Brick Lane Market 2
Pickles
Had I walked this street on a Sunday in 1911, I would have had florins or farthings or halfpennies in my pocket, and I would have been in search of a linnet or a parrot or maybe a Japanese Nightingale to share my home. And this narrow road would have been packed with all variations of humanity, a dark heaving mass ebbing and flowing, searching high amongst the piles of cages for a feathered companion to add song to their days. And, according to George Sims in his book “Off the Track in London,” when you buy a canary off a road hawker “he puts it in a little paper bag for you, and you carry it away as if it were a penny bun.”
But it is not 1911, it is now, and I am in search of a woman called “Pickles” who has traded at the market on and off for the last thirty years.
Ahead of me, I see a petite woman, pretty, with a red flower in her hair. The colour cuts through the grey light like a burst of joy. She stands in front of her Aladdin’s cave, part-tucked into a wall next to an old railway chapel. It is filled with the clothes and trinkets of past lives; rows of beads and racks of shoes, of hats – once someone’s favourite skirt, favourite jumper – ready to live again on swaying bodies. A treasured hoard of glass and crockery, of books and purses, and a mother’s hand-made dolls, and all – all – so cared for by Pickles, and displayed as she once would have done in her shop, the one with the old-fashioned bell above the door.
“Every class of man and woman came to that old bird market,” says Pickles, “and the same today. Markets – they’ve always been a great leveller,” and she hands me a welcomed cup of tea.
“I was hit hard by the development of Spitalfields. I always thought that this was a place that if you fell upon hard luck, hard times, you could start again. But it’s been difficult. When the old bridge was taken down, I lost everything – home and livelihood. Change bulldozes everything. I wrote to Prince Charles, and even Prince Charles tried to save the bridge. Development has no place for the everyman history,” she adds, her green eyes flashing. And I feel the injustice, a force potent and understandable. A sense of wrongness, an awakening to a world that is suddenly awry and unrecognizable.
“Even for kids, there are no discoveries to make anymore, nowhere to play,” Pickles adds. “Imagination is squashed – such a lack of creativity. I played on bomb sites when I was a child, and in the sink mud of the Thames,” she laughs. “I had a lot of freedom. Well it was after the war, and I suppose my mum had got quite desensitized, because of all the things she’d seen. She wasn’t overly protective. When I was nine, I got run over on the Wandsworth Bridge Road. When the policeman came to tell my mum, she said, ‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’ I suppose people were used to expecting the worst. When she came to see me in the hospital, I made out I was worse than I was and groaned and pretended to pass out. I had to stay like that till she’d gone – serves me right!” she laughs.
“Later I went with my mum and lived in a gypsy caravan. That’s where I learnt how to recycle things – make use of everything. Mum used to cut the zips and buttons off clothes and I‘d take them to the rag man and collect money. I’ve worked since I was fourteen. Played truant and worked as a waitress, a shop assistant in Woolworths, worked in a hat factory, started as a packer and ended up being able to make a block and hats. I’ve always done something, kept going. Always been a bit of an outsider too – I’ve lived up North, lived down here, lived wherever I could make a home.”
“Maybe it’s the gypsy caravan in your blood,” I venture.
“Maybe. But even my Nan moved a lot during the war. I think she was trying to outrun Hitler!”
“So what did you do after the development? After you were moved on?” I ask, and she points to the yellow van with the image of Mickey Mouse and “Pickles Parties” painted along the side. “I couldn’t do markets for a bit. A lot of stuff was ruined or in storage, and it hurt too much. So I did that. I made lucky dips and did face painting.”
And I marvel at Pickles’ spirit, at her passion and articulacy. Her tenacity and style is infectious. And as a sudden chill whips along the street, I’m about to cap my pen, when I stop.
“I have to ask you, you know,” I say.
“Oh Blimey, not my age!”
“No. Why are you called Pickles?”
“Ah,” she laughs, “that’s another story…”
Portrait copyright © Jeremy Freedman
ENVOI
My week is over and thanks are due. Thank you to the Gentle Author for the opportunity to spend time in Spitalfields Life – it is a beautiful and memorable world. Thank you to photographer Patricia Niven who has been with me all week and who has enhanced all I have written with the most wonderful and affecting images.
Sarah x
Photograph copyright © Patricia Niven
Grace Payne, City of London Resident
I am looking out from the thirty-sixth floor of one of the Barbican Towers. The clouds are low, and the City is trapped beneath a dismal fug. The spire of Christ Church, Spitalfields, is barely visible in the distance.
“You used to be able to see the Monument from here, but now it’s dwarfed by all the towers. Nothing is as it was, except perhaps the Honourable Artillery Company ground,” says Grace, as she places the tea tray down and offers me a delicious homemade flap jack. “Not that everything in the past is necessarily good. If you go back far enough, it becomes a hell of a lot worse.
My Granny had four children and her husband died of consumption. Died like flies from overcrowding then. Mummy was only six. Granny ended up living in the Corporation Buildings in Farringdon Road – The old Guardian home – There was one parlour, one bedroom and a scullery with a copper pot, and a loo out the back. I can still smell the linoleum in that parlour.”
I have known the ubiquitous Grace Payne for five years now. We sing in a Community Choir together and the first things I noticed about her was her style, her elegance, and her irrepressible vitality. Over this time I’ve got to know a little about her working life, her sixteen years spent in Hong Kong, a little about her family. But this afternoon, over a pot of tea, she is taking me back to a time before.
“I was born in 1924. We lived in a condemned tenement building in Brixton,” she tells me. “My father was in the police there. We then moved to Streatham and I went to Sunnyhill Primary School – think it’s still there actually. In 1934, my father was made Chief Inspector of a division at the Minories and we lived at the police station at number sixty. If you look for it now, it’s just a highway. I took a junior county scholarship for the City of London School for Girls, which was in Carmelite Street then. The headmistress was a Miss Turner: a slim woman, hair in a bun, flat buttoned shoes, dressed in purple, you know the type. Wouldn’t allow a book to be placed on top of the bible in her presence! It was quite a snobby environment, and I had rather a South London accent. My mother, a working class woman, went to meet Miss Turner and was asked, ‘What would happen about the fees if your husband lost his job?’ So insensitive. They recommended me to have elocution lessons.
I used to travel from Mark Lane Station (now Tower Hill) to Blackfriars. There were no school friends or neighbours who lived near me, except my friend Olga Raphalowsky who lived in Spitalfields. They were White Russian Refugees. Her father was a GP and they lived over the surgery. This family was like another world to me. Thick accents, intellectuals, wonderful and friendly – so exotic, not at all English. Uncle Danny was a film maker! I was still friends with Olga up until she died two years ago.
Oh I’ve stayed in touch with many of my school friends – Margaret and Mary, and Hazel Morris. I suppose wartime brought us together. In November 1940 we were evacuated to Keighley in Yorkshire. We waited in the church hall for one’s name to be called out and for someone to take you home. Margaret and I were billeted together with a family called Lumb. We were there for two years with the mother and father and three year old Jean. Well, Jean comes to stay with us now when she comes to London. She must be nearly seventy-three.
Keighley was grim. War was pretty bad by then and rationing tight. Coal was in short supply and homes were cold. But Margaret and I used to go into Bradford for the Hallé concerts. Henry Wood was conducting one night and he apologised for wearing a lounge suit. He explained that his suitcase had been lost on the train and that’s why he didn’t have his proper dress.
Before evacuation, however, we’d gone to live in Snow Hill police station because my father had again been promoted. He was in charge of all the ARP warden’s too. There was sticky tape across the bow windows and sandbags piled out the front. The police station had a flat roof and I used to collect shrapnel that had fallen during the night. I had a great collection. One morning, I found cans of fruit on the roof that had blown over from an exploding warehouse. I used to sleep in the basement and my parents slept at the back. A bomb fell on our building in September 1940. It was 10:30, 11:15 at night, I think. Four bombs were dropped all in a line – one hit the Evening Standard building, another St Bart’s hospital, another I can’t remember, but the last fell on us. I remember my parents coming out covered in dust.
From my school days until now, the one thing I’ve always done is sing in a choir – maybe with a few gaps. But my father always sang in a choir. He started the City of London Police Choral Society, started it during the war. He sang at Douglas’s and my wedding. We were married in St Bartholomew the Great Church. It was wonderful, didn’t cost an arm and a leg in those days – The film “Four Weddings and a Funeral” changed all that. Cost us seven shillings and sixpence, I think.
We didn’t consciously move back to the Barbican after our travels. We were living in South Kensington. But when we got to the age of seventy, we were nagged by one of our daughters to move before one of us had a stroke or something! But I can’t imagine not living here. At our age there’s so much to do. If we lived in the country what the hell would we do?”
There is a moment to pause, and I write: City of London Old Girl, Imperial College Old Girl, wife, mother, university teacher, text book writer, traveller, jewellery maker, and all round good egg.
“Anything else, Grace?” I ask.
“Grandmother and great grandmother,” she says. “Family, it’s the thing that matters most of all. Everything else is rather trivial in comparison,” she says and she smiles. And I know she is right.
I look up from my notebook and realize hours have passed. Night has fallen. We sit quietly as lights erupt across the spent City.
“I was also a model, you know,” says Grace matter-of-factly.” Must have been seven because after that I cut my hair and they didn’t want me then. I modelled for a Couture House in Bond Street – ‘Russell and Allen’s’ – I came up on the tram from Streatham, lovely to have a day off school. Also modelled for Paton and Baldwins’ knitting patterns.”
I take another succulent flap jack. I am happy. Grace Payne I salute you.
Home made flapjacks following a sixty year old recipe.
Grace’s first teddy bear.
Grace in her kitchen jewellery workshop.
Grace in her modelling days.
Grace at the Police Sports Day around 1930.
At Sunny Hill Road Primary School.
Grace’s father
Science text books from Hong Kong co-written by Grace.
Grace Payne
Photographs copyright © Patricia Niven
Trevor Chelsea, Smithfield Butcher
Trevor Chelsea
“It was market-morning. The ground was covered, nearly ankle-deep, with filth and mire, and a thick steam, perpetually rising from the reeking bodies of the cattle, and mingling with the fog, which seemed to rest upon the chimney-tops, hung heavily above … Countrymen, butchers, drovers, hawkers, boys, thieves, idlers, and vagabonds of every low grade, were mingled together in a mass…” – This is Charles Dickens’ vivid account of the livestock market in Smithfield, described in Oliver Twist in 1838. Seventeen years later the trade in live animals was forced to move north to the open space of Islington, due to the frequency of injuries and deaths caused by wayward cattle stampeding through the narrow streets of the City. And in 1868, the Meat Market at Smithfield formally opened as the London Central Meat Market in new permanent buildings designed by the famous City Architect, Sir Horace Jones.
And it is to this monument of Victorian vision and practicality that I am heading; its ornamental coloured cast iron as familiar to me as the dome of the Old Bailey, which peeks out from the periphery.
The market is sleepy and the workers have gone – the forgotten joke will have to wait for another night. Discarded takeaway cups are filling with rain and the litter from a night of work plasters the sodden streets. Wooden pallets are packed away, and lights within start to dim, as yawns set in. But not everyone is closing down, the day butchers are ready and waiting for custom.
At Smithfield Butchers a typical day starts at five am, with orders prepared for the pubs and hotels, with deliveries and shop displays and, of course, with “the breaking down” – dividing carcasses into those recognisable cuts of meat. This to me is a male world. A man is never without a hatchet or a knife, or a lump of meat, working skilfully amidst blood and bone and flesh, carving to extract the perfect cut. This is a world of affable men, natural storytellers whose banter is as rich and as succulent as a belly of pork, a world where birth names are replaced by nicknames.
Trevor Chelsea (or “Chels” as he is known – “because I support Chelsea”) is no exception. He has worked at the market for twenty-five years now, and I used to pass him and his colleagues as I made my daily way along Charterhouse street, the “hello” to the men at Crosby’s a natural ritual. They had been there since 1971, a bit of a landmark, always there and always would be there, I thought. But one compulsory purchase by the railways later, and the butchers moved to the west side of the market, leaving a yawning gap where they used to be.
“There was no time for a celebration or a quiet drink with your memories,” says Trevor, “it was a Bank Holiday, I remember, we packed up on the Friday and were in the new premises on the Monday. We had orders to fill and we got on with it.
The market has changed a lot since I started twenty-five years ago. A lot of business is done behind closed doors now, and all the characters are leaving or have left. In those early days, there was a real hustle and bustle, lots of laughing and joking, like a proper market, like Petticoat Lane. Loads of shouting.
It was the camaraderie,” he continues. “If I was to leave tomorrow, that’s what I’d take with me. And the laughs. You had to – In the early days my shift started at two am and went on till two pm. In winter it was freezing, hands had chilblains, it was real hard work, and those winters seemed colder then, maybe because we were outside all the time. But joking around kept you warm – kept your spirits up.
The rules and regulations were unwritten then, but you always knew what line not to cross. It was about what you could get away with. We used to cut off rabbit heads and nail ‘em to the front doors of customers who hated rabbit! Joe Pasquale used to work down here too – he liked to put a chicken on his head and run around. Teddy Lynch too – the brother of the entertainer Kenny Lynch – he was the first black man down here to be a bummaree,” and I must have looked quizzical because he added, “You know the barrow boys who load the meat and carcasses for the customer. They were the only ones who had the right to carry meat in the market. When I started there were about fifteen hundred bummarees – now there’s five.”
And Trevor leads me inside to look at the photographs on the wall, the photos of these “barrow boys”. And yet I see no boys, just men over fifty, the hard toil etched into their faces, of a working life that starts when most are asleep, and ends as daylight ferociously erupts across the city skyline.
“Him there, sitting on the stone,” says Trevor, pointing to an old man, “well that’s “Disley” – when he retired he had no one left. All his family had died, so he just came back down here and sat and watched. And that one there, that’s “Treacle” – they called him that because he had sticky fingers. You couldn’t leave meat around when he was about. And that one, him with the glasses, that’s Pat Crosby – brought up in a workhouse. Number D12. He still works. And him there, with the bugle, that’s Johnny Green, he played the Last Post the day the market died.” (The day the market temporarily closed in the mid-nineties to bring it up to EU food safety regulations).
“So did you always want to be a butcher?” I ask.
“No, at first I was a signwriter in Queensway for seven months, and it seemed like I wrote the same word for seven months! It drove me mad, so I left. But there was a recession and the only job I saw advertised was for an experienced butcher, so I went for it – told ‘em I’d worked as a butcher for a year. They found me out when they sent me to the fridge to get something – hadn’t got a clue what they were on about. But they kept me on and trained me. And I’m still here today. Cold and hungry, as we say.”
Treacle
Disley
Pat Crosby
Trevor
Johnny Green
Black and white portraits copyright © Chris Clunn
Colour photographs copyright © Patricia Niven
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At the City Corner Cafe
Delfina Cordani
The City Corner Cafe is exactly where its name suggests – on the corner of Middlesex St and Bishopsgate, where it has been for over fifty years. I approached it one crisp morning when the sun had not as yet delivered the promise of warmth, and its steamed windows lured me towards the prospect of delicious smells and chat and coffee inside, and, of course, towards a meeting with the owners, the delightful Delfina Cordani and her son Alexander – a formidable double act.
Time stops as you enter. This is a sixties cafe – a film set almost – with blue vinyl banquettes and panelled walls and a beautiful well-loved coffee machine by the renowned W.M Still and Son. And I imagine the deals done at these tables over the years, the stories read, the hands held, the illicit whispers of love, and I feel grateful, that here is a cafe of character and charm and warmth, a far cry from the generic, sterile cafes of today.
On the back wall is a beautifully polished mosaic from 1836 depicting the story of Dick – later the eponymous Dirty Dick – a prosperous city merchant and warehouse owner called Nathaniel Bentley, who fell into an abyss of dirt and decay and self-neglect after his fiancé suddenly died on their intended wedding day. Apparently there were two more mosaics to accompany this story, Alex tells me – one of the deceased’s funeral carriage with white horses and the other of a Town Crier, both, however, are missing.
Delfina sits down with her coffee. She is an engaging woman, blessed with a youthful spirit and a mischievous smile that belies her eighty-two years. Brought up on a farm in Italy, in Emilia Romagna, she was one of seven children and first came to London as a nursemaid before going to work at Great Ormond Street Hospital.
“At eight o’clock exactly, I used to make coffee for the matron and the governor. I made it by burning the dry grounds of coffee in a saucepan and then adding the boiling water. They loved my coffee, and I still have the saucepan…” she whispers conspiratorially.
“I think I was matron’s favourite,” she laughs. “I did a bit of everything – looked after the children because in those days parents were not allowed to stay in the hospital. Matron used to give me tickets to the theatre and opera. It was quite a special thing in those days – I had to buy a new dress so they’d let me in. I saw La Boheme,” she says, beaming.
“I loved working there. It was a wonderful environment, felt very equal. In Italy, if a man was a doctor he could be a bit snooty, but there it felt different. I remember one consultant raising his hat to me and I told him he didn’t have to do that – I wasn’t an important person – and he said ‘You’re just like me. I had the chance to study. Maybe you didn’t. But that’s our only difference.’
It was my friend Ida who persuaded me to leave the hospital and I went and worked with her as a waitress in Covent Garden in a busy Italian restaurant. I went from a calm environment to the bustle of Covent Garden. But I was never without flowers or vegetables!”
During this time, she met Giuseppe at a dance in the basement of the Italian Church in Clerkenwell, and in 1958 they were married. It was Giuseppe who was eager to set up his own business, and after a quick search, Delfina and Giuseppe spent their first day in the City Corner Cafe in June 1963.
“I was nervous to start with. An Irish girl who worked there before we took it over, stayed on with us and taught me the rules – lots of rules! – ‘Faster Delfina!’ she’d say. ‘People are in a hurry – you must do things faster!’ The cafe was small, few tables. And one day someone from Dirty Dick’s pub came to us and asked if we’d like to expand into the old alleyway beside us. We bought the alleyway and, of course, the mosaic which was part of the ancient wall. It gave us an extra five tables.
I’ve had a very happy life here, met so many wonderful people. We had customers who would come around the counter and make their own tea and leave the money on the side. People were honest then. We had lots of regulars – I would always get birthday cards and Valentine cards. A tall slim distinguished Englishman bought me an orchid on Valentine’s Day – such a rare flower then. If my husband didn’t like it, he certainly didn’t show it! I often wonder what happens to people. They become part of your life and tell you about their families and then one day they disappear. Maybe they’ve retired, maybe moved away? Maybe died? You never know.”
There is a quiet moment as she reflects on the years and the faces and the memories they hold. And then Alexander comes over and asks proudly. “Have you told her about hiding the British soldiers on your farm?”
“That was another life ago,” Delfina says.
“I’d like to know,” I say. And so she tells me.
“It was 1944, I think. I was thirteen. Blonde and small. I noticed my father making lots of sandwiches and I became suspicious because we didn’t eat lots of sandwiches. He told me that he had two British soldiers hidden under the hay in the barn. He had found them hiding in his vineyard and told them to stay put until dark, because the area was full of Germans. He hadn’t told us children because children talk, and if word got out the Germans would have burned down the farm and killed us all. He forbade me tell anyone. They stayed for a week, I think. I saw one of them once, he had blonde wavy hair. And then they disappeared and that was it. After the war the British MoD sent my father a plaque thanking him for his bravery. They also sent him money to pay for those soldiers keep.
I think they must have survived those soldiers, don’t you?”
And she looks at me with those deep eyes, as if she needed reassurance that her father’s brave efforts had not been in vain.
The extension of the cafe into a former alley.
The mosaic from 1836 upon the wall of what was once an alley leading to Dirty Dick’s next door.
Delfina
Alexander
A food order
Carlian
Delfina’s lunch
In Middlesex St
Photographs copyright © Patricia Niven
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A Lesson in Tripe
“Tripe strikes fear in people”
If there is one dish with the reputation to send someone rushing to the bathroom before trying it, then it has to be tripe. In its raw state, I’ve always thought it looks like coral, but that is as far as my musings go. It is edible offal from the stomachs of various animals, and no amount of imagination or similes can ultimately disguise that grisly fact. Tripe has quite a following away from these shores and is part of an everyday dining tradition in France, Spain and Italy. In the Mercato Centrale in Florence, there is even a “tripperie” – a fast food outlet serving those busy people of Tuscany who simply can’t get enough of the stuff.
“One tripe burger, please and hold the mayo!” – It just seems so wrong.
In Britain we tend to use beef tripe the most, the variants thereof sporting names like leaf, bible, carpet, blanket, plain, reed, honeycomb – gentle, innocuous names masking the unfamiliar terrain beneath. Plain comes from the first stomach of the cow, honeycomb the second and bible, or leaf, the third. The fourth stomach, I read, apart from the extraction of rennet, seems to be used less frequently “due to its glandular tissue….” Oh dear.
Having attempted to walk this life with an open mind, I soon realized that I had tripe prejudice simmering on a low heat in my heart. In order to advance my knowledge of this murky, intestinal world, I needed to procure the help of a master – nay, the King of Tripe! – who else but the inestimable, hugely affable, ridiculously talented Mr Fergus Henderson of St John Restaurant.
“Tripe stirs fear in people,” says Mr Henderson rather knowingly. There is a long pause, in which I feel the said fear. “Most people shut down and close their hearts to tripe. But people who come to the restaurant for tripe, really love tripe. They are tripe fiends.
There is no particular season for tripe. It is a forever dish: any time, any place, an anywhere dish. It’s tummy, so it doesn’t really change. Of course, jellied tripe is a more summery dish – it is an initiate’s dish one might say, and it tends to win over a lot of people. I like to serve it with cornichons. Accompanied by a jolly rosé – that to me would be perfect.
Could I tell the difference between honeycomb tripe and carpet tripe and leaf tripe?” – Another pause – “Well, if I wiggled my tongue and got the texture, then yes, probably.
Tripe and onions actually shows tripe at its best. Use unbleached tripe – it needs a good rinse in salted water as it is a little brown by nature – and then you soften the onions in milk, add the tripe and simmer for up to an hour. I would call this an enthusiast’s dish.
The great thing about tripe is that it achieves a great culinary combination, both steadying and uplifting at the same time. It rescues one from life. It is a white food and needs mashed potato – something to “anchor” it to the “*!*!*!” (Please note: At this point Mr Henderson makes a long slurping sound that completely enhances one’s understanding of the dish). Accompanied, of course,” he continues, “by a red burgundy.
Deep fried tripe is like a grown-up Quaver. Use unbleached tripe again. After cooking for eight hours season and flour and then throw in the deep fat fryer. It fans out – expansive gesture – and it’s wonderfully crispy. Eat with salt and vinegar. Accompanied, of course…”
“With a red sparkling wine,” interjects Mr Trevor Gulliver joyously. “A Portuguese or a Shiraz.”
“Or a red burgundy,” says Mr Henderson, with emphasis.
There is a moment to reflect. The simmering has stopped, and my heart is opening. I feel like an acolyte in an airless vault. In the presence of a Master. I refill my water glass, my head buzzing, my understanding clearer. We continue.
“Tripe needs enough chew,” continues Mr Henderson. “It shouldn’t yield straight away – maybe not until the third chew, and then it starts to give way, then it becomes submissive.”
My hand is suddenly in the air, waving.
“Yes?” says Mr Henderson.
“I read somewhere that tripe can increase libido. Four fold.”
There is a very long pause in which Mr Gulliver raises his eyebrows.
“Well,” says Mr Henderson, “It’s heady stuff, tripe. Uplifting.”
“Can you eat it as a dessert?” asks the photographer.
“You’d be very foolish,” says Mr Henderson.
“What you need to understand,” says Mr Henderson, “is that food is mood-led. You wake up and think…Ahhh, tripe and onions. One needs to test the perception of beauty. Tripe is a beautiful thing. It brings you back from the edge when you think there’s no hope… But then you remember there’s tripe and onions – it’s pretty impressive.” Mr Henderson sits back against the wall and exhales deeply. “First initiation into tripe,’ he says ‘I think we’ve had a good stab at it.”
Here Endeth the Lesson.
“Jellied tripe – an initiate’s dish. “
“If I wiggled my tongue and got the texture…”
“It shouldn’t yield straight away…”
“It fans out…”
“Can tripe increase libido?”
“It rescues one from life.”
Edmund Martin Ld, Tripe Dresser in Lindsey St, Smithfield, demolished last year.
Portraits of Fergus Henderson copyright © Patricia Niven
Tripe photograph in “Nose to Tail Eating” by Jason Lowe
Photograph of Edmund Martin Ltd by the Gentle Author
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James Lowe, St John Bread & Wine
Night in the Bakery at St John
The First Mince Pies of the Season
Justin Piers Gellatly, Baker & Pastry Chef
At Bunhill Fields
“After five hundred and forty-two stories, it is my pleasure to welcome Sarah Winman to take over for a week in celebration of the publication of her debut novel When God was a Rabbit on Thursday 3rd March. Sarah is an outstanding new talent in British fiction, and I can happily recommend her writing to you in the knowledge that you are in safe hands until my return on Monday 7th March” – the Gentle Author
As I walk through the familiar black metal gates, the moss on the headstones looks vivid green in the dull, wet gloom of February light. The sodden earth, fragrant and rich, is punctuated by thick clusters of daffodil stems – that precious moment when spring meets at the boundary of winter, the moment when we sigh, knowing the worst has passed, the short days have passed, and we, like nature, head towards the light.
I have always come to Bunhill Fields, since my early days of living in the City of London. But about three years ago I made a pact to come here every day for a year – my antidote to my father’s rampaging illness and those days spent on hospital wards – my need to understand the cyclical nature of life. And walking through these black iron gates, the markers of lives and stories past on either side, I breathe in the constancy and honesty of nature.
Over that year, I watched this small space adapt and change with the seasons. I went sometimes simply to listen out for the delicate drilling of a woodpecker. I watched the fig tree, once energised by encroaching spring and gloriously laden in the sweetness of summer, wilt heavily as autumn whispered across its branches, as its leaves drooped like shoulders, before falling to a frosty floor. I noted the multiple textures of light – the late evening buttery light of a summer day, the metallic light of a frost-covered morning, when my misted breath led me over to the graves of Daniel Defoe, John Bunyan, and to the uniquely cherished grave of William Blake, where trinkets and offerings and earrings and flowers lay beside, in front of, and on top – all in tribute and memory to a poet, artist and visionary, a man who continues to touch lives, and never more so than in this great City of ours.
“To see the world in a grain of sand/And heaven in a wild flower/Hold infinity in the palm of your hand/And eternity in an hour – This is what sums up Blake for me,” says Tom the Gardener, as he joins me on a bench for a quiet chat.
Tom has worked in Bunhill Fields for the last ten years, and he talks about the environment with passion, pride and wit – qualities all the best Irish storytellers share.
“You know this is supposed to be the most haunted graveyard in London. I haven’t seen anything yet, but I know people who have. Lots of women with big hats suddenly emerging,” he says, wryly smiling. “I love this place. I love the peace and tranquillity and because I am surrounded by history. I know it’s a graveyard but it’s all about people and their stories. All these histories add to what little knowledge we have.
The graves here are very simple, as you can see. Nonconformists are buried here so the stones are not really elaborate. These men and women were free thinkers, radical thinkers, seeking liberty away from church and government. Look over there,” says Tom, “the grave of Thomas Bayes. Statisticians from all over the world come to the grave to honour the man’s theories of probability.
Bunhill – Bonehill – This place is also known as God’s Acre because of the amount of preachers buried here. Lots of Americans make a pilgrimage here – Wesleyans, Baptists, Methodists. They all try and convert me!”
We wander through the stones. We pass thick layers of moss blanketing tombs like table cloths, and fox dens dug deep by the sides, their entrances curtained by hanging roots and an occasional spider’s web.
“I find lots of clay pipes in the dirt the foxes excavate, oysters too: the poor man’s food. I haven’t found anything Anglo Saxon yet. One day,” he says, with a glint in his eye.
“One of my favourite graves is over here – the grave of Thomas Miller – it has carved cherubs and skulls, and the face of the cherub really stands out” And as we approach, I can see that it does – the face peers through the dingy gloom like the serene face of a child, and I wonder if a moment like this has enhanced imagination and brought the realm of improbable into the realm of the real.
“The skulls too have an eerie feel,” continues Tom. “Skulls in the early eighteenth century were the symbol of mortality. This is another favourite,” he says, and leads me over to a grey slate stone – that of the departed Wheatlys from Ave Maria Lane – a carved tale featuring a globe, a cross, an anchor, and the words ashes to ashes, dust to dust. “People lived with death all the time then, early death, children’s deaths, they walked hand in hand with it. There was an acceptance of it. Not like today. We’re so scared of it,” he says, and his voice trails off into the fading light.
And we sit silently once again, as the City stills. There is no hush of breeze to stir the bare branches of the old plane trees, so self-consciously naked. And I look over the lawn as tufts of newly-seeded grass take hold, and the crocuses erupt in shuddering yellows and mauves: new life amidst this gentle setting of earthly departure, and I feel all is well. And all is just so.
A squirrel poses by a puddle before taking a drink. The sound of a faint siren draws us back to the present. Tom leans over towards me.
“Apparently Churchill came here during the war. A bomb had dropped just over there and the trees were on fire and he was fighting the flames with his hat…”
The stories continue.
Tom the Gardener.
Upon the wall in Tom’s hut.
The fox den under a tomb.
Photographs copyright © Patricia Niven
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Columbia Road Market 69
While the weather outside remains capricious, I am able to enjoy my indoor garden of Spring flowers in old pots upon the dresser every day. Now that Spring bulbs are coming into flower in the garden, the end of the season for potted bulbs at Columbia Rd means a large variety are available for as little as one pound a pot. Consequently, each week, I have been carrying trays of these back to Spitalfields and replanting them into my collection of old bowls, that I have amassed over the years from the market, to create an abundant display in my living room.
I cannot plant bulbs in my garden without squirrels simply eating them all, but I have found that if I plant out these Columbia Rd bulbs once they have flowered, they come up again next year and the squirrels do not touch them. Last week, I came back with a tray of late-flowering Pheasant’s Eye Narcissus, to replace the first wave of miniature Daffodils which have already flowered upon my window sill, and also five pots of Grape Hyacinths that I potted up indoors – all these were a mere one pound a pot.
The first Auriculas are in the market now, also at just a pound a pot and, each year, I can never resist these plants – with their exotically artificial-looking flowers – which are said to have been introduced to Britain by the Huguenots. Finally, I bought a coral-coloured Primula, which evokes a specimen my grandmother had of this exact shade when I was a child, and which I recall her showing me with great pride. Even though she died in 1991, when I see these plants each year, it always gives me a shock of recognition and I feel they belong to her. It is a tender reminiscence for the expenditure of just four pounds.
Grape Hyacinths.
Primula.
Auricula.
