsily mending a dilapidated shoe. On another bench, a woman trimming the frayed strips of her rags with a knife, and another woman, with a thread and needle, sewing up rents. Adjoining, a man holding a sleeping woman in his arms. Further on, a man, his clothes caked with gutter mud, asleep, with his head in the lap of a woman, not more than twenty-five years old, and also asleep.
It was this sleep that puzzled me. Why were nine out of ten of them asleep or trying to sleep? But it was not till afterwards that I learned. It is a law of the powers that be that the homeless shall not sleep by night. On the pavement, by the portico of Christ’s Church, where the stone pillars rise towards the sky in a stately row, were whole rows of men asleep or drowsing, and all too deep sunk in a torpor to rouse or be made curious by our intrusion.
On August 25th 1902, Jack London wrote, “I was out all night with the homeless ones, walking the streets in the bitter rain, and, drenched to the skin, wondering when dawn would come. I returned to my rooms on Sunday night after seventy-two hours continuous work and only a short night’s sleep… and my nerves are blunted with what I have seen.” In later years, after the success of his great novels “Call of the Wild” and “White Fang,” he recalled of “People of the Abyss,” “No other book of mine took so much of my young heart and tears as that study of the economic degradation of the poor.”
More than a century later, London would be disappointed to return and discover people still sleeping in “Itchy Park” – nowadays they are almost exclusively male and are a mixture of homeless people, addicts and alcoholics, economic migrants and those sleeping it off after a heavy night in a club.
Yet change is imminent, as there is controversy in Spitalfields over the future of “Itchy Park.” Only the section next to Commercial St is open today, to the East are the former Christ Church youth club building and the playground of Christ Church School in Brick Lane. While the school, which is short of space, wishes to build a nursery upon the site of the youth club, there is another body of opinion that would like to see the park enlarged to include the youth club site as a public green space for all.
Meanwhile the sleepers of “Itchy Park” continue their slumber, office workers come to eat their lunch in the shade and tourists sit under the trees to rest their feet, and somehow everybody co-exists amicably enough.
Sleeping in the churchyard of Christ Church, Spitalfields, 1902
Sleeping in the churchyard of Christ Church, Spitalfields, 2011
Jack London
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At the Coracle Race
For the past six years, the last Sunday in July has seen the annual coracle race hosted by the Eton Mission Rowing Club on the cut of the River Lee in Hackney Wick, and at this year’s event there were more spectators and contestants than ever before. The youthful residents of Hackney Wick have embraced this annual contest with passion, queueing up expectantly to try their luck at manoeuvring these flimsy vessels from one side of the River Lee and back. It makes an extraordinary scene, with the venerable rowing club on one side of the river and the futuristic site of the 2012 Olympics bordered with razor wire on the other.
The beauty of this race is that anyone can walk in and sign up and take part. You do not have to have any experience, you do not have to have any skill, you only have to have an eager nature and not be afraid of getting wet. And on this baking July afternoon, there was no shortage of plucky contestants, some in pretty flowery dresses, others in smart naval uniform, all valiantly stepping forward without a second thought, quite undaunted by the looming possibility of public humiliation.
You might think that if St Brendan was able to paddle to America in his coracle, then a crossing of the River Lee might prove an inconsequential challenge, but you would be wrong. Once you have worked out which is the front and the back of these archaic craft – contrived from willow and canvas primed with tar – and climbed aboard, then you discover how tippy they are. Some got into their coracles and capsized instantly, while others waited until they were in the middle of the river surrounded by duckweed to take the plunge.
As you can imagine, it makes great spectator sport and spirits were riding high amongst the assembled throng crammed together on the riverbank in the July sunshine to witness a long afternoon of heats, culminating in men’s and women’s finals. To commence the race, each coracle has to be touching the shore and when the commentator waves his flag the contestants push themselves off, paddling alternate strokes on either side of their coracles. With entrants of wildly varying abilities, there are those who can paddle the traditional figure of eight stroke and there are those who simply drift off down the river in the breeze. Yet the races are not without drama, since the boats often collide in the heat of the contest, and, when one person capsizes, sometimes they take a rival down with them too. Emerging from the drink into the crowd like river gods, trailing duckweed and with water pouring from their pockets, these dripping heroes bring further misrule into the excited gathering.
At the centre of the event, pacing the riverbank and helping contestants in and out of their coracles was Harry Meadows, an artist with a studio nearby. Harry grew up in Wales where the coracle is part of the national identity and he is the one who had the inspiration to start this glorious event, when the possibility of the Olympics was first mooted in East London. “Like many people in Hackney Wick, I went to the public consultations for the Olympics where we spoke and they didn’t listen – it was a ritual. So I realised we needed a different ritual of our own to serve as “beating the bounds” for the community that exists here.” he explained to me, his pale features flushed by the sun and the success of the afternoon, as we sat in the cool of the club house afterwards when the hordes had departed.
The coracle race is a spontaneous expression of the vibrant community in Hackney Wick today, and I was delighted to see so many young people celebrating at the Eton Mission Rowing Club. Where, in happy contrast to the apprehension I encountered on my previous visit, I found the senior members in good spirits. Yet it was not simply the coracle race that gave them such pleasure, it was the news that a hiccup on behalf of the Olympic authority has revealed they are in a stronger position than it appeared when I was last here a month ago.
You will recall that the Olympic authority were preparing to take part of the Eton Mission Rowing Club’s site to build a bridge, which would make it very difficult for the club to function. Throughout this process, the authority was acting as if it had ownership of the land, but recent scrutiny of the legal documentation has revealed that they only have a licence to use of the land, whilst the rowing club retains the lease – so the Olympic authority will not only have to compensate the rowing club but give the land back afterwards too.
Looking to the future, Club Secretary, Tim Hinchcliff, now intends to submit a planning application to build an extension to their clubhouse on the controversial piece of land – containing a changing room for women, which the club lacks at present. “We’ve won a small victory but not the battle yet,” he admitted, his sharp blue eyes glowing with determination, anticipating the tough negotiations that will be required to ensure the rowing club can get its land back after the games.
After such a joyous afternoon of high jinks on the river – an unexpected manifestation of how new and old East End have been brought together in Hackney Wick in the face of an external threat – I was delighted to learn that the future of the Eton Mission Rowing Club looks brighter than before, and I hope it means the annual coracle race on the River Lee may also now continue for many years to come.
You might also like to read At the Eton Mission Rowing Club
Columbia Road Market 72
Clockwise from top – Spanish Mint, Basil Mint, Pineapple Mint and Tashkent Mint
My friends Mick & Sylvia Grover, the herbsellers in Columbia Rd, sell so many different kinds of Mint (Mentha) that it has inspired me to start a Mint garden to permit comparison of the diverse flavours and explore the myriad uses of each distinctive variety. While others are connoisseurs of fine wines, expensive whisky, unusual cheeses, fancy olive oil or rare wild fungi, it suits me to become the connoisseur of Mint, a delicious and useful herb that is less appreciated than more exotic flavourings only because it is so popular. I hope you will indulge this newly-minted trait, because whilst I try to resist the seductions of mere novelty, I am always eager to learn new things.
I think of my mother running down the garden in Devon with an umbrella in early Spring to grab a few sprigs of Mint to make a sauce to accompany the lamb for our Easter Sunday lunch, and I think of drinking Mint tea to accompany couscous at a troglodyte village at the furthest extremity of the Sahara desert in North Africa. These days, I like to chop up fresh Mint in my green salad and add it to bowls of homemade soup to create another dimension of piquancy, and surely no Summer is complete without Mojitos or a glass of Pimms with a Mint leaf floating in it.
For just a few pounds, I was able to buy nine different Mint plants from the Grovers in Columbia Rd, and ever since I have been pinching the leaves and training myself to the recognise their characteristic flavours. Though I do not think I am ready for any blind tasting just yet, it offers a relaxing way to idle a spare half hour on a Summer Sunday.
Garden Mint is the one I know from childhood and Spanish Mint is a more vigorous strain that has a flavour inclined to spearmint – which I think of as the flavour of chewing gum. Tashkent Mint is another hardy variety with coarser leaves and a more aromatic scented flavour than Garden or Spanish Mint. Moroccan Mint is the one you need to create the authentic mint tea, and, of the larger plants, this is my favourite for its rich green colour and regular well-defined leaves that are deeply perfumed.
Lemon Mint and Pineapple Mint may sound like novelties but they do carry a hint of the fruits they are named after, and Pineapple Mint has attractive variegated leaves and trailing growth. Either would make an ideal addition to fruit salad. Basil Mint is a fleshy plant that resembles Basil as much as Mint, yet while it does share the flavours of Mint and Basil, to me it also has a strong aroma of Lavender. This could be wonderful on a dish of Vanilla ice cream.
Then come the Peppermints – Black Peppermint which has a very strong spearmint flavour and leaves that darken to purple through the season, and Chocolate Peppermint which does not smell of chocolate but possesses a scent which, if you close your eyes, is close to the scent of “After Eight” Mints.
So there you have my nascent mint collection. I realise this is a huge subject which offers the opportunity of discourse upon the origins, culture and medicinal properties of each one of the different varieties of this favoured plant – but I choose to leave you with it there, lest I risk becoming a Mint bore.
Clockwise from top – Garden Mint, Chocolate Peppermint, Hilary’s Sweet Lemon Mint, Black Peppermint and Moroccan Mint.
You might like to read about Mick & Sylvia Grover, Herbsellers of Columbia Rd
