Fiona Skrine, the Sit-in at Spital Square
Architectural historians, Mark Girouard and Colin Amery, with Fiona Skrine and Joanna Price during their sit-in, December 1981
Fiona Skrine came to Spitalfields as a student and left as a married woman with three children, and in the midst of this sojourn she found herself photographed for a national newspaper as part of a sit-in organised by the Spitalfields Historic Buildings Trust to save St Botolph’s Hall in Spital Square from the bulldozers in December 1981.
During the post-war boom in fresh fruit & vegetables in the nineteen fifties, the expansion of the market had destroyed some of London’s finest Georgian houses in Spital Square, which had otherwise survived almost unchanged since Dickens visited a silk warehouse there a century earlier. But now, emboldened by a saving a couple of eighteenth century weaver’s houses in Elder St by occupying them, the Trust decided to challenge the trustees of the Central Foundation Girl’s School who wanted to demolish their school hall without entertaining the possibility that it might have a future.
It is a measure of the success of this protest, in which Fiona is proud to have played a part, that last week she was able to return to Spital Square, almost thirty years later, to admire the handsome red brick edifice in the Flemish Renaissance style which is now home to the celebrated La Chapelle restaurant, and one of the few original buildings left to grant a significant gravitas in what might otherwise be a soulless corner. In retrospect, the occupation of St Botolph’s Hall marked a change in public opinion, as the moment when the unquestioning demolition of old buildings became unacceptable. And, today, the Spitalfields Trust, which stemmed the tide of destruction in Spitalfields that began in the nineteen sixties, is itself a venerable institution, even though when it was started by a group of architectural students who adopted the tactics of radical intervention – through squatting, occupations and sit-ins – they were, as the Director Douglas Blain recently admitted, “street fighters.”
“My sister Anna saw the bulldozers moving in, so she rang around to get enough people into the building and have it occupied so they couldn’t knock it down.” recalled Fiona, filling with enthusiasm to savour the memory, “I took a day off college, and my friend Joey (Joanna Price) also took the day off to support me. It was so dark and cold in December. The place had been stripped out, with no floorboards, and we wished we had brought warmer clothing and a thermos. We were there for one night, and then others took over and I’d done my bit. Although next day I had to justify it because you had to sign in at college, but fortunately it was very much in the spirit of the place, (the City & Guilds Art School in Kennington where I studied decorative art techniques) and when my teacher said, ‘Where were you yesterday?’ I said, ‘I was saving a building!'”
I could not tell whether spending a freezing night in St Botolph’s Hall in December with the threat of bulldozers outside, while locked in by the police for her own safety, was a rite of passage for Fiona. Yet in spite of living in a rat-infested house at first, she developed a great affection for Spitalfields – becoming drawn into the close knit society of young people of limited means and great imaginative enterprise who set about restoring the dilapidated eighteenth century houses with their own hands. Fiona’s sister Anna Skrine and Fiona’s husband photographer Simon de Courcy Wheeler were portrayed by ceramicist Simon Pettet in the famous fireplace of delft tiles that he made for Dennis Severs’ House illustrating Spitalfields personalities of the day. So it was highly appropriate that Simon made a delft fireplace as a wedding present for Fiona and her husband, when they took on the renovation of a house in Wilkes St as their family home.
“We bought an eighteenth century house with no floors or walls, and we threw a party with candles and that was how it began.” said Fiona, proud to recount the exuberant folly of her youth, “Wilkes St was pretty grotty in those days, the smell of the hops from the brewery at the end of the street was overpowering and these huge lorries of produce for the market thundered past. The house was in bad repair, it needed to be gutted, re-roofed and the panelling put back, although there were enough original fireplaces and surviving panelling to work out how to restore it. The house cost £40,000 and my father put aside another £40,000 for the building work. I was still at art school then, but I scraped and filled and painted every inch of that house myself, I did all the manual work once the builders had left.
We bought most of our furniture on Brick Lane, it was a tremendous adventure, getting up early and carting old chairs and chests of drawers back. The early eighties were a great time to be in Spitalfields with the excitement of everyone doing up their houses. We did it ourselves because we didn’t have much money, and there was always plenty of gossip and shenanigans going on. We were endlessly in and out of each others houses in those days and the Market Cafe in Fournier St was were we all met up. I had a lovely time because, in between having three children, restoring the house in Wilkes Street was the springboard for my career as a decorative artist and my first couple of commissions were auspicious.
English Heritage asked me to reproduce the colour ways of twenty Pugin wallpapers for the Palace of Westminster that was being renovating at the time. So I spent a few months at the V&A, reproducing the colours as accurately as I could with my gouaches, and then I was commissioned to paint replicas of old wall hangings for the Tower of London. I enjoyed these historic commissions, although later my work involved me in creating new decorative schemes around London and in Europe too.
Each Summer, I’d take the children to Ireland and it would be a shock to return to this soulful little house in this dark street, where you hardly saw the light and there were no trees – really quite grim, yet with lots of life too. All my children were born in the house, three home births. The midwife came on a motor bike when I had my first child, and it was 1987, the night of the hurricane, she was dodging falling chimney pots and trees.”
“I couldn’t go back to the house after we sold it, because I put too much of myself into it.” she confided in conclusion, as the emotion of the story dawned upon her.
Fiona came down from her home in North London to spend a morning with me before driving one of her grown-up children to university in Sheffield, and as well as walking over to Spital Sq in the rain, we visited the houses that the Spitalfields Trust is currently renovating in Fournier St. I realised it was a sentimental pilgrimage for Fiona Skrine and I was delighted to accompany her because, as the photos above reveal, she carries the same bright energy today and still cherishes her moment of youthful protest.
Ann Skrine, as portrayed in Simon Pettet’s tiles at Dennis Severs House
Simon de Courcy Wheeler, Fiona’s husband.
Fiona at St Botolph’s Hall
Columbia Road Market 65
My personality is such that once the Christmas decorations come down, I discover myself looking out the window and searching vainly in the garden for signs of Spring, even though I know there are months of Winter yet to pass. Over the years, I have discovered a means to ameliorate this unfortunate character flaw, I go to Columbia Rd Market and buy bulbs to create Spring indoors in January. It never fails to lift my spirits when – walking into the living room each morning – I am surprised by the heady scent of Hyacinths, sprouting in a dish upon the dresser. You may recall those that I plant annually in the old blue bowl which, after last year’s aberration of pink flowers, turned out blue again, thus permitting my grandmother who started this Hyacinth rigmarole to sleep peacefully in her grave for another year.
The scented Paper-whites above cost me just £1 at Columbia Rd and they fit nicely in this fine early nineteenth century porcelain bowl that I found in Brick Lane Market for £5. Prices for Winter bulbs at Columbia Rd have dropped dramatically since Christmas with potted Amaryllis that I bought for £3 in December now on sale at just £1, which makes it worth braving the weather to go along and bring some home to elevate your days. £1 also buys a pot of miniature Daffodils, which encouraged me to buy a tray of ten and fill two flowerpots on my window sill, so that I can look out and be rewarded with the sight of new life, even while the garden itself is dormant. Now each day brings me new growth to sustain my hopes, as a harbinger of the Spring that I know will come eventually.
Epilogue. The Weasel
You recall Detective Inspector Frederick Porter Wensley who played such an important role in the detection of the Houndsditch Murders and the subsequent Siege of Sidney St. Throughout his long and spectacularly successful career, he kept an album now preserved in the archive at Bishopsgate Institute where he pasted all his press reports conscientiously and labelled them with beautiful hand drawn lettering.
It was a labour undertaken with such consideration and care that it must have become an important solace for the great crimefighter to repair to his study with scissors and a pot of glue, and spend countless hours innocently engaged in arranging his cuttings. Many aspire to become the hero of the their own life story, but Wensley read it in the newspapers. It was a story that began in Spitalfields when he joined the police at the time of the Whitechapel Murders in 1887 and ended when he died in the era of the Krays in 1949. Just like a movie star contemplating his rave reviews, Wensley took pleasure in his write-ups, as witnessed by the attention he lavished upon collecting and preserving them, and it fascinates me to turn the pages of his precious album and appreciate something of the enigma of the man they knew as “the weasel.”
A year after the violent shootout on Sidney St, Inspector Frederick Porter Wensley was promoted to Chief Inspector of the Detective Department at Scotland Yard, though crucially he remained in charge of the Whitechapel District where he made his reputation. Prior to the Houndsditch case, Wensley was frustrated that he had not been appointed to the role of detective because it would mean a transfer out of Whitechapel, when his local knowledge proved invaluable to the local constabulary. As well as this promotion, Wensley was awarded a medal by the King and this recognition was the first step in his rise to become the pre-eminent London detective of the day, the man later described by the Sunday Express as, “Sherlock Homes in real life.”
Yet while the papers where quick to celebrate Wensley’s triumphs in crimefighting, they did not quite idealise the man – reading between the lines – as these character descriptions attest,“Frederick Wensley is not a talkative man. He speaks with blunt vigour and stops when he has finished. And his mind works in something of this direct fashion. He goes straight to the heart of the matter. He disregards the non-essentials so completely that I am inclined to think he does not notice them. So far as he is concerned they do not exist. One bludgeon stroke and they are gone.”
“He was a rare physical fighter when criminals showed fight. In his active outdoor days, a fight, if forced upon him, was all in a day’s work.”
“A burglar wrote: ‘Of all the police I have known in my life, he was easily the sternest.'”
In the years following the Houndsditch case, Wensley arrested the notorious Stinie Morrison who murdered Leo Beron on Clapham Common, and then convicted Voisin the Butcher who murdered Madame Gerard in Bloomsbury. Later, he brought Edith Thompson & Frederick Bywaters to justice, the perpetrators of the Ilford Tragedy, and took charge of the investigation into the case of the poisoned chocolates sent to Sir William Horwood. However the laughs were not all on Wensley’s side, because one night burglars broke into his house in Palmer’s Green whilst he and his wife were sleeping peacefully in their beds and stripped the house of everything of value including his Police Medal presented by the King. Wensley gamely told the press, “Whoever was responsible for the burglary, I am obliged for the sporting way they have behaved.”
Upon retirement, Wensley wrote ‘Detective Days,’ his bestselling biography with accounts of crimes to outstrip any work of fiction. And when the newspapers no longer had new heroic exploits of Wensley to report, he wrote his own for the press, retelling the tales of crimes long ago for a whole new generation, and rounding out his life story nicely.
When I consider Wensley’s involvement in the investigation of the Houndsditch murders, although I grant that he went bravely under gunfire to rescue Sergeant Leeson who had been shot in Sidney St, there is another detail that sticks in my mind. Entering the house in Grove St after the tip-off that a body was there, he was concerned lest gunmen be lying in wait, as his colleagues had discovered to their cost in Houndsditch a few days earlier. Ever the pragmatist, Wensley boasts in his autobiography, how, to remedy this eventuality, he pushed the fat landlady upstairs ahead of him, thus creating a human shield.
As the portrait above suggests, with its strange expression that is simultaneously half-serious and half-smiling, there were different sides to Wensley’s personality. May I remind you of origin of the word ‘”weasel,” and you can decide upon its suitability or otherwise as a nickname for Wensley? – because “weasel” derives from the Anglo-Saxon root “weatsop” meaning “a bloodthirsty animal.”
Detective Inspector Wensley disguised as a soldier raids an East End gambling den.
Wensley’s album with his personal collection of villains’ mugshots that he carried in his wallet.
Images copyright © Bishopsgate Institute
You can read the full pitiful story of the Houndsditch Murders and the Siege of Sidney St here
Chapter 1. Murder in Houndsditch
Chapter 3. A Funeral at Christmas
Chapter 5. Shootout in Sidney St
Drakes of London, Tiemakers
Although less known in this country, the name of Drakes is synonymous around the world with the most beautiful silk ties that money can buy. Founded thirty years ago on a top floor in Old Bond St and operating from a former Royal Mail depot in Old St for the past twenty, Drakes brought manufacturing back to the East End at the time everyone else was moving out. Working with companies of silk weavers in East Anglia that were once in Spitalfields centuries ago, the true legacy of the Huguenot weavers is manifest here in the exquisite sophistication of these ties manufactured by Drakes that are prized by the cognoscenti of Italy and Japan. Hidden in an East End backstreet, they are the largest independent producers in this country, supplying conservative English ties to an international market of stylish men who eschew the mere fashionable, and collaborating with Comme des Garcons too.
The rich colour of the silks with their subtly woven patterns delight the eye with sensuous pleasure, and it is quite inspirational to step inside from the rainy world of compromise into Drakes’ factory where a small group of skilled tiemakers work fastidiously to create superlative covetable items, sleek and sinuous with a life of their own. At first, the cutters mark out the silk with chalk, placing the patterns upon the bias of the cloth to ensure the perfect hang of the tie, before taking a sharp knife to slice through as many of twenty layers of cloth at once. The blade, the neck and the tail are the three primary parts of a tie. And next, the blade and tail are “tipped” – as it is called when the silk lining is attached. Once tipped and the three pieces sewn together, the tie is “slipped” – meaning, folded around the interlining to achieve its destined shape.
Turning the corner from the stillness of the cutters’ workroom, and passing the racks of silks upon rolls, I came into the centre of the factory where amidst a riot of colour – ties of every description and hue, garlanded and draped upon rails – sat those who did the sewing, more precisely known as the “artisan slippers.” When the interlining is tucked into the lining at the tip of the “blade”, the tie can be folded into shape, ensuring the seam is at the centre, and pinned in place. Then, using a curved needle, a loose slip-stitch along its length secures the tie’s shape. Now, tipped and slipped, with judicious pressings, the finished tie is ready for its label and those pieces of flat cloth have become transformed into an elegant three dimensional form of dynamic grace.
On a gantry up above the workroom, I found Michael Drake, bright-eyed and keen, surrounded by swatch books of gorgeous silks and boxes of colourful woolly scarves, preparing to fly to Florence where he will be showing his Winter collection 2011 at the trade exhibition this week in the city’s historic Fortessa, before returning on Saturday and then jetting off to New York for ten days. Part of the continuous cycle of design and sales, involving constant travel, that he has pursued tirelessly since starting the company with partners Jeremy Hull & Isabel Dickson in 1979.
“We’ve always made a decent living and we’ve always been successful,” he admitted to me with a sublimely relaxed smile, before revealing with a twinkle in his eye,“But it still is a nightmare. Over the years I’ve had so many sleepless nights.’ For a moment I was disarmed, until he said, “It’s good to worry, the more you worry, the more likely you are to pick up on mistakes before they happen.” Yet, in contradiction to this declaration, Michael still did not look convincingly stressed, rather he looked like a man in his element. “I could do this twenty-four hours a day and never catch up with what needs to be done…” he concluded with an amiable shrug, taking refuge in the former brewmaster’s house next door, which he keeps stocked with the lush art books that are his inspiration and delight. There, as we pored over collections of Mughal miniatures and paintings done by Matisse in Morocco – that Michael consults for ideas for colour combinations for ties – I could appreciate the merging of sensibilities that inform the luxuriously understated aesthetic of Drakes, while Michael explained to me how it all began.
When Michael joined Aquascutum, the traditional rainwear company, straight from school, one of the brothers who owned the company took a shine to him, putting Michael on a training programme that sent him to New York and California. He worked in the factory, and even served in the Regent St shop on Saturday to earn extra money. At twenty, Michael was assisting the design director and when he left, Michael stayed on and took over, creating the Aquascutum check still in use today. “I had two company cars in my early twenties,” recalled Michael fondly, with a gleeful smile,“even the accountant didn’t know I’d been given them.” It is apparent that the formative experience Michael had at Aquascutum, of a family-owned clothing company which valued employees and encouraged the transmission of skills, stayed with Michael throughout his career.
“We started with basic things,” explained Michael, outlining the origin of Drakes a few years later, producing scarves, “I discovered it’s much easier to do something new when you don’t have any knowledge. You do something on a whim and you do something fresh. We attended our first trade exhibition in Paris and we had the smallest stand and we took £100,000 of orders – but then my partner picked up the wrong briefcase at the airport and lost the one with the orders in it.” Thankfully, the briefcase was recovered and the company grew, yet all the scarves were delivered to Bond St and Michael remembers carrying the boxes up and down the stairs, “We worked hard, but we worked for ourselves and we could see it was working, and we always enjoyed ourselves.”
“I used to wear these nice ties and people came up to me and said, ‘You should do ties.'” continued Michael breezily, acknowledging this unexpected yet natural progression in the business,“We had to learn how to do it. There’s no book that tells you, so we wrote our own manual and we still refer back to it.” Today, Michael has a following of customers who have been buying ties from Drakes for twenty-five years. “I’m always trying to be better than before,” he told me, reminding himself of a personal mantra,“I think it’s more important to be better, than to try to be newer.”
Yet Drakes ties were rarely available in Britain – until they began direct sales from their website two years ago, and received so many orders from customers here that this Spring they are opening a shop in Savile Row. When asked why Drakes’ factory is in the heart of the East End rather than in some soulless business park in Outer London, Michael simply explains that this central location makes it easy for all his staff to get there. Through imagination, flair and tenacity, Michael Drake has found a way to contradict received wisdom and bring new life to the centuries’ old textile industry of the East End in a way that respects the craft traditions and offers sympathetic conditions to his employees too. And Drakes is thriving, “The only problem we have now is fulfilling all the orders,” he confessed to me, rolling his eyes in pleasure.
Holmes & Watson, Spitalfields Piglets
I hope my readers will forgive me if I admit that I chose to keep a discreet silence over the peaceful death of Itchy, the old sow at the Spitalfields City Farm last year, and instead to share my delight in beginning this new year by introducing these two beloved young squealers, Holmes & Watson.
When I went along to take these portraits of Holmes & Watson in the sty that serves as their approximation to 221B Baker St, I did not know which was which. But, as you can see from the photograph above, it soon became visibly apparent that the smaller darker one possessed the keener eye and more remarkable faculties in general, and that one was Holmes. Helen Galland, the pink-haired farm manager, who plays the role of Mrs Hudson, providing food and housekeeping for these two bachelors, revealed she spotted the disparity when they first arrived at their new lodgings three months ago. “They like play-fighting, pushing each other out of the way to discover who is the dominant – and seemingly it is the smallest one!” she told me with a grin of astonishment.
“When I tried training them by whistling and giving rewards if they came, Watson didn’t understand the game at all but Holmes deduced it at once – ‘If I do this I get food!'” explained Helen in custodial affection, “They have a love/hate relationship over food. When I scatter the vegetables in the pen and they run around finding them, the smaller one always gets more than the bigger one, which is strange. Maybe he’s hiding them somewhere?”
Holmes & Watson are officially registered Kuni Kuni pigs, like Itchy who came before them, hailing from New Zealand and descended from just sixteen hardy survivors when the breed came close to extinction in the nineteen sixties. Born at a rare breeds farm, near Ipswich, they were weaned early when their mother died of a spinal abcess. But in spite of this early tragedy, both piglets have embraced life wholeheartedly, as Helen proudly explained to me, “They love people, because they know people bring them food and if you tickle their bellies they lie down, it’s an instinctive response.”
Little else is known of their early months, yet on this basis of these ominous words that I overheard from Holmes – whilst they were at the trough – we can only assume they are relieved to find themselves in Spitalfields, “It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.” Subsequently, I was surprised to hear Watson confess, “I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained. There I stayed for some time at a private hotel in the Strand, leading a comfortless, meaningless existence, and spending such money as I had, considerably more freely than I ought.” Let us be thankful that Holmes & Watson have found a satisfactory home now at the City Farm.
I certainly enjoyed my brief opportunity to share the serenity of their existence whilst photographing the piglets in their pen, although I did become frustrated that they barely took their snouts out of the mud, until Helen helpfully explained that this is called,“the investigative instinct.” When she conjured this phrase, I could not help recalling the unfortunate break-in and abduction of a ferret at the farm a year ago and I wondered if this event might have proved a factor in the decision to bring in Holmes & Watson. Yet at just six months old, it seemed premature to enquire about the crime-busting potential of these piglets. May it suffice to know that Holmes & Watson have ended up in clover.
Personal callers who wish to pay respects to Holmes & Watson are welcome at Spitalfields City Farm and you can learn more about sponsoring animals at www.spitalfieldscityfarm.org
Watson keeps his nose to the ground, surveying the muddy details of the case.
Holmes, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
Bramble & Bentley, the twin goats, are Holmes & Watson’s neighbours at the farm.
Watson,“If I irritated him by a certain methodical slowness in my mentality, that irritation served only to make his own flame-like intuitions and impressions flash up the more vividly and swiftly. Such was my humble role in our alliance.”
You may enjoy these other stories of farm life:
Helen Galland, Spitalfields City Farm
Sheepshearing at Spitalfields City Farm
The Manhole Covers of Spitalfields
Ever since I wrote about sculptor Keith Bowler’s Roundels, describing how he set new manhole covers into the pavements of Spitalfields with motifs to commemorate all the people, cultures and trades that have passed through, I have been noticing the old ones that inspired him in the first place. This one from the eighteen eighties in Fournier St is undoubtably the most snazzy in the neighbourhood with its dynamic sunburst and catherine wheel spiral. So much wit and grace applied to the design of a modest coalhole cover, it redefines the notion of utilitarian design. In Bath, Bristol, Brighton and Edinburgh, I have seen whole streets where each house has a different design of coalhole cover, like mismatched buttons on a long overcoat, but in Spitalfields they are sparser and you have to look further to find them.
There is a second example of this Clark, Hunt & Co sunburst, that I like so much, in Redchurch St, just a hundred yards from the former showrooms at 159/60 Shoreditch High St of this company who called themselves the Middlesex Iron Works – founded in 1838, proud contractors to the H.M. War Office, the Admiralty and London County Council. And like many local ironworks, gone long ago, but outlived by their sturdy cast iron products. Alfred Solomons of 195 Caledonian Rd is another name I found here in Spitalfields on a couple of manhole covers, with some rather fetching, almost orientalist, nineteenth century flourishes. I discovered that the Jewish Chronicle reported the birth of a son to Alfred’s wife Celia on 18th December 1894 at the Caledonian Rd address, so these plates commemorate them personally now.
Meanwhile Hayward Brothers of 187 & 189 Union St, Borough, are the most ubiquitous of the named manufacturers with their handsome iron artefacts in the pavements of our neighbourhood. They were founded by William & Edward Hayward, glaziers who had been trading since 1783 when they bought Robert Henley’s ironmongery business in 1838. As glaziers they brought a whole new progressive mentality to the humble production of coalhole covers, patenting the addition of prisms that admitted light to the cellar below. You can see one of their “semi-prismatic pavement lights” illustrated below, in Calvert Avenue. Such was the success of this company that by 1921 they opened a factory in Enfield, and even invented the “crete-o-lux” concrete system which was used to repave Regent St, but they ceased trading in the nineteen seventies when smokeless zones were introduced in London and coal fires ceased. Regrettably, Spitalfields cannot boast a coalhole by the most celebrated nineteenth century manufacturer, by virtue of their name, A.Smellie of Westminster. The nearest example is in Elizabeth St, Victoria, where I shall have to make a pilgrimage to see it.
Unfailingly, my fascination with the city is deepened by the discovery of new details like these, harbouring human stories waiting to be uncovered by the curious. Even neglected and trodden beneath a million feet, by virtue of being in the street, these ingenious covers remind us of their long dead makers’ names more effectively than any tombstone in a churchyard. There was rain blowing in the wind yesterday but when the sun came out afterwards, the beautiful old iron covers shone brightly like medals – for those who had the eyes to see them – emblazoned upon the streets of Spitalfields.
In Old Broad St.
In Fournier St, a nineteenth century coalhole cover by Alfred Solomons, 195 Caledonian Rd – I am reliable informed there are similar covers in Doughty St and around Bloomsbury.
A more minimal variant on the same design by Alfred Solomons.
Hayward Brothers’ “Patent Self-Locking Semi-Prismatic Pavement Light” in Calvert Avenue.
A more recent example of Hayward Brothers’ self -locking plate.
In Gunthorpe St, this drain cover commemorates Stepney Borough Council created in 1900 and abolished in 1965.
At the Rectory in Fournier St, this early plate by Hayward Brothers of 187 & 189 Union St, Borough, which is also to be found in Lower Richmond Rd.
Another by Haywood Brothers in Spitalfields – although unlabelled, it follows the design of the plate above.
Bullseye in Chance St
In Commercial St, at the junction with Elder St, is this worn plate is made by Griffith of Farringdon Rd, Clerkenwell
In Middlesex St. LCC – London County Council was abolished in 1965. Can it be only co-incidental that this old manhole cover in Petticoat Lane Market, in the former Jewish quarter, has a star of David at the centre?
Mud God’s Discoveries 1
It is my pleasure to begin the new year by inaugurating a new series on Spitalfields Life, in which each month I visit my esteemed friend Steve Brooker, the mudlark – widely known as Mud God – and he shows me prized discoveries from his personal collection, accumulated over seventeen years of scouring the bed of the Thames.
Steve found this knuckle guard from a medieval gauntlet ten years ago at the Customs House near the Tower of London. “I’ve had some amazing finds but, out of all my discoveries, this is the one thing I love the most, a gauntlet knuckle guard from a suit of armour. It’s so delicate, yet by nature of the kink it’s so strong – I can’t bend this,” he told me with a excited grin, his eyes glistening in wonder and delight at the skill displayed in fashioning this gracefully curved sliver of brass and copper alloy inscribed with diagonal lines, once attached by rivets to a chain mail glove. The armoured glove was worn by knight with a cloth or leather glove underneath, yet this knuckle guard just sits upon of Steve’s finger, suggesting that it was made for a much smaller hand, as you would expect in medieval London.
“I dug this one out, which I don’t do much anymore,” explained Steve, recounting the memorable discovery as he picked the knuckle guard from his cabinet of treasures, “I dug a hole really deep down into the river bed, and then I put everything onto a board and ran a metal detector over it.” The knuckle guard was lying in anaerobic mud, with no oxygen, which means it was preserved without rust and gleamed with an enticing mystery when he found it, exactly as it does now. Declaring its precise yet obsolete purpose and elegant manufacture, it evokes an entire world gone more than five hundred years ago.
“I can just imagine a knight coming back from the Crusades and crossing the Thames,” said Steve, inspired by holding the cherished artifact between his fingers, and conjuring a picture for me, “His armour was being dragged off the boat at the landing place and the gauntlet caught against something, the rivets broke and the knuckle guard got knocked off into the river.”
“One day this couple joined me, they’d come to experience the joys of mudlarking but all they could see was gloop – four to five inches of wet mud stretching across the shore at Wapping.” Steve recalled, turning apologetic on behalf of his beloved Thames,“It only happens once in a blue moon.” Yet there was a line at the foreshore that was clean, where there were some corroded lumps of iron and Steve saw a spike emerging from one. “That could be part of a sword, let’s crack it open” suggested Steve, mustering a vain swagger. Yet when he took a look, to his surprise, it was this highly decorated renaissance rapier handle from around 1600. “It was rusty, but shining with silver wire and it had a gold sheen,” said Steve proudly, “You should have seen the look on their faces.”
“The whole thing is a work of art,” Steve declared to me, cradling it lovingly in his hands to show me, “A rapier was an man’s education, when accomplishment with a sword was everything. Everyone that could afford it had one.” And he pointed out the face at the centre of the elaborate design of flourishes upon the guard that had been bent backwards over the hilt, showing me the silver wire that once contained the binding upon the hand grip. The entire hilt sat within Steve’s hand, revealing, like the knuckle guard, that it was made for the much smaller hand of a Londoner over four centuries ago.
“It was thrown away because it was bust,” he theorised with a frown, indicating the useless broken stump of the blade protruding from the hilt, yet balancing the metalwork in his hand appreciatively. “It’s so ornate, but it feels there’s more power to it when it’s rusty,” he continued, perplexed and mulling over this intriguing survivor from Shakespeare’s London which still carries the dynamic spirit of its age today, even in its damaged state.
Even before tobacco was introduced by Walter Raleigh in 1586, sailors brought it back and smoked it – but it was very expensive, which is why this early clay pipe dating from 1600 is so tiny. Out of an estimated ten thousand pipes that he has found, mostly from later periods when they were disposable and two-a-penny pre-filled with tobacco, Steve has only found three of these early ones intact.
“This is a stevedore’s pipe that I found at Rotherhithe, still blackened inside. He can work with it in his mouth because it is so short,” said Steve, putting it into his mouth to give a demonstration, before adding with cheery grin, “You find their bodies with the teeth rotted out at one side.”
Then, “Who was at the end of it?” he asked me, taking the pipe from his mouth and gesturing naturally with it for emphasis, “Who was that man or woman or child, that sucked upon this?” As I could not answer his question, Steve pursued his thought further. “This pipe has been through the Plague and the Fire of London,” he said, placing the modest object respectfully on the table, “And it just awes me.”
“I don’t know why I like it so much. I love the bear and, being bald, – it’s for hair growth – it makes me laugh!” This was Steve’s explanation when I asked him why this nineteenth century lid from a pot of Russian bear’s grease means so much to him. You can admire the elegant typography and the poignant engraving of the creature, while recognising the sad irony of killing bears for a remedy that does not work, but the appeal of this lid remains intangible to Steve.
“If I had to choose between this and something of monetary value in the collection, I would choose this,” he confirmed to me resolutely, “I’ve had thousands of things up from the river, but I always wanted to find one of these, and a cannon.” It seems that the nature of mudlarking is such that you can almost never discover what you are looking for in the Thames. “You can’t choose what to find, there’s this guy who finds all these gold coins when he only wants a crotal bell,” Steve confided to me, shaking his head with a playful smirk, as an example of the capricious nature of the river.
But one day Steve got lucky when Old Father Thames directed him to a bear’s grease pot lid. “I’d been to test some mud at Charlton near to the O2 Arena but it was poor for finds, although when I walked back along the foreshore there were a lot of bottles, and that’s where I found what I had sought for years, sitting on a tip.” he told me, widening his eyes in excitement as he recalled the sentimental moment fondly. Now Steve just has the find the cannon, because – as you can see below – he already has the cannon balls to go with it.
Steve’s finds have spilled out of his house into the garden – boathooks, padlocks, cannon balls, broken Bellarmine jugs and old pipes.
You can find out more at Steve Brooker’s website www.thamesandfield.com and there will be further Mud God’s Discoveries here in February.
