Tony Burns, Boxing Coach
Pass under the sign that says “No guts, no glory,” then walk through the humid air laced with sweat, and the clamor of the boxing gym, where youths are sparring and slugging at punchbags, until you reach the tiny office in the corner – barely more than a cupboard – where Tony Burns has his lair. Once upon a time in the old East End, Tony came here to this former bathhouse for a wash, but today he is the head coach at the Repton Boxing Club, Britain’s most famous amateur club, which occupies the building now.
Tony took my hand with a boxer’s grip and cast his intense blue eyes upon me with a gentle yet incisive gaze from beneath such straggly brows, it was as if he was looking out at me from inside a cave. “You’re not a boxing person, are you?” he queried with a derisive smile, getting the sum of me in an instant. Yet in spite of my shortcoming, Tony indulged me magnificently, bringing out two pages of handwritten lists of boxing triumphs at Olympic and Commonwealth games which may be attributed to the noble Club, before tantalising me with enigmatic old black and white photographs of unidentified men in suits, some of which turned out to be illustrations of stories that I shall never be party to.
“It was a public school, Repton, what started this in 1884,” Tony explained, turning historian suddenly and gesturing around the atmospheric tiled spaces, lined with faded bills for the boxing bouts of yesteryear. “I often speak to the people at Repton School and they say ‘Couldn’t you bring a dozen boys up to Derbyshire for an education?’ But I don’t think you could take a kid from the East End and put him in a public school in Derbyshire, where all the pupils are the children of high ranking generals and such, he would bash everybody up”.
“When I was a kid you either kicked a ball or you hit someone. So, when I was twelve, I became a boxer,” continued Tony with faultless logic, “My mum died when I was a kid and if you lived in a place like this years ago, you was very fortunate to have a loving family. We all lived in Bacon St and Charlie Burns was the eldest, and they was a pain in the arse that family, but when I boxed all the family and friends would come, so I used to have quite a following.”
Then Tony looked at me critically. “I knew the Krays,” he confessed with an implacable gaze, returning to the pile of photos and searching my face for a reaction while showing me a picture,“We grew up together. I used to go round to their house in Valance Rd all the time, but I chose one path in life and they chose another.” The photograph was Tony with Reggie Kray, on the occasion of Reggie Kray’s wedding in 1997 at which Tony was best man. “He looks more dead than alive.” quipped Tony with a grimace, resigning the thought as he put the picture away again, closing the subject.
“The Repton was a club where East End boys could do all kinds of sports and they had around a thousand members when I joined,” Tony recalled, “but then it got closed down and Albert Jacob, the Mayor of Tower Hamlets, gave us this building on a thousand year lease. He saw the future of the East End – by putting this club here where it is – getting the kids off the streets and getting them off everything. The asset of the Repton is the area, it’s packed with talent out there.”
Tony was eager to tell me about his coaching, without filling in the details of his own distinguished boxing career which included winning the Amateur World Championship. “For some unexplained reason I had three gold medallists in the Olympics the first year I was here as coach in 1968.” he said, and at first I thought this statement was another expression of reserve on Tony’s part but then I realised it was something more intangible. “People do come along,” he puzzled, shaking his head in wonderment, as we walked through the gym to examine the photographs that lined the wall of fame extending around the corner, “We’ve had three hundred and fifty champions here – that’s national titles not championships – which is really quite unbelievable in forty years, roughly about ten a year.” he said.
“I can fall in love with a lad the minute he walks through the door, and make a fuss of him and build him up and make him think he’s a big talent.” admitted Tony, speaking tenderly, “The beauty of it is that I am at a club like this where maybe sixty or eighty youths come every weekend and you see them developing.”And he turned and cast his eyes around at the enthusiastic crew of young boxers of different races that filled the gym, all dripping with perspiration, full of fight and eager for glory.
Freddie Mills presents a clock to fifteen year old Tony Burns of Bethnal Green, who won his contest against R.Brice of Kingston, whilst Sammy McCarthy congratulates the young boxer during the recent amateur tournament at the Kingston Baths, October 31st 1955.
Tony Burns as a young boxer of twenty years old.
Tony Burns, Amateur World Champion Boxer, with Howard Winston, Professional World Champion.
Tony Burns with Mohammed Ali.
Tony Burns with Reggie Kray in 1997.
Tony is best man at Reggie Kray’s wedding in 1997.
Tony Burns with Frank Bruno.
Tony Burns, Head Coach at the Repton Boxing Club.
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Adam Dant’s Map of Hoxton Square 2011
Click to see what goes on in Hoxton Square
Spitalfields Life contributing photographer Martin Usborne is leaving Hoxton Square, and he commissioned this map from Adam Dant as a momento. Once it was the life of the square that drew the photographer to live here but now it is the excess of life that is driving him away. The drama and the craziness have reached such a pitch that Martin has no choice but to take his leave, if he is ever to have another night’s uninterrupted sleep in his life.
Recently, Martin and Adam have identified more than seventy different “Hoxton Types” that may be spotted in the Square and which are illustrated here on the map. I imagine Martin looking down from his window in wonder, in the way that Mark Lester does in the film of “Oliver” when he awakens at Mr Brownlow’s house after being rescued from Fagin’s gang. Only, instead of the “Cries of London,” Martin looks out onto the rampage you see above, as portrayed in such loving graphic detail by Adam.
Whether you celebrate this as an exuberant libertarian paradise or whether you condemn it as the nadir of unpleasantness is a matter of mere opinion, but there is no doubt that in recent years Hoxton Square has become a phenomenon – a crowded playground where those who so desire are may lose their inhibitions and their wallets with ease. “It must have some charm or why would people come all the way from Essex to go there?” asked Adam, with a twinkle in his eye and his tongue firmly in his cheek.
Hoxton Square is the East End’s Garden of Earthly Delights, peopled with Dog Walkers, Art Collectors, Art World Dilettantes, Art Dealers, Haircuts,Cycle Couriers, Trustafarians, Hen/Stag Nights, Estate Ped-Heads, Bengali Boys, Postcode Gangstas, Shrouded Girls, Eccentric Designers, Foreign Students, Smartphone Addicts, Vertical Drinkers, Light Industry Dregs, VVV Stupid Fashions, Scruffy Journos, Graffiti Tourists, Lost Dutch Travellodgers, Italian Anarchists, Polish Labourers, Polish Benchdwellers, Homeless/Drugs, Homeless/Dogowners, Homeless/Chirpy, Hoxton Elderly,Fast Food Barons, Hippy Circus Parents, Shh! Lesbians, Brooklyn Hipsters, Tribally Tattooed Folk, Out of Place Parents, Trashy Waitresses, A.D.D. Children, Ladettes, Japanese Stylists, Drunk Bankers, General Dickheads, Clowns, Sanctioned Graffitists, Fixi Bores, Rentokill Workers, Ukranian Pole Dancers, Strip Club Patrons, Media Nodes, Screwtop Rosé Girls, Interns, Coffee Bores, BBC Drama Shoot Participants, Tamagotchi Billionaires, Fashion Shoots, Nigerian Shoe Vendors, Incongruous Joggers, Plain Clothes Cops, Fried Food Schoolkids, Flash Restaurateurs,Pissers, Sterodial Bouncers, Flower Shoppers, Sticky Tape Artists, Performance Artists, Tai Chi Beginners, Architecture Students, Council Planning Officers, Bicycle Thieves, Drugs Vendors – and Joseph Markovitch,and Martin Usborne and his dog Moose.
In the top left of this detail of the map you can see Martin Usborne (walking his dog Moose) and Joseph Markovitch, a native of Hoxton.
Images copyright © Adam Dant
You might like to look at Martin Usborne’s photographs of
and A Fox in Hoxton.
You may also like to see
Adam Dant’s Hackney Treasure Map
or his Redchurch St Rake’s Progress
or his Map of the History of Shoreditch,
or his Map of Shoreditch in the Year 3000,
or his Map of Shoreditch as New York,
or his Map of Shoreditch as the Globe,
or his Map of Shoreditch in Dreams,
or his Map of the History of Clerkenwell
Les Wilkes, Warehouse Manager
Since he retired from being a warehouse manager in 1995, Les Wilkes has helped out every day at the Mister City Sandwich Bar in Artillery Lane and become a popular figure there, well known among the City types who frequent this busy establishment. Although Les maintains a discreet presence, with his perfect manners, neatly pressed shirts and resolutely cheerful manner, he has become the presiding spirit of this celebrated shop, someone who has retained his sense of enthusiasm throughout a long life.
Roberto & Mirella Fiori, the proprietors of Mister City, introduced me to Leslie Arnold Wilkes with the respect due to a senior member of their family and when I discovered that he had been employed nearby for more than half a century, I was eager to hear his story. Fortunately, Les was passionate to speak of his experiences, talking with great pleasure of his working life around Bishopsgate.
After the number of years I’ve worked in the City and travelled all over London, I know all the little shortcuts, and the byways and alleys. Back in 1958, when I left school at sixteen, I went to work for a company of bookbinders, Richards & Keens, at the corner of Leadenhall St and Gracechurch St. My first employer was Jack Keens, he was the third generation in the business and I knew him simply as “the old man.”
I used to collate pages together by hand before they were numbered with a handheld numbering machine. When I was collating, I had to do it backwards so my colleague would be able to take the pages off the pile forwards. The binding was done with glue and staples. I used to heat up the glue on a gas ring. First I had to break it, like great big lumps of chocolate, and then put it in a pot of boiling water, using a paint brush to stir it up. Perforations were done by a special machine that could only take a few sheets at a time. So, to make fifty books took us a whole week! They were jolly days they were.
I did other jobs – if the boss went out of the office I used to answer the phone and take messages and orders for pens, pencils and envelopes. It was my job to pick up orders from the suppliers and deliver them to the customers, and that was the part I enjoyed the most, calling round to see the customers and having a little chat. I was an old-fashioned courier, I used to travel on foot around the City and sometimes I caught a bus. I used to get around so quick, they used to called me “speedy.” Back in the nineteen sixties I was in my twenties and I could bus around like a loony. I was actually employed as a warehouse manager but I used to do all these other jobs.
By the end, I worked there forty-nine years, from the age of sixteen in 1958 to sixty-five in 2007. I was the longest serving employee and the family who had run it for four generations since 1910, they kept it going until I retired. As the saying goes, “first in, last out.” A lot of people can’t believe that I would spend my life in one job. Oh yes, people are changing their jobs now, probably three or four times in their lifetime. I stayed because I enjoyed my job.
My last boss, Ian Keens, was two years older than me but he stayed on after retirement age for my benefit, to see me out. We shut it down together. The lease on the premises ran out and the business was put in the hands of the accountant. What we had to do was to send letters to all our customers, thanking them for their custom over the years but “regret that we are closing the business.” He’s living in Northern Ireland now and we only communicate by birthday and Christmas card. I have his phone number if I need to call him, and as far as I know he’s ok. Most of the other staff I don’t see them any more.
We moved premises twice, from Leadenhall St to Boar’s Head Passage and finally to Scrutton St in Shoreditch. I was the only one that went out for lunch, everyone else used to eat their sandwiches they had brought from home. Once I had made them coffee, I would go out for an hour. There were plenty of places to eat in Shoreditch but for some reason I chose to go down to the City Way Restaurant. It was proper Italian place where you could sit and have lunch. The chef at the City Way Restaurant was Pino Cimelli, Mirella’s father and I gradually became friends with him and he would come and sit at the table with me. It was all very nice and I got to know the whole family. This lasted from 1995 until 2007 when his son Luigi sold the shop. He works here at Mister City now on Fridays, so we are still in touch and have a good laugh.
I’ve come here every day to the Mister City Sandwich Bar for my lunch since I retired from work and I help out in the shop with a few jobs. I live in South East London, Grove Park, so it is quite a long journey. One of the jobs I do is I roll up the plastic knives and forks in the serviettes. I count the cups and see to the stock for the shop, and when they are short I phone up the supplier.
My family’s scattered around the globe. I’m not married and I’ve never been married, so I don’t have any children. I live alone and come here everyday for company, if I stayed at home it would drive me mad. The Fiori family are my adopted family. After I have checked everything and locked up, Mirella Fiori always walks over to Moorgate with me and we go to Marks and Spencer to buy food, and she helps me choose clothes if I need any.
At weekends, I do shopping and gardening. In the Summertime, depending on the weather, I do plenty of walking. I try to get out from London. From where I live, I am only two miles away from Chislehurst in Kent, so I am able to leave South East London behind by walking to Petts Wood and Orpington. And, sometimes, I walk to Bromley – it takes me about an hour at most.
I have always been partially blind, I am shortsighted in my right eye and I have no sight at all in my left eye, but it’s normal for me because I was born that way. I feel sorry for people who lose their sight.
Les’ story was fascinating to me, because it revealed him as a rare individual for whom work is never toil and who, through his openness of spirit, has personalised all his working relationships. As a consequence, Les has always drawn the respect and affection of his workmates and employers, reciprocating his lively humanity. I can think of no other example where a company owner kept the business running for an extra two years just till an employee reached retirement age. Les’ story reminds us of a different perception of business – in which the purpose of a company is as much to provide a living for its staff as it is to turn over a profit.
Although the City can seem impersonal to many, this has not discouraged Les from striking up unexpected friendships. It was his lunchtime conversations with Pino Cimelli that led to becoming a family friend of the Fioris of the Mister City Sandwich Bar. With radical initiative, Les chose not to sit at home after retirement but to continue his passionate involvement with the City by coming to the Fiori’s cafe in Spitalfields everyday. So next time you walk down Artillery Lane, be sure to drop in to the Mister City Sandwich Bar and shake hands with Les Wilkes – because he knows how to live.
Les enjoys a pint of Guinness
Les at dinner with “the old man” – Jack Keens in the nineteen eighties.
Jack Keens took this photo while Les was staying the weekend at his house.
Les Wilkes’ last boss, Ian Keens – “He was very keen on John Wayne, so between the staff we went out and bought that figure for him for his birthday on Christmas Eve.”
Les Wilkes
Les Wilkes with Roberto & Mirella Fiori
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At Mister City Sandwich Bar
This is Roberto & Mirella Fiori, proprietors of the justly renowned Mister City Sandwich Bar in Artillery Lane, Spitalfields, open weekdays all year round except Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Celebrated among the offices of Bishopsgate and the City, this is the place where the hungry souls of those struggling in the corporate rat race can seek honest sustenance. Open from early, this tiny family establishment with its attractive blue livery and characterful signwriting offers a haven of sanity and good humour in the midst of the madness.
Step in amongst the throng at the Mister City Sandwich Bar on any lunchtime and you find yourself in a tiny theatre where the flame-haired Mirella sharpens her joyous repartee whilst keeping the orders moving at a ferocious rate. “We do have a laugh,” she confessed to me with a smirk, rolling her eyes knowingly and tossing her golden curls, “the customers, they’re not happy until I tell them off – they come for the abuse! Abuse first, food second, it’s the personal touch.”
When I arrived, the lunchtime rush had long departed and even Artillery Lane itself had emptied out of people. Afternoon shadows were lengthening in this ancient narrow street that miraculously retains the tranquil atmosphere of a backwater despite being so close to Bishopsgate.
I found Roberto had ascended from the kitchen to idle on the pavement discussing horticulture with a policemen, from the station round the corner opposite Liverpool St. Yet I was able to persuade him to join me for a cup of tea at his sole pavement table and tell me the story of his wonderful cafe that has such a distinguished pedigree within the noble tradition of Italian City cafes.
My dad’s cafe was Dino’s Cafe in Crispin St next to the Spitalfields Market and I worked there from the age of twenty-three until it closed, and I’m fifty-eight now. He was the cook for Dino Cura and his brother who first opened the cafe after World War II serving the market porters, and when they both retired at the age of forty-five and went back to Italy, they asked him to take over. Me and my brother Ernesto (known as Ernie) worked there with Terry Richardson (my brother in law), until the Spitalfields Fruit & Vegetable Market moved out to Leyton in 1991. They gave us a space for a cafe at the new market and Ernie & Terry still run Dino’s Cafe there today, while I came here to Mister City with Mirella, my wife, and Danieli, my son.
When I used to work in the market, I got up at three each morning and worked till midday, but now I’m finding it hard to get up at five and work until four-thirty. I go to Smithfield to buy fresh meat every morning and then I bring it back, and cook it, and sell it. All the other cafes, they buy it pre-cooked but we do it the old-fashioned way. It’s the only way I know, I learnt it from my father since I left school. Customers come in for breakfast and say “What’s for lunch?” I say, “I don’t know, I haven’t been to the market yet!”
My other son, Massimo, he works in Grosvenor House, he’s a proper chef – I’m a cook not a chef. I’m good but I could never go and work in a proper restaurant, I can cook a steak or a chop. He leaves me standing, talking about things I’ve never heard of. It’s all about sauces and cooking temperatures. He touches a steak to know if it is cooked, whereas I can look at a steak and I can tell if it’s cooked, or rare or well done. We sell a lot of roast pork, it’s a speciality of ours yet I can’t explain to you how to do it, I just know when to turn up the heat. It’s all experience. I do specials each day but I only cook so much because I like to make it fresh and sell out. I cook Bolognese sauce like my mother taught me. I always say, “If you go to Prêt à Manger, you’ve got to have what they give you, if you come here you can have what you want. We’ll make it in front of you, exactly how you like it.”
Ever since the crash, all my customers are constantly being shifted around. There’s one guy who comes in here whose job it is to shuffle everybody at the Royal Bank of Scotland. Another customer, he told me there used to be one hundred and eighty people in his division and now there’s thirty-five, and they’re expected to do the same work.
We used to have this lovely man, Richard, who came in every day for breakfast and lunch. Then, one day, he came in for breakfast and said, “See you for lunch,” but he never came back. When he arrived at work, they said, “Wait there,” gave him his things in a box and told him, “Your services are no longer required.” He came back after three weeks with his daughter to see us. He said,“I can’t get a job, my wife’s gone back to work.” Another man said to me, “If we make money, we get a bonus but if we make a loss, we just get our wages. We can’t lose because it’s not our money we’re gambling with, it’s other people’s money.” A lot of them have lost their jobs now.
I was fascinated by the recognition of mutual difference and the respect that exists between the members of the Fiori family and their customers from the world of high finance. While the rewards are potentially higher for City workers, there is appreciation that the Fiori family enjoy self-respect for working hard in their dignified endeavour over all these years – producing good quality food which is superior to the chains that surround them.
Roberto’s wife Mirella told me she also comes from an Italian family with a proud cafe tradition. “I used to work over in Scrutton St at the City Way Restaurant in Moorgate for my father Pino Cimelli and my mother Albina, with my brother Luigi.” she explained, “I didn’t want to study when I was at school, I wasn’t very academic, so my dad said, “You’re coming to work for me.””
“When I’m selling someone a roast pork ciabatta or a nice sirloin steak, I can see their body language, they’re rubbing their hands together because they can’t wait to eat it.” Mirella continued, her eyes sparkling with delighted emotion, “I sell food with confidence, because I know what goes into it. If it costs five pounds, I know it’s worth five pounds.” And the pride of the Fiori family and the triumph of the Mister City Sandwich Bar is that this is a concept of value which City workers have embraced enthusiastically.
Roberto’s father Angelo Fiori with Cuzzi the street sweeper in the nineteen eighties outside the former Dino’s Cafe.
Roberto Fiori “- I cook Bolognese sauce like my mother taught me.”
Mirella Fiori
Roberto shows the picture of the former Dino’s Cafe in Crispin St, he is second from the right.
Robert & Mirella Fiori with Les Wilkes
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Boundary Estate Cooking Portraits
This is Julie Begum of the Boundary Women’s Group dishing up a curry that she cooked for Spitalfields Life contributing photographer Sarah Ainslie. It was part of a collaboration between Sarah and members of the group, in which they cooked food and Sarah took pictures – and, as a consequence, both parties have enjoyed getting to know each other over some delicious meals. Naturally, I took the opportunity to join the feast, dropping in to one of the weekly meetings, that take place every Tuesday morning at the St Hilda’s Community Centre on the Boundary Estate, to learn something of what it is all about.
“I’ve been coming since 2005,” explained Sabeha Miah, who runs the group today, “I moved here and I had a young son, and I felt very isolated – but being in the group gives you a chance to breathe and you feel part of something bigger.” When Sabeha first joined, the need was for language classes and so the group all learnt English together. Subsequently, interests have broadened into other kinds of activities including a financial literacy course, the creation of an ambitious tapestry that was displayed at the Museum of London and the development of a food co-op which allows local people to buy food at low prices.
But at the core of the endeavour is cooking and conversation – providing a rare opportunity for these women to talk freely amongst their peers and discuss serious issues such as politics, sex education and the place of religion, all whilst preparing and eating a meal together. “I’m forty-two and I have been coming three or four years,” revealed Julie Begum, talking plainly, “We talk about being women in London, trying to run our lives and make other people happy too – all the things we need to do.”
Once the food was cooked, we helped ourselves from the dishes laid upon the counter, engendering lively curiosity over the different recipes employed, which gave full scope to the wit and raucous humour of the members of the group. “I really look forward to coming every Tuesday. My child is seven and I am at home the rest of the week,” the softly spoken Halima Khatun confided to me as the conversation level subsided and a hush descended upon the table while we savoured our food. “What could be more civilised?” I thought as a satisfied silence presided, “- than a group of women meeting each week to share their experiences over lunch.”
Sarah offered the opportunity to the members to have their portraits taken and you see some examples of these collaborations here. “The consensus was they wanted the portraits to be quite formal and they brought outfits to wear,” explained Sarah,“they chose how they wanted to present themselves.” From Sarah’s fascination and the excitement of the women at exploring photographic images of themselves, I could see this was only the beginning. “It quickly evolved to the point where they said, “Are you coming next week?”” Sarah confessed to me, delightedly, “I’ve become part of the group now and I’m going back to do more.”
Sabeha Miah’s recipe for Onion Bhajis Finely slice some onions, coriander, fresh chillies and ginger – roughly mix up together by hand. To this mixture add half and half mix bison (chick pea flower) and plain flour until all mixture is coated. Slowly add some warm water to this mixture until a smooth batter is formed around the onions etc (adding more water/bison/flour if you feel it is needed). In a deep frying pan with an inch depth of hot vegetable oil, slowly drop ping-pong ball sized blobs of the mixture in, turning once or twice until golden, then remove. Eat while fresh and warm!
Sufia’s Fish Curry Recipe Fry onion, green chili, bay leaves, curry powder, salt and coriander in oil, then add fish, then water. No need to cook long – the fish is ready quick.
Mahmuda Jaigirdas – in her Asian clothes
Sultana Begum – My husband likes to get in the kitchen. I used to say, “Get out, I’m the woman! The kitchen is my domain – if you got any suggestions you can cook it yourself!” Now he does cook, things he’s watched me make. He says, “You have to stand there and really lovingly watch your curry while it cooks.” I say, “No,” while it simmers, I go on the internet.
Mahmuda Jaigirdas – in her western clothes
Julie Begum’s recipe for Sardine Curry This is my favourite quick home cooking recipe after a long hard day’s work. Ingredients – half a kilo of sardines, two tomatoes, one onion, three green chilis, one teaspoon of red chili powder, half a teaspoon of turmeric powder, one teaspoon of coriander, one piece of ginger, eight cloves of garlic, one dessert spoon of lemon juice and salt as required. Procedure – Cut and clean the fresh sardines (score on both sides) or just open the tins ( I prefer the ones in tomato sauce). Heat oil in a pan. Add sliced onion, green chili, ginger, garlic and saute well.To this, add red chili powder, turmeric powder, salt, lemon juice and tomato slices. Saute well until tomatoes are done. Add water as required and until fish are cooked. Serve with fresh coriander and a slice of lemon with white basmati rice. Yum!
Sabeha Miah – her recipe for simple Dhal Add dhal (two hundred grams of red lentils) to a pot and wash until water runs clean. Put on a stove on a medium heat. Add a teaspoon of haldi (turmeric), salt to taste and a bay leaf. Leave pot covered, stirring from time to time, until all the dhal has turned mushy. Once at this stage – In a frying pan containing two tablespoons of hot oil, add four cloves of crushed garlic and three to four dried red chilis. When garlic has browned and chilis have turned a very dark red, add to the pot of dhal and stir in ( be careful as the oil and dhal will spit). Add chopped coriander to finish.
Jobeda’s recipe for Ghajjar Ka Halwar Ingredients: dozen grated carrots, half pint of milk, sugar, cinnamon sticks/cardamon, little bit of single cream, raisins, ghee and mixed nuts. Step one – boil milk with sugar, cinnamon sticks, cardamon, add the grated carrots and let it cook for thirty minutes. Step two – add single cream, for extra sweetness, and raisins after fifteen/twenty minutes. Step three – stir in ghee in the last five minutes. Step four – add mixed nuts for decoration. End result all milk should be gone.
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
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In Search of Untamed London
On these hot dusty Summer Sundays in July, I get a longing to go on country rambles – a desire that is not easily fulfilled in Spitalfields – but when the esteemed Herb Lester Associates asked me to contribute some introductory words to their map of Untamed London and then a copy arrived in the post this week, it inspired me to seek out the best approximation of such a walk without leaving East London.
I shall never forget the first time I was driven in a car from the West End out past Hyde Park as a child, and I thought “London is a big city, but we’re in the country now.” I had a similar feeling as I stepped onto the Green Way at Hackney Wick, with its innate bucolic promise. Yet, although there was a certain delight to be savoured from walking upon this former railway embankment lined with wildflowers while gazing upon the industrial landscape on either side, I had not bargained on the Green Way leading me through the centre of the site of the 2012 Olympics. On one side towered the vast white stadium, looking as if it had just landed from Outer Space, and on the other side bulldozers were at work, flattening acres of land as far as the eye could see – I think we may categorise this as “Tamed London.”
It was a relief to leave the Stratford Marshes behind – marshes only in name now – as I headed South-eastwards upon the Green Way towards the Mills Meads where I took time to appreciate the extraordinary dense variety of wild flowers growing beside the path including cow parsley, clover, yarrow, coltsfoot, vetch, rosebay willow-herb, buddleia and mallow. At this moment of high Summer, the dominant colours are pink and blue, and there is a sweet scent drifting on the soft breeze for anyone that choses to stand and contemplate. Already now in mid July, the rose hips have reddened and blackberries are ripe on the briars. And, from this raised causeway, I took great pleasure in pausing to peer down into some beautiful back gardens overgrown with creepers and verdant life – mysterious in their unreachable luxuriance of growth.
Reaching the wide bridge over the Channelsea River where the tide had withdrawn exposing car tyres scattered upon the expanse of mud, I was seized by an impulse to take the narrow overgrown trail that follows the river bank. Climbing down from the Green Way, I descended to a dirt path bounded by undergrowth where the surrounding developments are hidden by leaves. Here, for half a mile you can walk among balsam and willows, where rowan berries and hazelnuts hang over the path, and be shaded from the heat of the afternoon sun by deep foliage. In this narrow neglected strip of land on the river bank, beyond the perimeter fence, for the first time in my walk I could say I was in a place that could be described as “Untamed London.”
This path led me to to Three Mills Lock and, passing beside the ancient tidal mill, I crossed over to follow the bank of the River Lee – with a fine coat of green duckweed, undulating barely perceptibly and broken only by the trails of moorhens. And then at Bow Lock, I turned right, taking the cut back to the Limehouse basin (where it was necessary to visit the Grapes in Narrow St for refreshment), before crossing Commercial Rd and wandering up through Stepney to the fine old church of St Dunstans. From here I walked along the road where a path once ran across the fields to Spitalfields, now absorbed into the street network as Stepney Way, meeting the Whitechapel Rd at the Bell Foundry – here it still retains the name of Fieldgate St.
My hunger for roaming was satisfied, and in the very margins of the fringes of the city, I had discovered consolation in green places new to me. Although I set out to find “Untamed London,” as if it were a separate location, I realised that “untamed” is a relative concept, and everywhere a weed pokes its defiant head up may, to some degree, be described as “untamed.”
Nature accommodates and hangs on as tenaciously as we have been thorough to obliterate it. I often think of the dwarf oaks pointed out to me by the Mudlark in the river bed at Limehouse Reach, part of the primeval forest that was here before London, and of the broadleaf forest that has grown up and overtaken Bow Cemetery in recent years. One forest reminds me of the Untamed London that was here before we came and the other forest presages the Untamed London of that indeterminate future, after we have all gone.
The vast white stadium, looking as if it had just landed from Outer Space
Beside the Green Way
Gardens, mysterious in their unreachable luxuriance of growth
In the Channelsea River
The Tidal Mill at Three Mills Island
Oasthouses at Three Mills Island
A lone moorhen’s nest
Duckweed at Bow Lock
The path home through St Dunstan’s churchyard.
The map of UNTAMED LONDON with some introductory words by yours truly is available directly from Herb Lester Associates
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Phil Maxwell’s Brick Lane
Phil Maxwell is the photographer of Brick Lane – no-one has taken more pictures here over the last thirty years than he. And now his astonishing body of work stands unparalleled in the canon of street photography, both in its range and in the quality of human observation that informs these eloquent images.
“More than anywhere else in London, Brick Lane has the organic quality of being constantly changing, even from week to week.” Phil told me when I asked him to explain the enduring fascination for a photographer. “Coming into Brick Lane is like coming into a theatre, where they change the scenery every time a different play comes in – a stage where each new set reflects the drama and tribulations of the wider world.”
Phil’s work is distinguished by a strong empathy, drawing the viewer closer. In particular, he is one of few photographers to have photographed the Bengali people in Spitalfields successfully, winning the trust of the community and portraying many of his subjects with relaxed intimacy. “That’s because I live on the other side of the tracks, and the vast majority of my neighbours are Bengalis – I’ve been to Bangladesh at least half a dozen times.” Phil revealed, “The main problem that Bengali families face is overcrowding, with parents and four or five kids living in one bedroom flats. That means their living space is not enough to be able to socialise and express themselves freely. And so, Brick Lane tends to be the place where they can feel free to be themselves and communicate with each other, in a way they can’t at home.”
When I confided to Phil that the lyrical quality of his portraits of old people appealed to me especially, he pointed out the woman with white hair, enfolding herself in her pale overcoat. “She seems bemused by what is happening round her, but in her appearance she is very much part of the built environment that surrounds her.” he said, thinking back over the years “I find older people have a kind of demeanour which derives from the environment they’ve been living in, and because of that they’re more interesting to photograph.”
In its mutable nature, Brick Lane presents an ideal subject for photography – offering an endless source of fleeting moments, that expose a changing society within a changing environment. And, since the early eighties, Phil Maxwell made it the focus of his life’s work to record this place, becoming the pre-eminent photographer of Brick Lane. “Whenever there’s a big fight on Brick Lane, the papers will send a photographer down to get some images, but that photographer has no relationship to the community.” Phil explained to me, conceding, “If my work has any authenticity, it is only because I live here in the middle of the melting pot, and I prefer living here to anywhere else.”
“The bananas, the bridge and the man are all gone now.”
Photographs copyright © Phil Maxwell
Phil Maxwell’s latest exhibition A Sense of Place: Living in the East End runs at the Rich Mix in the Bethnal Green Rd until Saturday 6th August, and I recommend Phil’s daily photoblog Playground of an East End Photographer.
More pictures by Phil Maxwell
