Colin O’Brien’s Brick Lane Market
Let us take a walk through Cheshire St, Brick Lane, Sclater St and Club Row in the company of photographer Colin O’Brien to experience the life of the Sunday market in the nineteen eighties.
“I loved markets as a child, because I grew up during the nineteen forties in Clerkenwell and I used to go to Leather Lane to hear the patter of the stallholders. There is this mystique about markets for me. I love being surrounded by people and I feel safe in a crowd.” Colin told me, his grey eyes shining in excitement, as we made our way through the crowd onto the bare ground between Cheshire St and Grimsby St where traders sold their wares upon the frozen earth, by the light of lamps and candles.
“I’m a bit of a collecting sort of person, myself.” Colin admitted as we scanned the pitiful junk on sale, so carefully arranged in the frost, “I like old things.” It was a bitterly cold morning which led me to ask Colin why we were there. “I tend to go when it’s snowing,” Colin revealed cheerfully as we picked our way through the slush on Brick Lane, “there is a comradeship and drama.”
Examining Colin’s pictures later, just a fraction of the total, I realised that most were taken when the market was clearing up and portrayed individuals rather than the crowd. “Packing up is when everything happens,” he explained to me, “they dump all the unsold stuff in the street and the scavengers come to take it. You look at what’s discarded and it’s the history of the time.”
I noticed that the woman sitting at the centre of Colin’s photograph “Coming & goings at the corner of Brick Lane” was surrounded by five men and yet not one was looking at her. I realised that he had photographed her invisibility, and that the same was true for his other soulful portraits of market-goers, market-traders, homeless people, old people and marginal characters – all portrayed here with human sympathy through the lens of Colin O’Brien, yet gone now for ever.
On Brick Lane.
At Club Row.
Comings and goings at the corner of Brick Lane.
At the time of the miners’ strike.
Boy with a typewriter on Cheshire St
Taking down the stalls on Brick Lane.
On Sclater St
In Cheshire St.
Photographs copyright © Colin O’Brien
More photographs by Colin O’Brien
Travellers’ Children in London Fields
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Leo Epstein, Epra Fabrics
When the genial Leo Epstein, proprietor of Epra Fabrics says, “I am the last Jewish trader on Brick Lane,” he says it with such a modest balanced tone that you know he is just stating a fact and not venturing a comment. “If you’re not a tolerant sort of person you wouldn’t be in Brick Lane,” he adds before scooting across the road to ask his neighbour at the Islamic shop to turn down the Friday prayer just a little. “I told him he can have it as loud as he wants after one o’clock when I’ve gone home.” he explains cheerily on his return – now we can hear ourselves think. “We all get on very well,” he confirms,“As one of my Bengali neighbours said to me, ‘On Brick Lane, we do business not politics.'”
While his son Daniel was in Israel organising Leo’s grandson’s wedding, Leo was running the shop single-handedly, yet he managed – with the ease and grace of his fifty-five years experience – to maintain the following monologue whilst serving a string of customers, cutting bolts of fabric, answering the endless phone calls and arranging a taxi to collect an order of ten rolls of velvet.
“I started in 1956, when I got married. I used to work for a company of fabric wholesalers and one of our customers on Brick Lane said, “There’s a shop to let on the corner, why don’t you take it?” The rent was £6.50 a week and I used to lie awake at night thinking, “Where am I going to find it?” You could live on £10 a week then. My partner was Rajchman and initially we couldn’t decide which name should come first, combining the first two letters of our names, but then we realised that “Raep” Fabrics was not a good trade name and so we became “Epra” Fabrics.
In no time, we expanded and moved to this place where we are today. In those days, it was the thing to go into, the fabric trade – the City was a closed shop to Jewish people. My father thought that anything to do with rebuilding would be a good trade for me after the war and so I studied Structural Engineering but all the other students were rich children of developers. They drove around in new cars while I was the poor student who could barely afford my bus fare. So I said to my father, “I’m not going to do this.” And the openings were in the shmutter trade, I didn’t ever see myself working in an office. And I’ve always been happy, I like the business. I like the social part.
In just a few years, the first Indians came to the area, it’s always been a changing neighbourhood.The first to come were the Sikhs in their turbans, and each group that came brought their trades with them. The Sikhs were the first to print electronic circuits and they had contacts in the Far East, they brought the first calculators. And then came the Pakistanis, the brought the leather trade with them. And the Bengalis came and they were much poorer than the others. They came on their own, as single men, at first. The head of the family, the father would come to earn the money to send for the rest of the family. And since they didn’t have women with them, they opened up canteens to feed themselves and then it became trendy for City gents to come and eat curry here and that was the origin of the curry restaurants that fill Brick Lane today.
Slowly all the Jewish people moved away and all their businesses closed down. Twenty years ago, Brick Lane was a run down inner city area, people didn’t feel safe – and it still has that image even though it’s a perfectly safe place to be. I’ve always like it here.”
At any time over the last half a century, you could have walked up Fashion St, crossed Brick Lane and entered Epra Fabrics where you would have been greeted by Leo, saying “Good morning! May I help you?‘ with respect and civility, just as he does today. After all these years, it is no exaggeration when he says, “Everyone knows me as Leo.” A tall yet slight man, always formally dressed with a kippa, he hovers at the cash desk, standing sentinel with a view through the door and West along Fashion St to the towers of the City. Here you will find an unrivalled selection of silks and satins. “This is Brick Lane not Park Lane,” is one of Leo’s favourite sayings, indicating that nothing costs more than a couple of pounds a metre. “We only like to take care of the ladies,” is another, indicating the nature of the stock, which is strong in dress fabrics.
“I lived through the war here, so the attack wasn’t really that big a deal,” he says with a shrug, commenting on the Brick Lane nail bomb of 1999 laid by racist David Copeland, which blew out the front of his shop, “Luckily nobody was seriously hurt because on a Saturday everything is closed round here, it’s a tradition going back to when it was a Jewish area, where everything would close for the Sabbath.”
“Many of the Asian shop owners come in from time to time and say,‘Oh good, you’re still here! Why don’t you come and have a meal on us?‘ You can’t exist if you don’t get on with everybody else. It was, in a way, a weirdly pleasant time to see how everyone pulled together.” he concludes dryly, revealing how shared experiences brought him solidarity with his neighbours. Leo Epstein is the last working representative of the time when Brick Lane and Wentworth St was a Jewish ghetto and the heart of the shmutter trade, but he also exemplifies the best of the egalitarian spirit that exists in Brick Lane today, defining it as a place where different peoples co-exist peacefully.
The Redchurch St Rake’s Progress
Like it or not, Redchurch St has become the street in London that is the focus of all that is fashionable and happening, just as Carnaby St and the Kings Rd were in the sixties. When artist Adam Dant first came to Redchurch St in the nineteen nineties he remembers it as mostly printers, button makers and other light-industry, but now it is the white-hot hangout for those who are young and have money to throw around in the bars and boutiques. Inspired by this unlikely and sudden transformation from utilitarian to hedonistic, Adam Dant chose the crossroads where Redchurch St meets Club Row as the terrain for his panorama of “British Drinking” in the manner of Pieter Breughel’s social landscapes – only rather than Flemish proverbs, Adam Dant has illustrated English figures of speech for drunkenness to create an sprawling epic of bacchanalia. (You can click on this and the other plates here to enlarge and study them in detail.)
Something extraordinary happens when so much cultural attention is paid to a single street, it becomes a theatre where people need to perform, carrying an invisible sign above their heads that says “Look at me, I’m on Redchurch St.” A phenomenon that you can witness any day of the week, simply by walking along Redchurch St and observing all the people trying very hard to be unselfconscious. The recent music video for R.E.M. shot by Sam Taylor-Wood and featuring her fiancée Aaron Johnson dancing down Redchurch St, manifests the apogee of this bizarre circumstance – and which also, by an extraordinary fluke of chance, features Adam Dant – who is a resident of Redchurch St – in a fleeting appearance walking his dog Edwin in the background.
As the definitive chronicler of the social change that has come upon this corner of Shoreditch, Adam Dant created a “Redchurch St Rake’s Progress” in the manner of William Hogarth – in which a Rake inherits and loses a fortune upon a single block on Redchurch St. Setting each of the eight intricate tableaux outside buildings on the South side of the street, the series follows the fortunes of the Rake from flourishing his credit card on the corner of Club Row to ending up naked in the gutter at the corner of Chance St. If you have visited Redchurch St on one of the “First Thursdays” recently, when all the galleries have openings and give away free beers, and everyone wanders up and down, enjoying the party, you may recognise the scenes of revelry and rumpus illustrated here.
The young Rake takes possession of his wealth at the corner of Club Row and Redchurch St.
The Levee – the Rake surrounded by artists and hangers-on outside Lounge Lover.
The Rake enjoys an orgy on the pavement outside Watson Bros gunmakers.
The Young Rake is arrested for debt – confronted with his tab outside Museum 52.
The Marriage – outside “The Gallery in Redchurch St.”
The Gaming House – The Rake loses his fortune outside forty-eight Redchurch St.
In the Debtor’s Prison – The Rake and his possessions are thrown into the street outside the Outside World Gallery.
The Madhouse – Final depravity, the Rake is abandoned at the corner of Redchurch St & Chance St.
Pictures copyright © Adam Dant
Just as Hogarth featured his pug in the Rake’s Progress, Adam Dant’s dog Edwin can be seen in the right hand corner of the picture above. Can you spot Adam and his dog in the background of the Sam Taylor-Wood music video for R.E.M. featuring Aaron Johnson dancing down Redchurch St? Click here to watch it and here to watch a parody.
The original drawings of Adam Dant’s “Redchurch St Rake’s Progress” will be on display for Spitalfields Life readers from today and over this weekend at Hales Gallery in the Tea Building in the Bethnal Green Rd – just ask to see them.
You may also like to take a look at
Adam Dant’s Map of the History of Clerkenwell
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.
And these other Redchurch St stories
The Labour & Wait Brush Museum
King Sour DA MC, Rapper of Bethnal Green
At the Fish Plaice
Around three is a good time to visit the Fish Plaice in the Cambridge Heath Rd, between Whitechapel and Bethnal Green. By then the lunchtime rush is over and you have the chance of a leisurely chat with Andy & Nitsa, the couple who have run this place together since 1974 – as I did yesterday, when I took the opportunity to slip behind the counter and see life from the other side of the fish fryer. I discovered it was an ideal place to spend an afternoon on an occluded June day, watching the passersby with their noses set towards Whitechapel and greeting regulars who were seeking consolation in fish cakes and saveloys for a Summer that is not quite working out as it should.
Over the years, all manner of private jokes and rituals have evolved here. “The police want to speak with you, Andy,” called Nitsa casually through the curtain of plastic ribbons when I arrived, as she had done countless times before. And then Andy came out and introduced himself with an eager smile, “I’m Andy, everyone knows me as Andy, my dad was Andy,” – just in case there was any confusion. And when Beryl, a regular customer of thirty-eight years standing, arrived with the greeting, “Got a fish cake?” and asking “Are the chips fresh?”, Andy turned aside with a twinkle in his eye and adopted a loud stage whisper, saying,“Give her the old ones, Nitsa! – which filled Beryl with speechless delight.
Be informed, this is not a fancy fish & chip shop. The decor has not been updated since they opened nearly forty years ago, yet this only adds to the appeal – because it is immaculately clean and cared for, which makes it a place where everyone feels welcome. “Look at this!” exclaimed Andy, taking his bare hand, and – inexplicably – reaching under the fish frier, before – alarmingly – rubbing it upon the floor and then – in a theatrical coup – holding it up jubilantly to reveal an entirely clean hand.
Andy knows as much about fish & chips as it is possible to know, because fish & chips are his culture and his life.“My father had a fish & chip shop in Salmon Lane and we lived over the shop.” he explained, “All the family were in fish & chips, my uncles all had shops. I used to clean potatoes first thing in the morning and help out again after school.”
“Sometimes, I used to get up at four and go with my dad to Smithfield Market to get chickens.” he continued fondly, “Then he’d take me down to Billingsgate Fish Market in the City where we’d meet all his brothers and uncles buying fish, and afterwards he’d take me for a good breakfast in a workmen’s cafe and we’d be back by seven in the morning.”
Yet before he opened up this shop with his wife Nitsa, Andy tried other careers. He trained in motor engineering, and became ladies hairdresser in Whitechapel, off Commercial St – “It was all slums down there in those days.” Next he became a driving instructor and worked at Plessey in electronics too. “You do some crazy stuff when you are young!” he informed me, in authoritative verdict upon these trivial early diversions before he settled down to a lifetime of fish & chips.
“All my family are in restaurants, but I had no clue about fish & chip shops until I met, Andy,” admitted Nitsa with a flirtatious laugh,“By now, we are a good team. When we come in the morning, we know exactly what to do and we do it in no time.”
“I do all the heavy stuff, filleting fish, mixing the batter and chipping, while Nitsa prepares the fryer,” added Andy, “She’s as quick as two people serving, three of my cousins came down to help out once and they couldn’t keep up with her.”
As will be self-evident by now, Andy & Nitsa have very high standards, priding themselves on the superlative quality of their fish & chips which are keenly priced. Nitsa fried me a piece of cod in batter with chips, and it was creamy with a good chewy batter. As I sat in the corner enjoying my late lunch, Andy explained The Fish Plaice is the closest fish & chip shop to the site of London’s first ever fish & chip shop, that opened in Cleveland Way – just round the corner – where Russian Jewish immigrants had the idea to serve both fried fish and chips together from the same shop in the nineteenth century.
“We like it,” admitted Andy, turning contemplative and catching Nitsa’s eye for a shared smile while I concentrated on my lunch, “We’ve been doing it so many years. We love it when when people come back, because it means they appreciated what they had.” All three of us sat together, enjoying the quiet of the afternoon in the empty shop and watching the ceaseless parade outside moving back and forth between Whitechapel and Bethnal Green.
“It’s a nice trade, fish and chips.” conceded Nitsa with a soulful smile, sitting with her arms crossed, casting her blue eyes around the shop where they spent the last thirty-eight years and almost speaking to herself, “We are happy here. The people are very nice and most of the customers are our friends. You always ask after everybody’s families.”
Nitsa fries me a piece of fish in batter.
Andy – “All my family were in fish & chips”
Nitsa, widely known amongst the customers as “Aunty” and “Mammy.”
The Fish Plaice, 86 Cambridge Heath Rd.
John Moyr Smith’s Tiles 3
Now I have gathered thirty-seven of the forty-five tiles I shall need to line my fireplace for next Winter, it is time again to show you my latest acquisitions. A current favourite is this curious broken nursery rhyme tile that possesses an unlikely saucy humour, as the Knave reaches out to grab not the Queen’s tarts but that part of her anatomy which almost rhymes with “tarts.” It is closer in spirit to the work of seaside postcard artist Donald McGill than to the innocuous children’s illustrations of Kate Greenaway which you might expect in a Victorian nursery.
Six months ago, I was asked if I had been standing next to a bonfire recently and I realised that all my clothes reeked of wood smoke – on account of the drafty old chimney in my house where I burn wooden pallets from the market in Wintertime. At that moment, I vowed to have an iron stove installed by next Winter and to tile my fireplace in preparation. And these circumstances became the pretext for assembling a serendipitous collection of the work of the prolific nineteenth century Scottish ceramic artist John Moyr Smith, and since my budget is very limited and my house is very old, it suits me very well to buy broken and damaged tiles that other collectors do not want.
John Moyr Smith created many series of tiles illustrating familiar narratives and some quite unfamiliar too – produced cheaply by Minton – and it appeals to me to mix them all up to create a fireplace which is an eclectic compendium of stories, that I may contemplate by the light of the flames each Winter. In fact, the cracks and the chips only add to the appeal for me, providing another level of storytelling – that of the histories of the tiles themselves.
Two of the tiles that I bought for less than five pounds each – since no-one else wanted them because they were stained and cracked – came from the shipwreck of the Simla that left the London docks bound for Sydney and sank after a collision off the Needles in January 1884. These tiles sat at the bottom of the English Channel for over a century until rescued quite recently, which endows them with extra charisma in my eyes – what an extraordinary journey they have come upon to rest in my fireplace, circling back to Spitalfields, just a mile from the London Docks where they set out. In fact, since the Minton factory is in the North of England, it is possible that they passed through already, travelling down Commercial St to get to the docks in 1884.
The most stained tile from the wreck has an image of Hagar & Ishmael in the desert, a biblical story that was entirely new to me. Hagar was an ex-slave who became Abraham’s second wife, before he sent her off into the desert with her son Ishmael and a jar of water. When the jar ran out, they called to God for help who sent them a supply of water and told them they would found a new race of people, the Egyptians. This tile is an image of abandonment that was itself abandoned.
I have come to appreciate the designs of John Moyr Smith for his sense of drama, created by the subtle tension he can place between two figures in a composition, and it fascinates me that he always portrays the instant when events turn, often the moment of jeopardy. And I have deliberately sought out some that mean a lot to me, such as when Hamlet sees his father’s ghost, or Romeo climbs up to embrace Juliet – alongside tiles portraying favourite characters such as Boudicea and Simple Simon.
In another age, Moyr Smith would have been a natural designer of film posters with his ability to encapsulate an entire drama in a single image. His lively vision of the world, as a place thick with stories and rife with drama, is one that I find especially appealing. As I walk through the streets, I cannot avoid interpreting all the interactions of people that I see. This is one of the reasons why the city fascinates me so – it constantly engages my attention and imagination with myriad characters and stories that I can never entirely know.
And so it is with with these tiles, they compose a universe of stories as a constant reminder – should I ever get weary and forget, slumped before my stove – of the rich potential of this life that surrounds me.
Simple Simon met a Pieman. I like the attenuated style with which Simple Simon is rendered – reminiscent of Dr Seuss.
The biblical story of Hagar & Ishmael in the desert – this tile sat at the bottom of the English Channel from 1884 until recently.
Romeo & Juliet, Act One. Abraham & Sampson “Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?” Another tile from the Simla that sank in 1884.
Abraham offering up his son Isaac – the moment before the angel appears to stop Abraham and he sees the ram trapped in the thorn bush.
Antony & Cleopatra. Act Five, Scene Two. Cleopatra & the Clown “Hast thou that pretty worm of Nilus there that kills and pains not?”
Romeo & Juliet. Act Two, Scene Two – the balcony scene.
Boadicea leads the Ancient Britons against the Roman Invaders.
Hamlet encounters his father’s ghost upon the battlements at Elsinore.
Taken from James Thomson’s poem “The Season”s (1724), this tile shows the moment before the matchless pair of lovers Celadon & Amelia were struck dead by lightning while seeking shelter from a Summer storm in Wales. ” ‘Tis safety to be near thee sure, and thus to clasp perfection!’ From his void embrace, Mysterious Heaven! that moment to the ground, a blackened corse, was struck the beauteous maid.”
Macbeth. Act Five, Scene Seven. Macbeth confronts Young Siward who was “not of woman born,” fulfilling the witches’ prophecy.
The Dyer, from the artisans series.
The Taming of the Shrew. Act Four, Scene Three. Petrucio & Katherine “Well, come, my Kate, we will unto your father’s.”
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Favourite Pie & Mash Shops (Part Two)
At F.Cooke in Hoxton
Already, months have passed since Spitalfields Life contributing photographer Sarah Ainslie and I enjoyed the first instalment of our crawl around all the Pie & Mash Shops in the East End, indulging ourselves recklessly in their irresistible mouth-watering hot meals. And so, with renewed appetite we set out again, led by an inescapable craving for a some good meaty pies and, I am relieved to report, we were not disappointed in our quest.
As before, we commenced in the East and worked our way across the territory, starting our journey at Maureen’s Cockney Food Bar in the lively Chrisp St Market – boasting over thirty years of pie making and recently voted as the East End’s number one hidden gem by users of the Docklands Light Railway. Since Maureen retired years ago, the credit goes to her son Jason who bakes the pies and his wife Karen who keeps everything running smoothly. Yet even Karen was a little flushed by current events, which had resulted in a stream of photographers and televisions crews over successive days, and Sandra’s Bullock’s sister – a food journalist and pastry chef – who came in a limousine to savour the pies at Maureen’s.
I was immediately endeared to this friendly and supremely unpretentious establishment that has triumphed on nothing less than the superlative quality of its pies. No wonder trucks arrive from Liverpool and Newcastle before dawn each morning to carry away fresh deliveries to the North of England, and pies are shipped internationally to Spain, Italy and South Africa where ex-patriot East Enders rely upon regular supplies from Maureen’s to ameliorate their homesickness.
The shop is shut on Monday because that is when Jason goes at three in the morning to buy his beef in person at Smithfield Market and then spends all day mincing it by hand. Only he and Maureen know the secret pastry recipe in use for over half century, Karen informed me, raising her eyebrows for effect. And if you are planning a party, be aware that they supply pies in bakers’ dozens – thirteen for the price of twelve – and you get free liquor (as the delicious parsley sauce is known) if you bring your own jug. Ideal for weddings, Karen emphasised. Maureen’s Cockney Food Bar is the East End’s next hot food destination, so you had better go before toffs from Islington find their way across to Milwall or Sandra Bullock’s sister returns with Sandra Bullock.
Over in Hoxton, F.Cooke was also alight with the glow of popular appreciation, including a recent visit from David Beckham. Yet Joseph Cooke (whose grandfather opened the other shop in Broadway Market in 1902 now run by his brother Bob) takes it in his stride in the way that only those who enjoy universal popularity can do so. “No additives or artificial flavourings, we only sell top quality gear,” he assured me with a swagger, “The most authentic meal in the East End – the most traditional meal you could have.” And he spread his arms in a happy flourish of satisfaction, accompanied by an angelic smile upon his blithe, round, baby face – before he let it all crumple, rolling his eyes in comic despair, lamenting, “It’s an awful lot of work.”
While the regular diners ate their pies contentedly in near silence, seated at marble tables within the airy space of this former Barclays Penny Bank, Joseph expounded to me enthusiastically about the varieties of parsley available at different times of the year and how this effects the nature of the liquor. “We’re using Spanish parsley at the moment,” he explained, delighting in its tangy flavour and the viscous sauce it makes once it has been minced up. “You splash it on your arm and it stays like paint!” he exclaimed in wonder. Over coming months, to complement the pies made here from a recipe unchanged in four generations of piemakers, there will be fresh liquor of – successively – English, French, Spanish, Italian and Turkish parsley.
Naturally, Joseph was curious to learn how his pies in Hoxton St compared to those of his brother Bob in Broadway Market, but since they both use the same recipe and I did not wish to become the catalyst for any unfortunate sibling conflict I chose my words with care. Let it be known that I found Joseph’s pies gratifyingly meaty with a sweet gravy that was tasty and rich, and I shall be coming back here again. It says something that the floor of the dining room is thoughtfully scattered with sawdust to absorb gravy splashes caused by over-enthusiastic pie eaters. “My old grandmother ate pies every day of her life and when she died at ninety-three, she still had all her own teeth,” added Joseph in afterthought, as further advocacy – if such were needed – of the health benefits of a diet of pie and mash.
Sarah & I managed to fit in one more Pie and Mash Shop just to make our day complete, S & R Kelly & Sons in the Bethnal Green Rd. This appealingly intimate little blue and white shop with room for just a handful of diners is lined with matchboarding and tiles, and has an interior of Japanese simplicity. Here we met Jill who has worked for proprietor Robert Kelly for fifteen years, serving behind the counter. She explained that out of all the Kelly’s Pie & Mash Shops this was the original, established over one hundred years ago. “Most people seem to like this one!” she agreed when I complimented her on the shop, “They all say it’s the best one. Even people that move away, the first thing they do when they get off the plane is come here and have pie and mash.” We were very sorry to have missed Jill’s oldest regular customer, a venerable lady of a hundred and three who had died a few weeks earlier. “She had been Robert’s milk lady when he was at school and she loved eels, and he didn’t use to charge her,” admitted Jill in affectionate reminiscence.
Of all the various communal spaces in the East End – even more than pubs or churches – Pie & Mash Shops exist in the public consciousness as the most celebrated locations of emotional memory, and the explanation lies in the food. East Enders love their Pie & Mash, because by enjoying this glorious meal they can participate in the endless banquet which has been going on for generations, longer than anyone can remember, and which includes all their family, relatives and loved ones, both living and departed. The world has changed and the East End has transformed, but the Pie & Mash Shops are still here and the feast goes on.
Jason Patterson dices margarine for pastry.
Jason sprays milk onto the pie crust.
The pastry mixer.
Jason has a secret pastry recipe, in use for half a century and known only to himself and Maureen.
The mincer.
Karen Patterson, the Queen of Chrisp St Market.
F.Cooke in Hoxton, David Beckham’s preferred Pie & Mash Shop.
“My old grandmother ate pies every day of her life and when she died at ninety-three she still had all her own teeth.”
Contented diners eat pies in near silence.
Ladling the liquor made with Spanish parsley.
Joseph Cooke, fourth generation piemaker.
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
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Favourite Pie & Mash Shops (Part One)
At the Penny Farthing Race
One Saturday each Summer, the grand old meat market in Smithfield transforms into a velodrome where a lively range of contests – including fierce races for professional cyclists and playful dashes for City commuters in bowler hats on folding bikes – take place before for a roaring crowd, bringing hectic life to these streets that are empty for every other weekend of the year. And this year’s big attraction was a Penny Farthing Race, the first to be held in London since the eighteen eighties when the technology of the modern bicycle rendered them obsolete. Yet, confirming that the Penny Farthing is a vehicle to be reckoned with in the twenty-first century, forty competitors converged on Smithfield from the United Kingdom, Australia, America, Spain, France, Italy, Germany and Belgium to compete, some riding venerable old bikes from the nineteenth century and others astride shiny new ones enhanced by the possibilities of modern technology.
The challenge, the drama, the sense of freedom and the possibility that bicycles originally offered are vividly present with Penny Farthings. The unlikely marriage of man and machine that cycling entails becomes obvious to all on a Penny Farthing, when it has been lost by the ubiquity of conventional cycles. Quite simply, the larger the front wheel the faster you go and the problem is not, as you might imagine, going uphill but keeping control while coming downhill at breakneck speed.
On a Penny Farthing, you are always going to stand out from the crowd and you will get to see over the hedge too, even look down on motorists. And so, the idiosyncratic delight of the Penny Farthing attracts the individualists of the cycling world, those who would rather diverge from the pack and wish to do it on a crazy contraption with one great big wheel and one little tiny one – a beast that requires agility to climb onto and superlative balance to stay in the saddle. Those who cycle “ordinaries,” as specialists refer to them, require a certain strength of character, combining fearlessness and fun, because once you are up in the saddle your feet cannot touch the ground.
The Penny Farthings – many of which were more than a hundred years old – looked entirely at home lined up in the gloom of the market’s Grand Avenue beneath the intricate cast iron vault, where I took the opportunity to chat with some of the competitors in the half hour before the race, as they prepared to face the glare of the afternoon. “They’re fast, they’re spectacular and they excite the crowds,” enthused Phil Saunders, the succinctly spoken white-haired City gent who organised the gathering, as he stood with one hand on the saddle of his proud machine. Phil told me he has toured Japan on his Penny Farthing, and travelled abroad with it more than fifty times in the last twenty years to participate in races all over the world including Uganda, Kenya, Egypt and Jordan.
“I saw one in a museum as a child but it took me thirty years to go out and buy one for myself!” revealed Graeme Smith – who has been cycling his Penny Farthing for five years now – in wonder at his own equivocation. While Barry Denny, a veteran cyclist from Bury St Edmunds confessed to me that he bought a Penny Farthing as a dignified strategy because, “I can no longer keep up with ordinary bikes.” But the surprise of the afternoon was eager Essex boy Joff Summerfield who admitted in the midst of our conversation that he had cycled twenty-six thousand miles round the world on his Penny Farthing, showing me the dent in his pith helmet where he fell off in Tibet. As I stood in silent wonder at this mind-boggling endeavour, Joff helpfully explained he had panniers on the back for supplies and a basket on the front where he kept his stove for cooking. “It’s not as hard as it sounds,” he said in an unconvincing attempt to shrug it off.
Then, before he could say more, it was time to wheel the Penny Farthings out onto the track where the photographers and television crews awaited, and shots fired by the Portsoken Militia set the race in motion. The cyclists enjoyed one lap around the course together at a casual pace until they passed the starting post for the second time, when they sped away for a one mile dash, pedalling like demons. On the first lap, the bystanders were all entranced by the rare spectacle of so many Penny Farthings, but when the cycles flew away down to the Faringdon Rd and up Charterhouse St, returning by Long Lane before anyone expected it, a ripple of amazement went through the crowd – because in the first race in London for over a century, Penny Farthings had affirmed themselves as serious racers.
Joff Summerfield and the Penny Farthing on which he cycled round the world.
You can watch Joff Summerfield on his round the world Penny Farthing trip here
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