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.
Ally Capellino, Bag Lady
This is Ally Capellino outside number six Sunbury Workshops at Arnold Circus where she started her own label thirty years ago. It is just a short walk from her design studio and bag shop in Calvert Avenue, which she opened in 2005. Yet it has been a long journey that Ally travelled between these two locations, during which she designed clothes for twenty years, then split from her partner and re-established herself again independently as a designer of bags.
Years ago, I used to cherish the clothes that Ally Capellino designed and sold in her shop in Soho. And I remember pulling a shelf of my books off the wall, one miserable afternoon at this time of year, and selling them to a second hand book dealer – in order to go and buy myself a new coat at Ally Capellino to cheer myself up. Let me assure you, I never regretted it and I still have the velvet coat in question.
When I bought my coat, I did not know if Ally Capellino was a man or a woman, and – since it was Soho – I somehow imagined Ally Capellino was of Italian descent and, in my mind’s eye, Ally wore a straw hat just like the gondoliers of Venice. In fact, it was a pleasant surprise to discover recently that Ally is a diminutive yet superlatively elegant Englishwoman with deep grey eyes and long glossy brown hair to her waist. Wrapped in indeterminate layers of coats and cardigans, accessorised with beads and silk scarves in a style that recalls Vita Sackville-West, and possessing an impressive manner of walking, striding forth as if she were a tall person – Ally is the most sophisticated bag lady you could imagine.
Visiting Ally in her large design studio in the former counting house of the Boundary Estate in Calvert Avenue, where members of her all female staff scurry around between crates of bags piled up high, it was immediately apparent that this is no cottage industry. Yet Ally sits quietly in a corner, and assumes a levity of tone which dispels any sense of professional hauteur that you might expect from one whose identity is manifest as an internationally recognised brand. Ironically, it is her personal sense of understatement that the cognoscenti appreciate in her designs – in other words Ally Capellino does “plain” brilliantly. Her work exists as the antithesis of those fancy bags which are the vogue, adorned with buckles and straps and quilting and tags and gilt and labels and other frippery.
“I think we’re getting plainer,” revealed Ally, as if she were forecasting the weather, “we’ve discovered our customers like to take the labels off. I’ve always started with materials, I’ve never designed anything and then worked out what to make it from. I’m interested in materials – quite often pretty basic, unpretentious, cheap ones – that have an inherent quality and stand up for themselves. But I’d never made anything in leather before I made bags, so I’ve had to learn to work with it.”
And you can find these covetable bags in Ally’s Calvert Avenue shop (once Feldman the tailors) that exemplify this pared-down aesthetic, of durable construction and graceful proportion, with subtle contrasts of canvas and coloured leather. It was Ally’s sympathetic utilitarian style that led to her commission to design new outfits for the Brownies and Girl Guides, and, thanks to her, never was Guiding as stylish as it is today.
Ally pulled on her Peruvian knitted hat and we set out together up the Kingsland Rd in the biting wind to visit the workshop of Rupert Blanchard, who has a way with material too. He works with discarded timber, old doors, drawers and anything else he can get hold of – chopping them up and reassembling them to make contemporary furniture and fittings. When we walked into Rupert’s workshop in the labyrinthine spaces at the rear of the former Shoreditch Police Station, where he has been cutting up rotten old doors salvaged from Bethnal Green to make a new counter for Ally’s shop and a display for her bags at Liberty, I expected piles of sawdust and disordered piles of scrap timber but instead I discovered his painstakingly organising trove of raw materials and curios. A pale-faced man with wayward lanky hair, who likes to hoover up every grain of sawdust after each job, Rupert seemed happy alone here tending his collection of broken things and so we chose not to interrupt him too long.
Returning to Arnold Circus, we sneaked around the back to the Sunbury Workshops to visit the place where Ally started. Climbing up the worn old stairs in the gloom, ahead of me, “It hasn’t changed at all!” she declared in a whisper as, in excitement and without compunction, she walked right walking into her former studio. Today people mostly sit at laptops in these workshops designed for artisans, although we learnt that wood turning continues below as it did in the days when Ally was first here. The man behind the computer, whom we walked in on, was happy to meet the celebrated Ally Capellino in person, succumbing to her charm, and as quickly as I noticed that his bag was one of hers, he produced his wallet that Ally had designed, proffering it with a smile to show her in illustration of how nicely it had weathered.
As we walked back to her studio, I asked Ally how she has preserved her capacity for delight after more than thirty years, and she gave a modest explanation. “I love Scrabble, and my job is bit like Scrabble, the manoeuvring and making it fit together.” she explained, revealing a naturally fertile imagination. Then, “I play Scrabble online constantly.” she confessed with a wicked smile of self-parody.
In the world of fashion and style, where so many designers come and go, Ally Capellino is still here and still enjoying herself too.
Ally’s bags loaned by their owners for her thirty year retrospective last year.
Designs from when Ally began at the Sunbury Workshops at Arnold Circus in the early eighties.
A desirable knitted waistcoat.
The history of Ally Capellino.
Ally’s shop in Calvert Avenue.
Ally Capellino at Pitti Immagine Uomo in Florence.
Rupert Blanchard in his workshop.
My other Calvert Avenue stories:
How Raymond’s Shop became Leila’s Shop
Ainsworth Broughton, Upholsterer
Tom Disson, Fishmonger
Tom shows Jesus’ thumbprint on a Haddock
Cod are spawning now. We are in that short season of four to five weeks each Spring when fresh Cod roe is available – and fishmonger Tom Disson has his supply, that he boiled up at the back of his shop in the Roman Rd, on sale now. Tom’s long-standing East End customers are eager to enjoy this celebrated annual treat – far superior to the frozen variety – delicious spread on toast or prepared in the traditional manner, sliced and deep fried in batter. From behind the counter yesterday, viewing the world through the narrow frame of the shopfront at “George’s Plaice,” I watched them all come along and halt in their tracks to admire Tom’s magnificent display of steaming Cod roe glistening on the slab.
Tom knows his customers by name and our conversation was regularly punctuated as Tom turned his head to utter a greeting to each person that appeared in the field of his peripheral vision, flitting past the shop window – “Hello Mary Love!”- “Hello Ted!” – “Hello Ginger!” There has been a fishmonger on this site since 1898 and today “George’s Plaice” is the centre of the world in the Roman Rd, where customers come to introduce their daughters to cockles and to order jellied eels for their mother’s funeral, while Tom keeps everything buoyant with constant flow of banter, both lewd and lugubrious by turns. “Are you looking for service? I’m feeling chesty today.” proposed Tom with a provocative comedy smirk as his customers scrutinised the kippers, heroically suppressing the heavy cold that is getting him down.
“My dog had a wart on its ear and do you know what it cost me? – £387 to have it removed!” protested Tom, sharing his affront at the iniquity of our times, with Rene who matched it with an account of her greyhound’s broken leg that cost £475 to set, a statement countered by Tom’s revelation that his dog required cream for its foot, to stop it scratching, that cost £85. A resultant empathetic silence of mutual outrage prevailed while Tom wrapped up Rene’s fish, before an exchange of genial smiles accompanied the close of the transaction.
“I was a banana salesman at Fyffes Bananas for fifteen years, until I met my lovely wife at an eel stall in Club Row and that’s how I came to be here.” Tom confided proudly, “She’s an East End girl, born in Poplar from a family of twelve. I’m from West London, but I never had cause to regret moving here because I’ve met some lovely, lovely people over the years. My brother-in-law George was a fishmonger, he used to go down to the country, buying crabs and whelks in Norfolk and Suffolk. He ran this shop for seven years before I took over from him in 1982, and the fellow before him, he was porter from Billingsgate Fish Market.”
Tom has decorated his walls over the last thirty years with an appealing gallery of pictures, some of the old East End, others of himself in former days – with two stuffed oystercatchers in a glass box as the centrepiece of the shop. And the view from the pavement, looking across the expanse of coloured fish to where Tom stands in his white apron and flat cap with the backdrop of framed pictures is a memorable spectacle.
Week in, week out, through all weathers, Tom sits keeping his fish company with his good pal Geoffrey (“East End born and bred”) a former publican. “There used to be thirty-two pubs between here and Shoreditch, but if there’s eight now it’s a lot,” posited Geoffrey regretfully, in a quiet moment yesterday. “We’ve definitely seen the best days,” agreed Tom, nodding with a sardonic grimace, playing Vladimir to Geoffrey’s Estragon in this fish shop re-enactment of “Waiting for Godot.” “Years ago, you had so much banter with the people, we used to have queues both ways on a Saturday morning!” continued Tom, crossing his arms, gazing across the gleaming fish for consolation, and smiling fondly in a reverie of the glory days of fishmongery in the Roman Rd.
Yet the moment a customer appeared, Tom and Geoffrey both sprang into animated life, eager to please, because they appreciate the esteem with which the local people hold this shop – as an unchanging landmark and reminder of the time when people always greeted each other in this neighbourhood. For Tom Disson, it is no duty, it is his joy, because this is his community. His customers may be aging but the affection with which “George’s Plaice” is held by the populace of the Roman Rd ensures that this performance is destined to run on for a few more years yet. And in the meantime, you must take the chance to visit the last old fish shop in the East End, and enjoy for yourself the rare delicacy of freshly boiled Cod’s roe while it is still in season.
Choosing the Haddock.
Choosing the Cod Roe.
Tom waits while customers deliberate over the Skate.
A satisfied customer, delighted with her Cod Roe.
1985
1985
Tom’s magnificent display of freshly boiled Cod roe.
Tom Disson, 1985
Tom Disson, 2011
You may also like to read my stories about Gary Arber’s Printing Works in the Roman Rd
Jonathon Green, Lexicographer
Jonathon Green knows more dirty words than anyone else in the English speaking world, including twelve hundred for penis and a thousand for vagina, and yet, much to my disappointment, I found he is capable of engaging in civilised conversation without recourse to any unpleasant, vulgar or colourful vocabulary.
If you sat next to him at dinner you would count yourself lucky to enjoy such amusing and well-educated company. You would not guess that he is the top lexicographer of slang, the foremost scholar of filth, author of the definitive Green’s Dictionary of Slang, published by Chambers in three fat volumes last year – as the product of more than twenty years tireless application to the frayed margins of the English language, earning him the title Mr Slang.
“It’s my life’s work,” he confessed to me with a reckless smile of delight, “it has occupied my very being from the tips of my toes to the top of my head. I am the latest in a long line of slang lexicographers that is quite tangible and continuous stretching back to Robert Copeland in 1538. One day I realised, ‘You are doing the right thing for you,’ because I enjoy teasing out etymologies. I am fascinated by the margins, and I’m sure it’s linked to being a Jew and being an only child. Marginal language is more interesting to me, I wouldn’t want to be a mainstream lexicographer. I think, every book that I have written, it has always been about, ‘What can we learn from this?'”
“The primary difference between my work and that of earlier lexicographers is that they had to go looking, whereas, in the modern world, I don’t know where to stop!” continued Jonathon, exhilarated at the potential of the universe to offer up material for his pleasure. “Slang is thematic and there are certain themes,” he added with a conscientious orderliness,” – crime, drink, drugs, parts of the body and what we do with them, being unpleasant to other people, being nice about yourself, racism and having a good time. There’s also bodily fluids, shitting, pissing, fucking and farting. And on top of that there’s words for stupid, fools, prostitutes and the whole world of commercial sex.”
Judging from the nature of his curosity you might assume that Jonathon inhabits a hovel in the gutter, but in fact he lives with his wife in an airy modern rooftop apartment in Clerkenwell, less than a mile East of Dr Johnson’s house where this whole dictionary business began. “I feel a true relationship with my predecessors.” he confided to me, “I can relate to Samuel Johnson, but the one I most identify with is John Camden Hotten author of ‘The Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant & Vulgar Words’ 1859, because he wrote pornography and since I also used to write for top shelf titles, I always recognise a certain kinship with him.”
Before I could enquire further about the pornography, Jonathon launched into a history of slang, explaining how Robert Copeland once asked the porter outside St Bartholomew’s Hospital in Smithfield what the poor people were saying and received the reply, “They have their own language.” From this chance conversation over five centuries ago, just a quarter of a mile South from Jonathon’s flat, came the first book of cant, entitled “The Highway to the Spital House,” thereby initiating the field of scholarship Jonathon ploughs today. “Because slang is marginal only criminal stuff was written down at first since there was no other reason to record it,” he explained, before reeling off the names of those who have gone before him, from Eric Partridge to John S. Farmer to C.G. Leyland to John Camden Hotten to Francis Grose, reaching the early nineteenth century when the term slang appeared in our language. Then, enthusiastically pulling treasured copies off his shelves to show me,“Slang Dictionaries have always been independent,” he declared with a sparkle in his eye, “I am an independent, but there aren’t people like me any more – institutions and publishers make dictionaries now.”
After editing dictionaries of quotations in the early eighties, Jonathon wrote his first dictionary of contemporary slang in 1984 – just eleven and a half thousand entries, compared to twelve thousand in his current work for the letter “S” alone. In 1993, he was asked to write a broader dictionary of slang that was published in 1998, which in turn led to the commission for the current work comprising 110,000 entries, that, including the work of assistants, has taken an estimated fifty years of human labour to complete. Jonathon’s good humoured yet pale faced wife Susan Ford, who refers to herself succintly as “the slave,” visited the British Library five or six days a week for ten years to pursue research for the dictionary and, when Jonathon’s advance ran out only the unexpected legacy from an obscure uncle enabled him to continue, until the day the publishers hauled the mighty beast into publication.
Unsurprisingly, Jonathon admits to feeling depressed since his dictionary was completed, recognising that the changing world of publishing means there will never be a second edition and, more than this, there is unlikely ever to be another printed dictionary of slang. With some poignancy, Jonathon understands that his work is the last dictionary of slang – the end of the sequence of books that began with Copeland in 1538 – because the future lies in electronic databases. A realisation which has permitted Jonathon to ameliorate his sadness by continuing with the work of expanding his personal files in preparation for the day his beautiful dictionary of filth can become a continuously updated online resource.
“There have been moments of drudgery,” revealed Jonathon, almost reluctantly, “but you when you publish the book you become a little tin god – an expert.” With laconic irony, Jonathon encapsulated the apotheosis of the lexicographer, from drudge into deity and then, at this natural conclusion, he returned to his desk while I continued my conversation with Susan. But I could not help noticing that Jonathon appeared to be having a few problems with his computer, judging from the string of expletives worthy of the pages of his dictionary that emanated from his direction. And I was glad, because what is the use of knowing all these bloody words if you cannot savour their rich poetry upon your own tongue?
The Caveat for Common Cursetopurs by Thomas Harman, 1567
The New Dictionary of the Canting Crew by B.E. Gent, c.1698
Francis Grose author of “The Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue,” 1785.
A Cadger’s map from The Vulgar Tongue by Ducange Anglicus, 1857
Advertisement in Cockney with text in standard English below from The Vulgar Tongue by Ducange Anglicus, 1857
At God’s Convenience
“Slovenliness is no part of Religion. Cleanliness is indeed close to Godliness” – John Wesley, 1791
Oftentimes, walking between Spitalfields and Covent Garden, I pass through Bunhill Fields where – in passing – I can pay my respects to William Blake, Daniel Defoe and John Bunyan who are buried there, and sometimes I also stop off at John Wesley’s Chapel’s in the City Rd to pay a visit to the underground shrine of Thomas Crapper – the champion of the flushing toilet and inventor of the ballcock.
It seems wholly appropriate that here, at the mother church of the Methodist movement, is preserved one of London’s finest historic toilets, still in a perfect working order today. Although installed in 1899, over a century after John Wesley’s death, I like to think that if he returned today Wesley would be proud to see such immaculate facilities provided to worshippers at his chapel – thereby catering to their mortal as well as their spiritual needs. The irony is that even those, such as myself, who come here primarily to fulfil a physical function cannot fail to be touched by the stillness of this peaceful refuge from the clamour of the City Rd.
There is a sepulchral light that glimmers as you descend beneath the chapel to enter the gleaming sanctum where, on the right hand side of the aisle, eight cedar cubicles present themselves, facing eight urinals to the left, with eight marble washbasins behind a screen at the far end. A harmonious arrangement that reminds us of the Christian symbolism of the number eight as the number of redemption – represented by baptism – which is why baptismal fonts are octagonal. Appropriately, eight was also the number of humans rescued from the deluge upon Noah’s Ark.
Never have I seen a more beautifully kept toilet than this, every wooden surface has been waxed, the marble and mosaics shine, and each cubicle has a generous supply of rolls of soft white paper. It is both a flawless illustration of the rigours of the Methodist temperament and an image of what a toilet might be like in heaven. The devout atmosphere of George Dance’s chapel built for John Wesley in 1778, and improved in 1891 for the centenary of Wesley’s death – when the original pillars made of ships’ masts were replaced with marble from each country in the world where Methodists preached the gospel – pervades, encouraging solemn thoughts, even down here in the toilet. And the extravagant display of exotic marble, some of it bearing an uncanny resemblance to dog meat, complements the marble pillars in the chapel above.
Sitting in a cubicle, you may contemplate your mortality and, when the moment comes, a text on the ceramic pull invites you to “Pull & Let Go.” It is a parable in itself – you put your trust in the Lord and your sins are flushed away in a tumultuous rush of water that recalls Moses parting the Red Sea. Then you may wash your hands in the marble basin and ascend to the chapel to join the congregation of the worthy.
Yet before you leave and enter Methodist paradise, a moment of silent remembrance for the genius of Thomas Crapper is appropriate. Contrary to schoolboy myth, he did not give his name to the colloquial term for bowel movements, which, as any etymologist will tell you, is at least of Anglo-Saxon origin. Should you lift the toilet seat, you will discover “The Venerable” is revealed upon the rim, as the particular model of the chinaware, and it is an epithet that we may also apply to Thomas Crapper. Although born to humble origins in 1836 as the son of a sailor, Crapper rose to greatness as the evangelist of the flushing toilet, earning the first royal warrant for sanitary-ware from Prince Edward in the eighteen eighties and creating a business empire that lasted until 1963.
Should your attention be entirely absorbed by this matchless parade of eight Crapper’s Valveless Waste Preventers, do not neglect to admire the sparkling procession of urinals opposite by George Jennings (1810-1882) – celebrated as the inventor of the public toilet. 827,280 visitors paid a penny for the novelty of using his Monkey Closets in the retiring rooms at the Great Exhibition of 1851, giving rise to the popular euphemism, “spend a penny,” still in use today in overly polite circles.
Once composure and physical comfort are restored, you may wish to visit the chapel to say a prayer of thanks or, as I like to do, visit John Wesley’s house seeking inspiration in the life of the great preacher. Wesley preached a doctrine of love to those who might not enter a church, and campaigned for prison reform and the abolition of slavery, giving more than forty thousand sermons in his lifetime, often several a day and many in the open air – travelling between them on horseback. In his modest house, where he once ate at the same table as his servants, you can see the tiny travelling lamp that he carried with him to avoid falling off his horse (as he did frequently), his nightcap, his shoes, his spectacles, his robe believed to have been made out of a pair of old curtains, the teapot that Josiah Wedgwood designed for him, and the exercising chair that replicated the motion of horse-riding, enabling Wesley to keep his thigh muscles taut when not on the road.
A visit to the memorial garden at the rear of the chapel to examine Wesley’s tomb will reveal that familiar term from the toilet bowl “The Venerable” graven in stone in 1791 to describe John Wesley himself, which prompts the question whether this was where Thomas Crapper got the idea for the name of his contraption, honouring John Wesley in sanitary-ware.
Let us thank the Lord if we are ever caught short on the City Rd because, due to the good works of the venerable Thomas Crapper and the venerable John Wesley, relief and consolation for both body and soul are readily to hand at God’s convenience.
Watch Thomas Crapper’s works in action in this short film by clicking here.
Nineteenth century fixtures by Thomas Crapper, still in perfect working order.
“The Venerable”
Put your trust in the Lord.
Cubicles for private worship.
Stalls for individual prayer.
In memoriam, George Jennings, inventor of the public toilet.
Upon John Wesley’s Tomb.
John Wesley’s Chapel
John Wesley’s exercise chair to simulate the motion of horseriding,
John Wesley excused himself unexpectedly from the table …
New wallpaper in John Wesley’s parlour from an eighteenth century design at Kew Palace.
The view from John Wesley’s window across to Bunhill Fields where, when there were no leaves upon the trees, he could see the white tombstone marking his mother’s grave.
Learn about John Wesley’s chapel at www.wesleyschapel.org.uk
Crapper sanitary-ware is still available from www.thomas-crapper.com
You may also like to read about Agnese Sanvito, Toilets at Dawn
A Renovation in Fournier St
This is the eighteenth century house in Fournier St that Jane Cumberbatch and her husband Alastair renovated in the nineteen eighties. Today its serene appearance belies the ambitious restoration that was undertaken to bring it back from the verge of collapse a quarter of a century ago.
“Neither of us really realised what we were taking on,” admitted Jane with a winsome smile to find herself standing outside the house she bought in 1985, more than ten years since she left it, “We didn’t realise how beautiful it was because all the panelling was hidden behind layers of hardboard – but we knew we had to do major work because there was a bow in the back wall and a dodgy roof in danger of collapse. Though we were so lucky to find some wonderful people, Richard Naylor was the architect who drew up the plans, Jimmy Brunton was the builder, Bodhan Antoniuw was the carpenter, Robert Davies carved the corbels and Jim Howett made the shutters and our bed, which we still sleep in today.”
Yet before she could achieve her dream, Jane had to suffer the nightmare of the back wall collapsing in the midst of the two year programme of work required before she could move in. “At one point you could look through the floor from the attic to the basement.” she recalled with a sentimental grin, “We had to take it back to the skeleton, but we tried to keep as much as we could and we used recycled boards where we couldn’t. One of the problems is how far do you go, we tried to make the house work for now but you have to retain its integrity. Dan Cruickshank was always around as a sounding board and everyone involved was very passionate.”
When Jane came to live in Spitalfields, the Fruit & Vegetable Market was still in operation and it was a more utilitarian place. “At first people would say, ‘Where is Spitalfields? Is it safe?” Jane informed me, wincing with retrospective irony, before giving in to her affectionate reminiscences, “I remember Nelly, the longest established resident of Fournier St at ninety years old, she had been born there. And Michael and David Gillingham opposite, who had the perfect Georgian house, with a poltergeist that had to be exorcised. And John, who once had a good job, but would stand and rant outside the church gates, yet stop to pat the children on their heads nicely. And there were hawks nesting on the church tower that ate the rats. And one night somebody dumped five hundred tins of used cooking oil outside our front door. And one night somebody set fire to a skip in the street. And there were bombs in the City and Brick Lane, and our windows shook. There was always something going on! And there were so many down and outs, I wonder what happened to them?”
Among Jane’s fond memories of Spitalfields, one night stands out above all others, 16th October 1987. “The night of the hurricane was very scary,” she announced, rolling her dark eyes, “We were woken by this howling wind and the lights went out in the City. All the trees came down in the churchyard and there was this huge gap because the planes opposite were not there any more. I couldn’t get to work next morning, so I went out into the churchyard and took pictures.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever got over leaving Spitalfields because it was magic, but we have all these tangible memories.” said Jane tenderly, thinking out loud and reconciling herself to her experiences, as we looked through her old photographs together, “I used to feel the houses were so old and an awful lot of misery had happened in them. It would have been a rooming house – so many people came through. And we were just another wave of immigrants, amongst all the waves and waves of of different people. Yet all the friends we made here, we still keep in touch, because there were lots of children then and they all used to play in each other’s houses.”
Over the passage of time, Jane Cumberbatch has come to recognise that no-one ever truly owns these old houses, the inhabitants are mere custodians. These photographs (selected from nearly three hundred that she took of the house she eventually left in 1997) record the transformation that she is proud to have supervised, as her personal contribution to the ongoing stewardship of these soulful edifices which have seen so much life over the centuries.
This is the house when Jane first saw in 1985 as U-Tex of London Ltd, Trouser Manufacturer.
The view from the weaver’s loft towards the market.
The derelict loft.
During the replacement of the roof and the floor.
After renovation.
Eighteenth century panelling uncovered on the ground floor.
Restoring the original position of a partition wall.
The dining room.
The facade with the signage removed.
The facade with new windows and shutters replicating those of the seventeen twenties.
The bedroom.
The banana merchant at number one Fournier St.
The rear elevation with the bowed back wall.
The absence of back wall after its collapse.
The reconstructed back wall using recycled bricks.
Jane contemplates the dereliction she bought into.
The living room.
Jim Howett, still renovating houses in Fournier St today, fits the new windows.
October 1987, the night of the hurricane in Spitalfields.
Plane trees in the churchyard brought down by the hurricane .
Photographs of renovations copyright © Jane Cumberbatch
Photographs of interiors after renovation copyright © Henry Bourne
Jane Cumberbatch’s book “Pure Style” is published by RPS and you can follow her work through her blog www.purestyleonline.com
You may also like to read my other Fournier St stories
The Wallpapers of Spitalfields
Hugo Glendinning, Photographer
Andy Rider, Rector of Christ Church Spitalfields
