Hugh Wedderburn, Master Woodcarver
Hugh Wedderburn works every day carving wood in the window of an old shop in the Borough at the meeting point of two Roman roads, Stane St and Watling St. “The ancient approach to London,” Hugh delights to call it, aware that the nature of the work he does has not changed significantly in all the time these roads have been there. Fifty yards behind Hugh’s workshop, a fourth century Roman tablet was found recently that includes the earliest known usage of the name “London.” It gives Huw pleasure to contemplate these things, savouring his position at the centre of this age-old neighbourhood.
While the world races by Hugh’s window, and as the acorns in pots on his bench grow up to become trees, he patiently shaves away superfluous pieces of wood to reveal elegant forms of creatures and foliage, that were just waiting to be uncovered by his keen tools. Or rather, that is the way it seems, because the quality of Hugh’s carving has such natural veracity and grace that it belies the immense skill and laborious application it takes to bring it into existence.
“The chisel makes the shape,” said Hugh, as if his involvement as woodcarver were merely incidental. “So you have to have the right chisel to make the form, and you need to have them in various bent shapes to do the awkward bits.” he added, referring to a handsome array of fifty diverse old chisels laid out in a crescent upon his bench surrounding the current piece of work, all perfectly-sharpened and interlaced with shavings. With these, Hugh can create the extraordinary intricate relief carving of baroque swags, flourishes and foliage that stands proud of the surface and defies the imagination to comprehend how mere mortals could carve it.
“I felt like I was coming home when I moved here to the Borough in 1996,” confessed Hugh brightly, peering out the window at the passersby in Tabard St,“because I was born in Nigeria and there are quite a lot people in Southwark from Nigeria.” In 2001, Hugh was contacted by Margaret Wedderburn Evans who told him they had a common ancestor in Robert Wedderburn, born in the West Indies in 1762 to a Scots’ father and a Jamaican mother. A campaigner against slavery, he came to London and joined the Spencerians, an English radical group that united the working men’s cause.
Today, Hugh’s ancestor is remembered for slogans such as,“It’s demeaning for the oppressed to petition the oppressor,” and “You can take away my weapons but I can still spit.” Sentiments that Huw quotes with relish and a gleeful smile. “I am the answer to the question of what happened to the first Afro-Caribbeans that came to London,” he said, holding up a lithe forearm to display his pale flesh. “Look, that’s what happened to them,” Hugh declared enigmatically, indicating that his perception of the world has a depth and complexity comparable to his work.
Hugh is at the top of his profession, yet in spite of his superlative skill the rewards are ultimately those of esteem rather than wealth. “It would be lovely to earn a fortune, but I get the satisfaction,” he admitted quietly, with a self-possessed grin, turning to the window again, “And I’m here in the middle of London. Office workers pass by on the way to their jobs and tell me how contented I look.”
When Hugh moved into his current workshop it had been a betting shop, but when he pulled out the shopfittings he found old matchboarding, now covered with organised lines of tools that form the background to his crowded yet harmonious work space. Sunlight pours in through the shop window, and filtered through the saplings in pots on Hugh’s work bench, it casts a soft light upon all the bits and pieces of work in progress, souvenirs of past works, cases of books and catalogues, working drawings, sculptures, driftwood and twigs.
“I wanted to be a sculptor but I didn’t want to go to art school,” explained Hugh, casting his eyes upon all the objects disappearing into shade at the rear of the shop. “So I found the City & Guilds School that teaches restoration” he continued, leading me purposefully to a table in a shadowy corner of the workshop,“and after that I became an antiques restorer. Then I made this table in the Queen Anne style and put it in an exhibition. It was shown in a magazine and that brought in a few private clients. And I realised how much more pleasure it was working for them than the antiques trade in general. The most interesting work is when an interior designer commissions a piece and gives you the freedom to be creative.”
I was fascinated to examine Hugh’s first table and see the marks of the chisel still fresh upon this bravura work. Without the varnish, staining and gilding that you expect of old furniture, it had another quality, and the clarity of the expressive wood carving came into relief. “There’s a snobbery about whether you’re an artist or not, as a woodcarver, because it’s a collaborative art,” mused Hugh, while I squatted down to admire the details of his extraordinary table,“but a musician interprets a composer’s work and that’s collaborative, yet it is not seen to compromise their integrity as a fine artist.” It was an interesting question, but not one to trouble Hugh very long because it was time to return to the bench and his current work.
Hugh started carving, making deliberate, slow confident strokes with a sharp chisel in absolute physical concentration, and a transformation came upon him. The man who had been so upbeat in conversation – flashing his startling grey eyes – was gone, and different, quieter, energy filled him. The clamor of the city retreated, the sound of Hugh Wedderburn’s wood carving was the only sound, and peace reigned.
This was Hugh’s first table.
Hugh’s current work-in-progress, these acorns are a detail from a larger composition.
A mirror carved by Hugh Wedderburn to a design by Marianna Kennedy
The title panel for the Cadfael television series, carved by Hugh in oak.
Work in progress upon a mirror frame by Marianna Kennedy sits upon the bench in Hugh’s workshop.
A Day Out from St Hilda’s
This may appear to be an innocent, heart-warming scene of schoolgirls waiting upon virtuous senior ladies with the vicar presiding from a distance. But a recent candid testimony from Rosemary Harvey, an ex-pupil of Cheltenham Ladies’ College – who came to do good works at St Hilda’s in Bethnal Green in 1965 when she was eighteen – tells a much more colourful story of how some posh girls got taken for a ride by a gang of sly East End women who knew how to enjoy a good knees-up.
“Wye Women’s Institute had asked them down to tea. Quite a long way to go in a coach. Now as far as we knew, one of the staff would come and we would be there to help. But at the last minute, the member of staff got off the bus and said, ‘Have a good day!’ or words to that effect, and almost the last words this person said was, ‘Whatever you do, do not stop at a pub.’ and he told the driver.
So, you know, we were out of London, and of course by about eleven o’ clock, we pull into a pub don’t we? What else? What else?! And they all get out, saying they had to go to the loo. Well, whether they did or not, they tanked up on liquid to replace it! They were in a pub, I mean to them, that was probably the highlight of the whole thing. All the women drank Guinness. They certainly got fairly merry. We did get them out of the pub, but with enormous difficulty. Then we went down to Wye and there was this lovely tea, all laid out by these very nice women with sandwiches with the crust cut off and fairy cakes and all of that. It wasn’t quite what they thought of as tea, but then I think they thought – rather like they thought about us – ‘They’re these strange people who live this peculiar way and we’d better be polite to them ‘cause they’ve made an effort’. But the tea wasn’t the thing. The advantage was seeing the countryside and it would start the memories of picking fruit when they were children. They remembered summers and going out and living in caravans and camping and camp fires and it was enormous fun.
Of course, we had to park in the same pub on the way back, me having told the coach driver very firmly not to do that. ‘Yes ma’am,’ and it made no difference. They were rolling drunk by the time they got home and there were some very raucous songs which we knew were naughty, but we didn’t know why because of the innuendos. They would start singing and there was a cheerleader, she would get them going, and a few of them would be sick. We got them all home, but it was a bit of a nightmare. I don’t know whether the staff thought this would be a good idea to see if we were up to being social workers, or whether they just disliked us so much they thought, ‘We’ll get our own back on them’. But actually the people on the coach were sweet to us and they kept coming and saying ‘She’s alright,’ ‘She’s ok, she had a drink with us’ and ‘You know, she laughed with us’. Which is not what they expected, I think they expected us to be very severe, coming from a different sort of culture.
We weren’t the first I’m sure.”
St Hilda’s was founded in 1889 by Cheltenham Ladies’ College as a charitable settlement where pupils came to live and work with the people of the East End, and it was suggested to Rosemary Harvey that she might like to go for a couple of weeks and work alongside the staff there upon leaving school. Brought up on farm in Devon, Rosemary was shocked by the urban deprivation and atmosphere of violence that she encountered, yet looking back forty five years later, she values it as a vital experience in her growing understanding of the world as a young woman.
“We thought we were going down there to help the poor but I don’t think we really had any clear idea about what we were going to do. Some of us dallied with the idea of going into social work which was a fairly new-ish idea then. You didn’t need a degree for it and it was slightly like going into nursing without actually having to do anything physical. There was nothing compulsory about going to St. Hilda’s, it was a bit like work experience really.
The place wasn’t as multi-cultural as it is today of course, but there were quite a lot of Jewish families there which tended to keep to themselves a bit. And there were black families, they had a much more outgoing louder lifestyle. Lots of drumbeats and lots of music everywhere and lots of smiles and that sort of thing. They were very well integrated as far as one could see. One didn’t expect them not to be, there was no expectation that people wouldn’t be accepted. So quite fun, quite different cultures. A lot of people though, had lived their lives in Tower Hamlets, but their children, who had made good, moved out. Hendon was the place if their children were successful, and there would be these big photographs of their children, saying you know ‘He’s now become a doctor,’ or a teacher or whatever and ‘They moved to Hendon’. ‘Do they come back and see you?’ Very often it was ‘Not often.’ You got the impression they were ashamed, they’d moved up the social scale. I can remember elderly people who were very proud of their children and not critical that they didn’t come, ‘Yes, oh yes, of course they come, they came for my birthday last year.’ And that to us seemed very strange, because families are families.
It was a very tough place but you couldn’t say it was totally unhappy. It was a very hand to mouth existence. I think that’s the bit that shocked us, we couldn’t imagine that at the end of the week you had no money to feed your family. That to us was a whole new concept, and I have to say we were probably pretty judgmental about that. We’d probably say, ‘They’re living above their means, they’re disorganised.’ I don’t think we actually had enough sense to think, ‘This is appalling, that people are paid so little that they can’t keep their families on it.’ I don’t think that crossed our minds. I don’t think we came away feeling sorry for them. Why should we? I don’t think they’d have wanted us to. In fact I think they might have thought, ‘Strange people, they don’t have this community spirit we do.’ Because I think they’d have found our lives as strange as we found theirs, and I don’t think they would necessarily have wanted to swap it.”
Rosemary’s experience was collected as part of an oral history project run by St Hilda’s East Community Centre, the contemporary incarnation of the St Hilda’s Settlement, still serving the people of the East End today. Alongside the pictures of the notorious ladies’ bus trip, it is my pleasure to publish a few other choice images from their archive because in spite of St Hilda’s mission to address deprivation, most of these beautiful pictures celebrate the joy it engendered.
A film “St Hilda’s East: the Story of a Community” telling the story of the settlement over one hundred and twenty years through personal testimony and archive material will be shown at the Rich Mix Cinema on November 8th. More details from St Hilda’s Archive
Ladies setting out on a day trip from St Hilda’s in anticipation of an intoxicating adventure.
At St Hilda’s, travel posters illustrated the fantasy of exotic destinations while a day trip to Bognor Regis was advertised on the noticeboard.
Documentation provided as induction to social work at St Hilda’s.
A young mothers’ trip to the seaside.
A dance for seniors.
A sewing group.
Mr Harris & the youth discussion group, 1952
Carnival time.
A camping trip in the nineteen forties.
Four local ragamuffins.
St Hilda’s opened in Old Nichol St in 1898 as the Incorporated Cheltenham Ladies’ Guild Settlement.
Jazmine Miles-Long, Ethical Taxidermist
“I just fell in love with it,” declared Jazmine Miles-Long, the ardent taxidemist of Stepney, when I visited her tiny workshop yesterday, “You only do it if you really love it, because taxidermy is such hard work.” A tall woman with straight hair, dark gleaming eyes and a serious self-confident manner, at twenty-four years old, Jazime is already ruffling feathers in the secretive and competitive British taxidermy community, with her radical and witty approach to this controversial art form.
The first thing you should know about Jazmine is that, as an ethical taxidermist, all her creatures died of natural causes or perished in accidents. No animals were killed in the making of these works. In fact, Jazmine herself has been a vegetarian since the age of nine and her work is an expression of her lifelong devotion to animals. “I’m completely obsessed with animals, I think they’re wonderfully interesting things and incredibly beautiful. As a child, I was only allowed cats and rats, and I still keep three rats in a cage in my bedroom,” she confided to me fondly.
You might wonder where Jazmine gets the dead animals that are both the raw material and subject of her of art, but I discovered that finding them is not a problem, as she explained to me, “Most of the animals come from the road outside my parents’ home in Herstmonceux, East Sussex.” You might think Herstmonceux is a black spot for roadkill, but Jazmine revealed that the entire modern world is dangerous place for wildlife, “Once you start looking for dead animals, they’re absolutely everywhere. The other day, I said I wanted a magpie and I got five in a row at the side of the road. Sometimes people find out about me and they’ve been hoarding birds in their freezer that crashed into their windows and died, but were too nice to throw away.” No-one could fault the cool logic of Jazmine’s scheme to create inspirational sculpture from these pitiful tragedies of animal life.
Jazmine studied sculpture at Brighton where she created environments in which she cohabited with animals, as a means to explore the relationship between animals and humans. Leaving college and seeking a living, Jazmine chose taxidermy, only to discover that it was as difficult as pursuing art. “Taxidermy was my idea of a career, and it’s been a bit of a struggle.” she confided with a weary smile, recounting her dogged attempts penetrate the small world of British taxidermy,“My learning has been completely self-directed. I joined the Guild of Taxidermists and, after calling up asking a lot of questions, I persuaded Jack Fishwick of the Museum of Scotland to let me join his studio on a voluntary basis, watching and helping him. But it has taken me three years to get to this point, where I have been doing commissions for the past year and now I have my first solo show which puts forward my own interpretation of taxidermy – because there’s quite a lot of pressure from the taxidermy community to do it in a certain way.” And Jazmine knitted her brows to illustrate the oppressive resistance of the taxidermy establishment.
“When I see a squirrel, I put a certain personality onto it and I may imagine it’s flirting with me,” revealed Jazmine delicately, as if that is what everyone thinks when they see a squirrel. Rejecting the conventional practice of creating stuffed creatures that are impassive within a natural environment, Jazmine seeks to emphasise the characterful presence of her creations, arranging ingenious and startling dramatic tableaux to confront the viewer. She is a taxidermist of the post-Marcel Duchamp, post-Maurizio Cattelan, post-Damien Hirst school and she is top of her class.
Jazmine is the first to admit that her work polarises opinion, “For a lot of people, the whole idea of touching something dead is disgusting, when they don’t have a problem eating meat.” she posited wryly. One of her most controversial pieces is a tiny lamb curled up, apparently sleeping, in a suitcase. Jazmine explained that her father, who fits kitchens for living, found the lamb. It was born unable to drink and was being kept alive in an Aga by a four year old girl who had knitted it a jumper. When it died, he told the little girl that his daughter would take care of it for her and so Jazmine acquired the lamb in a sweater. “Some people love it, others run away and can’t take it. They think it’s too morbid, they don’t like looking at death.” admitted Jazmine plainly. I found the sculpture to be an affectionate elegy for young life, contemplative and plangent like a Metaphysical poem.
Unlike conventionally lifeless stuffed animals, Jazmine’s are full of vibrant life and feeling, which is a both a measure of her achievement and may also explain why they draw strong responses. Some people find them too lifelike. As with the paintings of Peter Roa around the neighbourhood, which Jazmine admires, these creatures demand our respect, challenging us to empathise and, in doing so, examine our relationship to the natural world.
In a former engineering works in a quiet corner of Stepney, Jazmine has constructed a modest two room cottage of breeze blocks where she lives and works, sleeping in one room with the three rats in a cage for company, and working alone each day in the other room surrounded by all her cherished creations and works-in-progress. Here in this secret windowless space, Jazmine single-mindedly pursues her art of perfectionism with big ambition, as she confessed to me candidly, her eyes glistening with excitement, “I want to be the best taxidermist ever. There’s a competition run by the Guild of Taxidermists and I mean to win it one year. It’s a very exclusive world and at the moment they think I am quite amusing, but I want to become a threat to them.”
Jazmine has an acute feeling for the strange poetry of animals and birds. They unlock something in her. This is personal work in which the creatures become vehicles to express aspects of Jazmine’s psyche. Jazmine Miles-Long is a fearless original. Out of the East End, a new star rises in the world of taxidermy.
Catch Jazmin Miles-Long’s debut exhibition at Rob Ryan’s shop Ryantown in Columbia Rd, open for two more weekends only, until Sunday 24th October.
Jazmine proudly showing her first fox.
The Flowergirls of 1851
The image of the London flowergirl lingers in the popular imagination today primarily because of the writing of George Bernard Shaw who created the most famous of East End flowergirls, Eliza Doolittle, in his play “Pygmalion.” Subsequently transformed by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe into the musical “My Fair Lady,” and filmed with great success by George Cukor starring Audrey Hepburn, the romance of the flowergirl has seduced the world. Yet there was a vivid historical reality behind Shaw’s fiction that was less glamorous but equally revealing of human nature.
To complement my portraits of two contemporary flowersellers Tony Purser of Fenchurch St Station and Finty Chester of Columbia Road Market – I am publishing this account of two flowersellers by Henry Mayhew from his “London Labour & London Poor,” 1851.
Sunday is the best day for flowerselling, and one experienced man computed, that in the height and pride of the summer four hundred children were selling flowers on Sundays in the streets. The trade is almost entirely in the hands of children, the girls outnumbering the boys by more than eight to one. The ages of the girls vary from six to twenty, few of the boys are older than twelve, and most of them are under ten.
Of flowergirls there are two classes. Some girls, and they are certainly the smaller class of the two, avail themselves of the sale of flowers in the streets for immoral purposes, or rather, they seek to eke out the small gains of their trade by such practices. Their ages are from fourteen to nineteen or twenty, and sometimes they remain out offering their flowers until late at night.
The other class of flowergirls is composed of girls who, wholly or partially, depend upon the sale of flowers for their own support or as an assistance for their parents. They are generally very persevering, more especially the younger children, who will run along barefooted, with their, “Please, gentleman, do buy my flowers. Poor little girl!” or “Please kind lady, buy my violets. O, do! please! Poor little girl! Do buy a bunch, please, kind lady!”
The statement I give is of two orphan flowersellers, the elder was fifteen and the younger eleven. Both were clad in old, but not torn, dark print frocks and they wore old broken black chip bonnets. The older had a pair of old worn-out shoes on her feet, the younger was barefoot, but trotted along, in a gait at once quick and feeble – as if the soles of her little feet were impervious, like horn, to the roughness of the road. The elder girl has a modest expression of countenance, with no pretensions to prettiness except in having tolerably good eyes. Her complexion was somewhat muddy, and her features somewhat pinched. The younger child had a round, chubby, and even rosy face, and quite a healthful look. Her portrait is here given.
The elder girl spoke not at all garrulously, but merely in answer to my questions, “I sell flowers, sir, we live almost on flowers when they are to be got. I sell, and so does my sister, all kinds, but it’s very little use offering any that’s not sweet. I think it’s the sweetness as sells them. I sell primroses, when they’re in, and violets, and wallflowers, and stocks, and roses of different sorts, and pinks, and carnations, and mixed flowers, and lilies of the valley, and green lavender, and mignonette.
The best sale of all is, I think, moss-roses, young moss-roses. We do best of all on them. Primroses are good, for people say, ‘Well, here’s spring again to a certainty.’ Gentlemen are our best customers. I’ve heard that they buy flowers to give to the ladies. Ladies have sometimes said, ‘A penny, my poor girl, here’s three-halfpence for the bunch.’ Or they’ve given me the price of two bunches for one, so have gentlemen. I never had a rude word said to me by a gentleman in my life. I never go among boys, I know nobody but my brother.
I was born in London. Mother was a chairwoman, and lived very well. None of us ever saw a father. We were all ‘mother’s children.’ Mother died seven years ago last Guy Fawkes’ day. I’ve got myself, and my brother and sister a bit of bread ever since, and never had any help but from the neighbours. I never troubled the parish.”
In answer to my inquiries their landlady assured me that these two poor girls were never out of doors all the time she had known them after six at night.
“I buy my flowers at Covent Garden, sometimes, but very seldom, at Farringdon. I pay 1s. for a dozen bunches, whatever flowers are in. Out of every two bunches I can make three, at 1d. a piece. We make the bunches up ourselves. We get the rush to tie them with for nothing. We put their own leaves round violets. The paper for a dozen costs a penny, sometimes only a halfpenny. The two of us doesn’t make less than 6d. a day unless it’s very ill luck.
I always keep 1s. stock-money if I can. If it’s bad weather, so bad that we can’t sell flowers at all, and so if we’ve had to spend our stock-money for a bit of bread she (the landlady) lends us 1s., if she has one or she borrows one of a neighbour. We never pawned anything, we have nothing they would take in at the pawnshop. We live on bread and tea, and sometimes a fresh herring of a night.”
The brother earned from 1s. 6d. to 2s. a week, with an occasional meal, as a costermonger’s boy. Neither of them ever missed mass on a Sunday.
CUT FLOWERS
I now give the quantity of cut flowers sold in the streets. The returns have been derived from nurserymen and market salesmen. It will be seen how fully these returns corroborate the statement of the poor flowergirl, “it’s very little use offering anything that’s not sweet.” I may remark, too, that at the present period, from the mildness of the season, wallflowers, primroses, violets, and polyanthuses are almost as abundant as Spring sunshine.
Wallflowers ………………………………………. 115,200 bunches Lavender…………………………………………… 296,640 bunches Pinks and Carnations ……………………………..63,360 bunches Moss Roses …………………………………………172,800 bunches China Roses ……………………………………….. 172,800 bunches Mignonette …………………………………………. 86,400 bunches Lilies of the Valley …………………………………… 1,632 bunches Stocks ………………………………………………… 20,448 bunches Total cut flowers sold yearly in the streets …. 994,560 bunchesGeorge Bernard Shaw played upon the perceived moral ambiguity of the flowergirl in “Pygmalion.” While Eliza Doolittle protests her virtue by declaring, “I’m a good girl, I am,” her father is entirely amenable to prostitute his daughter to Professor Higgins for whatever he can get. Henry Mayhew’s testimony confirms the historical veracity of this ambivalence, while emphasising that the majority of flowergirls struggled to scrape a living by selling flowers and chose to retain moral dignity in spite of their poverty. And the cathartic moment in Shaw’s play when Eliza throws Professor Higgins’ slippers to the floor dramatises this crucial assertion of self-esteem.
Speaking with Tony Purser on the day of his retirement as a flowerseller after fifty-two years, I was surprised to learn of his early arrests for flowerselling without a licence. It reminded me that the lack of distinction between street traders and beggars – categorising all street people as low-life – which existed in the nineteenth century, persisted well beyond the Victorian era. I was inspired to meet Finty Chester, a contemporary Sunday flowergirl, who attends college in the week studying for a professional career, though the irony of our age is that even as a full time student, she also needs to run a flower stall to support herself.
Seventeen year old Finty Chester, twenty first century flowergirl, is studying media with a view to pursuing a parallel career as a journalist.
Photograph copyright © Jeremy Freedman
Columbia Road Market 54
This is Finty Chester who, at the tender age of seventeen years old, has the distinction of being the youngest trader in Columbia Road Market. Jeremy took a photograph of Finty a few weeks ago, but we decided to reshoot the portrait when we examined it and realised she had a black eye. With cheerful alacrity, Finty explained that she acquired the injury while defending herself against a gang of thieves who stole her mobile phone. I winced to hear this story but, with admirable strength of character, Finty had already put the experience behind her.
Such is her self-assurance that I had assumed Finty was in her mid twenties – since with her bright energy, charisma and great taste in flowers, she has already established herself as one of the most popular traders in Columbia Rd. No blushing violet, Finty has shown she has the personality to hold her own amongst the loud cries and banter of the more experienced stallholders that surround her, all of whom have become endeared by her spirited approach. The senior flowersellers have taken Finty to heart because she reminds them of their early days.
It is apparent that Finty is a young woman of independent nature, living on her own since the age of fifteen and trading here for over a year now with the support of her father. “I spend Saturday getting ready, and I set up the stall and run it on Sunday, while he prepares all the flowers and gets the van ready for me,” she explained enthusiastically, delighting in the whole process. While Finty studies at college in the week, her father goes to the wholesale market to get the stock, although she decides what he should buy. It means that by selling flowers at the weekend Finty can support herself through college. “I’ve always known Columbia Rd,” said Finty with open-hearted affection for the life of the market, “It’s great company, I have regular customers and it’s something I want to do always.”
Yet Finty cherishes other ambitions too, she is pursuing media studies with the intention to become a journalist and combine this career with selling flowers in Columbia Road. Finty has the qualities to stay the course, and match Tony Purser’s career and be there selling flowers over fifty years from now if she chooses. But Finty brings a new perspective, shrewdly recognising that a parallel career in media will enrich her life and give her financial security. Finty Chester is the model of a twenty-first century flower girl.
Photograph copyright © Jeremy Freedman
Tony Purser, Flowerseller of Fenchurch St
Although the man in the foreground is unaware, this photograph records an historic moment in the City of London – Tony Purser’s last day selling flowers from his stall in the vicinity of Fenchurch St Station after fifty-two years of business. I took the opportunity to walk over from Spitalfields and sit with Tony to keep him company for a few hours on his last afternoon. A dignified popular figure with a ready smile, Tony told me he remembers the very first day of business. He was driving around in a van with his father Alfie in 1959, looking for a place to sell flowers and they drew up outside Fenchurch St Station, parked the van and decided to start trading at once. “It was quite a success, but I wasn’t that interested,” said Tony, bemused at his former self, “I was just a kid, I was cold and wanted to go home.” Tony never dreamed that he would still be there over a half a century later, yet his father’s instinct was a good one because the passing trade ensured that for fifty years Tony earned a living selling fruit and flowers in the heart of the City.
Without a licence in the early years, Tony & Alfie were regularly arrested, their stock was confiscated, they were fined three shillings and spent the night in the cells at the Bishopsgate Police Station. An event that recurred until they were granted a licence in 1963. “My father started in the nineteen forties and my grandfather was in the business before him, so he thought you didn’t need a licence, but if you’re licenced you don’t get any trouble from the police.” explained Tony ruefully. “He was a fruiterer just after the war, one of seven brothers and sisters, who all worked for him at one time or another. He was still working when he was eighty-four – a good old boy he was – but I want to enjoy a bit of life before I die.” Tony admitted with a smile of eager anticipation at the thought of no longer getting up every morning at half past three, working until seven at night and spending all day on the street exposed to the weather.
In 1998, when Fenchurch St Station was rebuilt and rents increased, Tony moved over to a new location nearby at the foot of the neat little medieval tower of All Hallows Staining in Mark Lane. He enjoyed another ten years of profitable trading there, but in these last two years Tony has made no money at all, though he has continued undaunted, going to the flower market at dawn, setting up stall each day and selling flowers to a dwindling number of loyal customers while living off his savings.
Tony decided to retire, recognising that the market for the street flowerseller has been taken by supermarkets and companies supplying corporate displays where once a secretary would have simply bought a bunch of carnations for reception. “Business is so bad, I’ve barely paid the rent,” he announced to me with a grimace and a shrug of grudging acceptance, “Otherwise I’d have handed it down to one of the boys, my son, my two grandsons or two great grandsons.”
Nevertheless, the news of Tony’s retirement brought an unexpected series of affectionate responses from his last loyal customers, as he recounted to me proudly, “I served one guy yesterday who has been buying from me for thirty-two years. A retired chap who came in specially to bring me a bottle of champagne and wish me well. A little girl I’ve seen here for four years, I know she’s got no money – not that there’s many of them round here, but they’re the best kind of people – she brought me a bottle of malt whisky. And a lady I haven’t known very long, she brought me a card. It’s those you don’t expect that do it. You see these people for years and you don’t know their lives. I don’t suppose many of them know my name, but some people are just very nice.”
“One guy, he gave me five pounds for a banana!” continued Tony with crazed amusement, now that he had detached himself emotionally, uplifted by these gestures of appreciation. In confirmation of Tony’s situation, there were more people asking for directions than customers on that last afternoon and our conversation was constantly interrupted by enquiries for directions to the intriguingly named Seething Lane. “I get plenty of enquiries, if I had a pound for every one I should be a rich man,” commented Tony, rolling his eyes ironically. Yet Tony always gave directions as if it were the first time he had been asked, which struck me as remarkable largesse after fifty-two years. Tony’s heroic composure was both in line with the strength of character that has got him through the last half century trading on the street and indicative of his sense of relief at letting go of the responsibility too.”I’m not angry because the trade has been good to us, we’ve done very well. We used to take the whole of August off, though I’ve not had a holiday in twelve years. I’m sad because it’s been my life, but the trade is over.” he confessed to me in a quiet moment.
Once the flower buckets were empty, Tony began giving away bags of fruit to surprised customers who only asked for an apple or banana. He gave me a bag of oranges to take back to Spitalfields. Then Mark, a droll Liverpudlian, stopped by to pick up the weekly bunch of flowers for his wife. He shook hands with Tony, brandishing the lilies for his wife extravagantly, “That’s the last she’ll see for a while,” he quipped. It was the end of an era at Fenchurch St Station.
Tony Purser, his last day on the stall.
Alfie Purser, selling flowers at Tower Hill Station, nineteen seventies.
Alfie selling flowers at the Wake Arms, Loughton, nineteen sixties.
As a young man, Tony (left) briefly tried working at the Jeyes Fluid factory in Plaistow.
Tony Purser aged seven with his sister.
The Roundels of Spitalfields
Around the streets of Spitalfields there are circular metal plates set into the pavement. Many people are puzzled by them. Are they decorative coal hole covers as you find in other parts of London? Or is there a mysterious significance to them? Sculptor Keith Bowler was walking down Brick Lane one day when he heard a tour guide explaining to a group of tourists that these plaques or roundels – to give them their correct name – were placed there in the nineteenth century for the benefit of people who could not read. Keith stuck his neck out and told the guide this was nonsense, that he made them on his kitchen table a few years ago. And although the tour guide gave Keith a strange look and was a little dubious of his claim, this is the truth of the matter.
“I was approached by Bethnal Green City Challenge in 1995, and I was asked to research, design and fabricate twenty five roundels. I was given a list of sites and I spent a few months doing it.”, explained Keith summarily, as we sat at the famous table where he cast the moulds for the roundels in the basement kitchen of his house in Wilkes St. Keith cut the round patterns out of board and then set real objects in place on them, such as the scissors you see above. From these patterns he made moulds that were sent over to Hoyle & Sons, a traditional family-run foundry in the Cambridge Heath Rd, where they were cast in iron before being installed by council workers.
The notion was that the pavements were already set with pieces of ironwork, making this a natural context to introduce pieces of sculpture, and the emblems and locations were chosen to reflect the diverse culture and history of Spitalfields. Sometimes there was a literal story illustrated by the presence of the roundel, like the match girls from the Bryant & May factory who met in the Hanbury Hall to create the first trade union. Elsewhere, like the scissors and buttons above in Brick Lane, the roundel simply records the clothing industry that once existed there. At first there were interpretative leaflets produced by the council which directed people on a history trail around the neighbourhood, but these disappeared in a few months leaving everyone to create their own happy interpretations ever since.
The roundels have acquired a history of their own. For example, the weaver’s shuttle and reels of thread marking the silk weavers in Folgate St were cast from a shuttle and reels that Dennis Severs found in his house and lent to Keith. And there was controversy from the start about the roundels, when two were mistakenly installed on the City of London side of the street in Petticoat Lane and at at the end of Artillery Passage in City territory, leading to angry phone calls from the Corporation demanding they be moved. Six are missing entirely now, stolen by thieves or covered by workmen, though occasionally roundels turn up and wind their way back to Keith. He has a line of errant roundels in his hallway, ready to be reinstalled and, as he keeps the moulds, plans are afoot to complete the set again.
Keith told me he liked the name “roundels” because it was once used to refer to the symbols on the wings of Spitfires, and is also a term in heraldry. There is an elegant austerity to these attractive designs that I walk past every day and which have seeped into my subconscious, constantly reminding me of the history that surrounds me, and witnessing the presence of what has gone. Keith is planning a book of photographs, explaining the background to each of his roundels – to delight the curious and prevent any further confusion among tour guides. But in the meantime, I photographed half a dozen of my favourites to show you, which you can see below. Now keep your eyes open, because there are at least eight more roundels still to be found on the streets of Spitalfields.
On Brick Lane, among the Bengali shops, a henna stenciled hand.
Commemorating the Bryant & May match girls, outside the Hanbury Hall on Hanbury St.
In Folgate St, cast from a shuttle and reels from Dennis Severs’ House.
In Brick Lane, outside the railings of Grey Eagle Brewery.
In Princelet St, commemorating the first Jewish Theatre, where Jacob Adler once played.
In Petticoat Lane, on the site of the ancient market.
In Wentworth St, an over-vigilant council worker filled in this roundel as a potential trip hazard.
