Adam Dant’s Map of Shoreditch as New York
“People do say they like the New Yorky feel, here in Shoreditch,” admitted Adam Dant with a wily smile and a discernible twinkle in his eye, when I asked him how he came to draw this map of Shoreditch as New York. In this arresting vision, (A double click will enlarge the map to fill your screen) Old St roundabout is transformed into Old St Circle, Arnold Circus Park becomes Madison Square Gardens and Liverpool St Station becomes Grand Central Station. In this metamorphosis, the buildings and terminology are Americanised too, Brick Lane becomes Brick Lane Avenue, Bethnal Green Rd becomes Bethnal Green Boulevard and Quaker St becomes simply Quaker. Commissioned in 2003 by the Shoreditch Map Company, the original painting now hangs above the table football machine in Bar Kick in Shoreditch High St, where Adam and I went to have a look at it yesterday. Unsurprisingly, we were told it is the subject of a great deal of discussion in the bar.
When you come to think about it, the comparison becomes less far fetched than you might assume, because Broadway in New York is along the line of an ancient pathway followed by the Algonquin tribe, whereas in Shoreditch, Old St follows the route of a primeval trackway of the ancient Britons, and Canal St in New York follows the route of the former canal whereas Shoreditch takes its name from the “Suer” that was once ditched and is now piped off. Both places are renowned for their mix of artists and immigrant culture, and down in Brushfield St, on the site of the Spitalfields Market, Adam has drawn New York’s Ellis Island building in acknowledgement of the immigrants who have come to New York and Spitalfields, defining the nature of these locations today.
Looking around the neighbourhood, you quickly come upon further clues. We have Rivington St here just as they do, and Broadway Market and Columbia Rd too, chiming with New York. And the extension of the Great Eastern Railway up to Old St created a narrow triangular plot, occupied by a tall tapered building at the bottom of Great Eastern St which is reminiscent of the Flat Iron Building. Many people live in lofts in this vicinity today just as you might find in Soho or Tribeca and, of course, we have Shoreditch House whereas in New York they have Soho House, though I am reliably informed our rooftop pool deck is bigger than theirs.
In Adam’s vision, the Bishopsgate Goods Yard is transformed into a park, something many residents would like to see. Wheler St crosses the yard beneath a bridge just as 79th St crosses Central Park, while the elevated garden upon the former railway arches that Adam has drawn resembles the Highline Park in Chelsea – and a similar proposal has been made here, to transform the continuation of the Bishopsgate Arches over in Pedley St into a raised park. On Sundays, you will find the Chelsea fleamarket in the West Village, and here in Sclater St and Bethnal Green Rd. In Summer months, young people fill Hoxton Square, just as their transatlantic counterparts fill Washington Square.
The impetus behind Adam’s map was the Situationists, who would take a map of Paris to the Sahara Desert, exploring the strange poetry of transferring a map from one area and applying it to another. Inspired by the Situationist movement, Adam had previously done a project of Reading as Rome, in which he staged a casting call in Reading for “Reading Holiday,” a remake of the classic Audrey Hepburn, Gregory Peck movie, relocated to Reading – using a Lambretta and back projection of the streets of Reading. “I tried to take photos of Reading where it could pass for Rome,” Adam explained to me with a smirk, as we walked back from Bar Kick to his studio in Club Row, “It was bloody difficult.”
Then we were both stopped in our tracks by an image on a passing courier truck in Redchurch St, showing New York viewed through Tower Bridge grafted onto the Brooklyn Bridge. But was it Tower Bridge joining the Brooklyn Bridge across the East River with Manhattan in the background? Or was it London with the New York Financial District transferred to Shad Thames? Was it London as New York or New York as London? We stood and looked at each other in amazement…
The courier truck in Redchurch St, is this London or New York?
You may like to take a look at Adam Dant’s Map of the History of Shoreditch and his Map of Shoreditch as the Globe. Next time, Shoreditch in the Year 3000. Adam Dant’s current exhibition Bibliotheques & Brothels runs at the Adam Baumgold Gallery, East 66th St, New York City until November 27th.
In & Out the Eagle Tavern
I wish you would take me out to the theatre. On these dark nights when the rain beats at my window and the wind moans down my chimney, I dream of leaving the gloomy old house one evening and joining the excited crowds, out in their best clothes to witness the spectacular entertainments that London has to offer. The particular theatre I have in mind is The Grecian Theatre attached to the Eagle Tavern in Shepherdess Walk, City Road between Angel and Old St.
The place seems to have developed quite a reputation, as I read yesterday, “The Grecian Saloon is really a hot house or a black hole, for the number of human beings packed in there every night would induce a supposition there was no other place of entertainment in London. At least two thousand persons were left unable to procure admission.” This was written in 1839, demonstrating that the popular art of having a good time – still pursued vigorously in the many pubs and clubs here today – is a noble tradition which has always thrived in the East End, outside the walls of the City of London.
“Up and down the City Road, in and out the Eagle, that’s the way the money goes…” The Eagle public house in the rhyme still exists to this day, though barely anything remains of the elaborate entertainment complex which developed there during the nineteenth century – apart from a single scrapbook that I found in the archive of the Bishopsgate Institute. All the balloon ascents, the stick fights, the operas, the wrestling and the wild parties may be over, and the thrill rides closed long ago, but there is enough in this album to evoke the extravagant drama of it all and fire my imagination with thoughts of glamorous nights out on the town.
You only have to walk through Brick Lane and up to Shoreditch on a Saturday night, through the hen parties and gangs of suburban boys out on a bevy, jostling among the crowds of the intoxicated, the drugged and the merely overexcited, to get a glimpse of what it might have been like two hundred years ago. With as many as six thousand attending events at the Eagle Tavern, we can assume that lines must have formed just as we see today outside nightclubs.
On the site of the eighteenth century Shepherd & Shepherdess Pleasure Garden, the Grecian Saloon developed at the Eagle Tavern to provide all kinds of entertainments, from religious events to conjuring and equestrian performances. There is a tantalising poetry to the hints that survive of these bygone entertainments, because sentences like “We are glad to find that little Smith has recovered her hoarseness.” and “We have little to find fault with save that the maniac was allowed to perambulate the gardens without his keeper.” do set the imagination racing. There are many fine coloured playbills in the cherished album that I hope to show you in coming weeks, crammed with enigmatic promises of exotic thrills. Take a look at the plates below and wonder who exactly was the beautiful Giraffe Girl, or General Campbell, the smallest man in the world. Amongst so much hyperbole there is a disappointing modesty to learn that the central attractions are merely supported by the “artistes of acknowledged talent.”
Elaborate pavilions with all manner of special effects were constructed at the Grecian Saloon, which in turn became the Grecian Theatre in 1858 where Marie Lloyd made her stage debut, aged fifteen. Eventually the building was acquired in 1882 by General William Booth of the Salvation Army and the parties came to an end. Yet this site saw the transition from eighteenth century pleasure garden to nineteenth century music hall. And when you come to think of the many thousands of souls who experienced so much joy there over all those years, it does impart a certain sacred quality to this location, even if it is now mostly occupied by the Shoreditch Police Station.
Watercolours of the New Grecian Theatre in 1899, built during the management of George Augustus Oliver Conquest in 1858 and later purchased by General William Booth of the Salvation Army.
All images copyright © Bishopsgate Institute
Peter Hardwicke, Signwriter
You may have seen Peter Hardwicke in Brushfield St over the last couple of weeks, busy up a ladder or crouched down on the pavement, painting new signwriting on the Market Coffee House which has opened an English Restaurant. “That’s not how you spell ‘restaurant’!” I called out cheekily to him, when I saw Peter standing with his brush poised, while balanced precariously upon two planks supported by tall trestles. Yet such was his professional mode of composure that he simply turned his head and, looking down, gave me a gracious smile of complicity – as if he had never heard that one before. While everyone has gone about their business recently in Spitalfields, Peter has painted his elegantly proportioned letters with placid concentration, apparently oblivious to the chaos surrounding him.
Directly across Crispin St stands The Gun, which is covered in signwriting that Peter did back in the nineteen eighties. Although I admired the flourish of his gold italic script emblazoned there, Peter is a little dubious of this early work because he is aware that tastes in signwriting have moved on. The trend now is for cleaner typography, whereas in the eighties they liked their fascias crowded with letters. I think we can allow Peter this singular distinction because he knows what he is talking about, since he has devoted all the years between doing these two premises on either side of Crispin St to painting the lettering on shops all over the East End.
Today, Peter may be the last sign writer in London who works entirely by eye – painting lettering freehand, and positioning and sizing it by eye too, rather using a computer. His innate sense of proportion and knack of placing the words upon the building derive from his practice of working directly onto the shopfront, rather than planning it on a computer and then simply transferring the design, a process that he dismisses as mere “painting by numbers.” And I cannot deny there is a certain heroic bravado to Peter’s work, which provided a popular spectator sport for the curious in Brushfield St last week, as we saw him consulting with the proprietor, then sketching out words in chalk before getting up there in front of everyone, and painting perfect nicely balanced letters, getting it right first time – and spelling ”restaurant” correctly too.
I managed to persuade Peter to climb down his ladder and join me for a cup of tea at Dino’s Cafe in Commercial St, where he took the opportunity to explain how he acquired and refined his talent for painting lettering with such grace.
“My father was involved in the restoration of historic vehicles, old trucks, and through him I learnt the basics of my craft. But then in 1984, at the age of sixteen, I went on to join a very established traditional signwriting company who did a lot of work on pubs for Courage, Whitebread, Watneys, Combe Reid and Truman’s. I had very good time there and fantastic workmates, apprentices like myself. The owner Ted Ambridge – an absolute genius – taught me everything I know, an complete master he was.
I was reasonably competent after three years and I was sent to signwrite my first pub, The Red Lion in Hoxton. I was a spotty faced teenager and the landlord told me to go home.He called Mr Ambridge and said, “I’ve got a young kid here who wants to do the signwriting on the pub.” And he said, “It’s alright, let him get on with it, it’ll be fine.” I done the job and it was very successful, but the point of the story was that although I done the signwriting on this pub, I couldn’t buy a drink there because I wasn’t old enough.
It’s one of those trades where the work is very therapeutic and satisfying, it’s almost like a hobby but you are being paid for it. I can be desperately ill and still do it. I think there’d have to be a hurricane for me not to do it. I’ve worked in all winds and weathers. I’ve worked in the snow. Signwriters are a bit like mountain goats.
When I started my freelance career, I worked in Central London in the high end of the trade doing gold leaf and glass work, the premium market – the cream of the signwriting trade. But what with the regeneration of East London and being from here, I actually prefer working here. It’s more interesting and I like to see my local area looking good. I get great pleasure walking along Columbia Rd, Cheshire St and through Spitalfields, knowing that I’ve had a hand in creating this environment. It’s almost tribal, here in the East End there is an optimistic flourish to the signwriting even if it is a bit rougher, whereas up in North London the lettering is more uptight, anxious and controlled. I can do any font from memory, though I have own house style, a pointed serif font signwriter’s Roman. We’ve all got it, I can look at any sign and tell you what signwriter done it. It’s just like a signature. You can see the link between the three of us who trained with Mr Ambridge, very classical.
I met a guy last week – he stopped in his van outside the Market Coffee House – in his late fifties. He said, “I used to do what you do.” “What happened?” I asked. He’d gone over to scanning signs onto plastic with a computer, and the last time he picked up a brush was five years ago. He got quite melancholy,“There’s no work now,” he said. “But there is,” I replied,“If I can do it, you can!””
Below you can see a proud selection of Peter’s work in the vicinity and you can view his archive here.
Peter Hardwicke at work in Brushfield St
Peter as an apprentice in 1984, aged sixteen, with one of his first pieces of work.
New photographs copyright © Jeremy Freedman
Lucinda Rogers’ East End
Even before I met her, I always admired this view looking West over Spitalfields by Lucinda Rogers that is framed on the wall of the Golden Heart in Commercial St. It is a large drawing executed in vigorous lines placed with superlative confidence, and filled with subtlety and fluent detail to reward the eye. The pale cloud on the horizon high above the City – illuminating the grey Northern light of a London sky – is a phenomenon that anyone in Spitalfields will recognise. What I especially like about this drawing is that there are so few lines, enough to summon the drawing into existence yet without any superfluous gesture. And although there is no pretence to photographic realism, the vivid spatial quality is such that when you gaze into the deep spaces of the composition it can feel almost vertiginous, especially if you have had a few drinks.
The next work of Lucinda’s to impinge upon my consciousness was her portrait of my friend Paul Gardner, the paper bag seller, which hangs up behind the counter in his shop in Commercial St, where his family have traded from the same building since it was built in 1870. Here you see Paul, in his world composed of paper products, at ease behind the counter in a characteristic pose of dreamy contemplation, ever expectant of the next customer to burst through the door demanding paper bags. The crowded symphonic detail of the bags and tags and signs in this masterful portrait manifest the contents of Paul’s extraordinary mind, possessing a natural facility to keep to track of all his stock, as well as working out all the prices, discounts for multiples and VAT percentages with ease.
I do not know what I expected when I met Lucinda Rogers for the first time, but I certainly was not prepared for her alluring poise, as she arrived looking chic in a tweed coat with dramatic long straight copper hair, pale skin and a huge ring with a rectangular stone – with an intensity of glamour as if she had stepped from a Jean Luc Godard movie. As we shook hands and I complimented her on her work, she flashed her hazel eyes with a generous smile, and I was momentarily disarmed to realise that she was looking at me with the same shrewd vision which she demonstrates in her elegant work. Once introductions were accomplished, we enjoyed several hours studying this remarkable set of drawings, which exist collectively today as a unique portrait of our neighbourhood as it was in the first decade of this new century.
They were created by Lucinda between 2003 and 2008, for an exhibition at the Prince’s Foundation Gallery in Shoreditch and then for a feature in an Italian design magazine, Case da Abitare, as she explained to me, “I was offered an exhibition, so I decided to make it of the East End – because I had only drawn New York up until then – with the focus on Spitalfields and especially on people working. So not really about the buildings, but about recording the things that go on inside the buildings and how they are changing. Not like a photograph, but more about a particular day, your feelings, and what you choose to leave out or leave in to make the picture. You are making something that’s less factual and more subjective.”
The first drawing Lucinda made was of the B2B building in Usborn St at the bottom of Brick Lane. “The reason I did this drawing was because of the numbers that are cut out of plywood and nailed to the wall to advertise the sound studio where the soundtracks for Bollywood films are recorded. The floor beneath is occupied by the rag trade, the Jewish Monumental Mason is next door, in between is the Italian Coffee Shop, while in the background the Gherkin is being built and in the foreground is an apple core.” she told me, enumerating the diverse elements in her picture that coalesce to define the elusive mutable culture of this location, where today an estate agent occupies the property.
The modest aesthetic of these drawings upon tinted paper with just a few touches of colour is dramatically in contrast to their bold compositions and scale. Lucinda’s work is closer to cinema than photography, because confronted with the physical presence of the works you cannot resist turning your head to scan the extent of these images.“I see the finished drawing in my mind,” Lucinda said to me plainly, revealing an imaginative confidence that permits her to work without preparatory drawings, defining the structure of these pictures with her first deftly-placed bold brushstrokes.
Each was completed in a single session on location in the street or in the workplace, contributing to the spontaneity that all these drawings share. The fragile lines that conjure these images out of ether give them tremendous energy and life, whilst also emphasising their diaphanous transient quality of vision. As Lucinda Rogers admitted to me with philosophical smile and a gentle shrug of perplexity, “Everything that I draw changes…”
Brick Lane at the junction with Hanbury St.
At the rear of the Nicholls & Clarke building, Norton Folgate.
Leatherworkers at Hyfact Ltd, Links Yard, Spelman St.
Sunday in the Spitalfields Market, Christmas
B2B Building, Osborn St.
Sunrise wedding services, Hanbury St.
Paul Gardner, Gardners Market Sundriesmen, Commercial St.
Phil at Crown & Leek joinery, Deal St.
KTP Printing, Princelet St.
Night in the kitchen at the Beigel Bake, looking out towards Brick Lane.
Big John Carter playing Boogie Woogie on Brick Lane.
Saffire furniture shop, Redchurch St.
Columbia Road Flower Market.
Eugene at North Eastern Motors, Three Colts Lane.
Junction of Middlesex St and Wentworth St, viewed from Petticoat Towers.
Bishopsgate Goods Yard with Spitalfields and the City beyond, viewed from pool deck at Shoreditch House.
Drawings copyright © Lucinda Rogers
Ivor Robins, Fruit & Vegetable Purveyor
Here you see Ivor Robins’ father Maurice and mother Ethel at the Spitalfields Market around 1965, a respectable couple looking very nicely turned out in their Winter clothes, with a magnificent display of the fruit and vegetables that comprise the substance of the family business as their proud backdrop. I found this evocative photograph in Ivor’s office at the New Spitalfields Market in Leyton recently when I went over to pay him a call.
Always dapper in a velvet-collared overcoat, with a fresh carnation in his buttonhole every day for the last fifty years – of the subtle shade of red that is known as ‘clove’ – Ivor Robins is renowned in the market as the gentleman purveyor of fruit and vegetables. “Mr Carnation,” they once called him. A born sportsman who became an heroically ambitious fruit and vegetable seller, his ascendancy has been the culmination of the modest enterprise begun by his grandfather in the Spitalfields Market in 1899, reaching its zenith in 2007 when Ivor became Master of the Worshipful Company of Fruiterers in the City of London.
“My father joined my grandfather Michael in Spitalfields when he was just fourteen years old – even when he was still at school he helped out at weekends – but then my grandfather got cancer and my father had to take over suddenly in 1920. Around 1950, I was at school possibly going on to university, but after three or four years intensive study, I got a thing in my head that I didn’t want to continue with my studies. I preferred the life at the market because I was very sport-oriented at the time, and the beauty of this business was that it started at five in the morning and finished at twelve, which meant I could then go and play cricket and football all day to my heart’s content.
I did enjoy the business. It was totally different then because fifty per cent of produce was sold under auction at the London Fruit Exchange in Brushfield St, only English produce was sent up from the farm for direct sale. You really had to know what you were doing to buy at auction, you needed a developed sense of taste and smell so that you could buy ahead, recognising when things were going to run out. I remember in 1960, all of a sudden South Africa said they didn’t want to sell their fruit under auction, they found an agent and distributed it themselves in the market. Then other countries stopped too and selling fruit at auction ceased.
We were just wholesale in 1950, and for about ten years I dabbled in retail, opening up five shops in North London but I sold that up in 1962 when I opened up ‘Hotel Purveyors,’ We went from strength to strength, supplying to gentlemen’s clubs, the Carlton, Athenaeum, Oxford & Cambridge, National Liberal, a number of leading restaurants and we specialised in private dining rooms in the City for banking firms. In the late sixties, there was a trend towards exotic produce and although there were half a dozen dealers in Covent Garden, there wasn’t anybody selling it in Spitalfields, so I had a lorry at Covent Garden and was the first to bring it over here and it gave us a spectacular advantage. That was how I blossomed out into the catering business, there was such a call for Aubergines, Avocados, Peppers, Lychees, Paw Paws and fresh Mint, Rosemary and Bayleaves.
I have a secretary who has worked for me for forty years and I still pick her up in my car at six o’ clock each morning and we go through the tickets and check them against the stock and she enters them in the ledger. All the orders come in through the night, the staff are on at midnight and deliveries go out between two thirty and six thirty. At seven, I go into the warehouse and cold store and check the stock and then I know what we need to carry, so between seven and eight-thirty I buy the best part of what we will require for the following day.”
Today, Ivor maintains the same modest routine as a fruit and vegetable wholesaler that his grandfather and father would recognise, turning at up work at dawn five days a week, buying stock in person and supervising the paperwork in a tiny office in a corner of the warehouse. Blessed with rare courtesy and possessing a dignified respect for everyone he encounters, he remains a popular figure in the market.
Ivor confessed to me the only significant disagreement he ever had with his father, which he remembers vividly to this day. As a young man, Ivor had sold some boxes of apples, when his father returned from the auction with the news that the price had gone up – since the apples had not yet left the market, Ivor suggested he tell the customer that they had increased. Ivor’s father was outraged and Ivor learnt the imperative of being a man of your word, crucial if you are to maintain a reputation for fair dealing that will last your tenure in the market. And Ivor’s tenure has been distinguished, as he confided to me, his eyes gleaming with undemonstrative pride.
“Over the last twenty-five years, I have been very fortunate to meet and befriend, and be befriended by top chefs. For my installation as Master of the Worshipful Company of Fruiterers, Brian Turner, Gary Rhodes and Albert Roux cooked the dinner for me and two hundred and seventy guests at the Mansion House . Never had so many people been catered for dinner at the Mansion House before, even the Lord Mayor was impressed! It was a wonderful year, I think I did one hundred and thirty five functions. I was very privileged and very lucky that my friend John Stoddart was Lord Mayor that year, and together we attended functions with the Queen Mother, the Queen (three times), the Prince of Wales (twice) and Princess Anne (twice). It was like a fairytale, quite magical.
Most fathers want something better for their son. I went to Grammar School and I was determined my son would go to Public School and University. It puts a certain polish on them. He didn’t appreciate the value of it at the time, but over the last twenty years he has said, ‘How lucky I was to go there.’ He’s a stockbroker now, and he has no intention of going into the business and I don’t blame him.”
I could not ignore the poignancy in Ivor’s story – he has exceeded the aspirations of his father and grandfather to the paradoxical degree that, after more than a century of market trading, he is proud to admit the story ends with him. In fact, Ivor Robins sold off the wholesale side of the business five years ago and now just serves his long-term catering customers. Sporting his Worshipful Company of Fruiterers’ tie with its discreet image of Adam & Eve with the apple under the tree, as a symbol of his achievement, he is a satisfied man who has fulfilled his ambitions in life and yet continues to do the work he enjoys. “Mr Carnation” is in his element.
The Spitalfields Market Golfing Society with Ivor (centre) as Secretary, 1965.
Ivor receives the cup from Desmond Auchin on behalf of the Market Golfing Society in 1965.
The Evening News and Star, Wednesday, December 2nd, 1964
At a trade fair, Ivor proudly points out some of the very first air-freighted strawberries and asparagus that he imported from the USA in 1972.
Ivor shows the asparagus he imported from the USA to American Ambassador Walter Annenberg in 1972
The Chilean Ambassador samples fruit from his own country imported by Ivor in 1973.
Ivor presents Belgian hothouse grapes to the Lord Mayor of London in the Spitalfields Market, 1975.
Ivor Robins, purveyor of fruit and vegetables.
The Cobblers of Spitalfields
“When I left school at sixteen, I told the careers officer I didn’t want an office job, I wanted to do something creative, so he set up appointments for me with a shoe repairer and a watch repairer,” Gary Parsons, the proprietor of Shoe Key in the Liverpool St Arcade, told me last week.“The interview with the shoe repairer was on a Friday and I started work on the Monday, so I never went to the other interview,” he explained with the alacrity of one who now describes himself not as a shoe repairer but “the shoe repairer.”
Shoe repairmen have long been my heroes, the last craftsmen on the high street – where you can still walk into a workshop, inhale the intoxicating fragrance of glue and watch them work their magic on your worn out shoes. Even better than new shoes, there is something endearing about old shoes beautifully repaired. And so, in the heartfelt belief that – although it is commonplace – the modest art of shoe repair should not be underestimated, I persuaded Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie to accompany me on a sentimental pilgrimage to pay homage to some of my favourite East End cobblers.
When the crash happened in the City, news crews descended upon Gary at Shoe Key in Liverpool St to learn the true state of affairs from the authority. They wanted to know if city gents were getting more repairs rather than buying new shoes, or if the crisis was so deep that they could not even afford to mend the holes in their soles. Yet Gary dismissed such scaremongering, taking the global banking crisis in his stride. “There was a slump in the winter of 2008, but since July 2009 business has been steady,” he informed me with a phlegmatic understatement that his City clients would appreciate.
Seventeen years ago, Gary built this narrow bar at the entrance to the Liverpool St Arcade where he and his colleague Mike Holding work fifty-four hours a week, mending shoes with all the flamboyant theatrics of cocktail waiters. They felt the blast of the Aldgate bomb here in 2005 and each winter they suffer the snow landing upon their backs, so three weeks ago they hung up a new tarpaulin to afford themselves some shelter from the future whims of fortune.
Round the corner from Shoe Key, I visited Dave Williams, a gentleman with time for everyone, comfortable in his enclosed booth in Liverpool St directly opposite the station. Dave told me he was the third generation in his trade,“My grandfather Henry Alexander and my father Norman were both saddlers and harness makers, my father he’s a Freeman of the City of London now. They were from an Irish immigrant family in Stepney. In those days, if people had trouble with their boots they took them along to the harness maker and gradually the trade in repairs took over. My training was at my father’s knee. I left school at sixteen and I have been doing this twenty-seven years. I think this trade is pretty much recession proof. It’s always been a good trade and I do very well thankyou.” In contrast to Gary at Shoe Key, Dave was full of self-deprecatory humour. Passing bags of shoes over to a couple of girls, “That’s two satisfied customers this year!” he declared to me with a cheeky smirk, the ceaseless repartee of a man who is sole trader and star turn in his own personal shoe repair theatre.
Over in Camomile St, at the base of the tall Heron Tower, Kiri and George, the energetic double act at Michael’s Shoe Care, enjoy the privilege of having a door on their neat little shop, where everything is arranged with exquisite precision. The additional service at Michael’s Shoe Care is the engraving of trophies, cups, plaques and statuettes which – as George explained to me enthusiastically – are in big demand now that corporate life has become increasingly about hitting targets and setting employees in competition against each other. George, who has been here twenty years, leaned across with eyes gleaming in anticipation and confided his hopes to me, “A lot of places closed down round here recently and thousands of people were moved out, but the new build opposite will be complete next year with a lot of new office space to rent. It’s just a question of waiting and more people will come to us.” I glanced up at the gleaming tower above, and thought of all the engraved trophies that are going to be required to reward all the corporate striving upon its forty-seven floors. Yet in spite of the pathos of this bizarre appropriation of sports day trophies, I was happy in the knowledge that Kiri & George will be secure in their jobs for years to come.
Up at Well Heeled in Bethnal Green, Ken Hines – a veteran of forty-seven years of shoe repair – had a different angle which he delighted to outline.“I was going to be a blacksmith but there was no work in it, so I did shoe repair instead. I like doing it, I’ve always enjoyed doing it. My father was a docker and my family were all butchers in Wapping, my brother still has the butchers down the street. When I started here twenty-seven years ago, there were four shoe repairs in Bethnal Green now I am the only one. We don’t want to modernise. We don’t want to go modern, we’re not a heel bar. We’re going back to the beginning of the nineteenth century. There’s a lot of people bringing vintage shoes and we can take them apart and put them back together again. There’s nothing we can’t do to a pair of shoes here.”
Ken invited me into his workshop, crowded with magnificent well-oiled old machines, prized hand tools and shelves piled with dusty bags of shoes that no-one ever collected.“This stitching machine is over a hundred years old, we use it more than ever.” he said placing a hand affectionately on the trusty device. “Soles should always be stitched on. You buy a pair of shoes and the soles aren’t stitched on, they’re no good.” he declared, pulling huge sheets of leather from a shelf to demonstrate that every sole is cut by hand here. While Ken stands sentinel over the traditions of the trade, training up an apprentice at the old shop in Bethnal Green, his enterprising son Paul has opened four more branches of Well Heeled in shopping centres. But such ambition is of little interest to Ken,“There’s a lot of knowledge you pick up, being around older men,” he informed me, getting lost in tender reminiscence as he lifted his cherished shoe repair hammer,“This was given to me by an old boy thirty five years ago. It was over eighty years old then and I still use it every day.”
Our final destination was Shoe Care at the top of Mare St in Hackney where John Veitch, a magnanimous Scotsman, welcomed us. “I done it since I left school.” he revealed proudly, speaking as he worked, hammering resolutely upon a sole,“I saw one of the boys doing it and I thought,’That’s the thing for me!’ and I’m still happy in it twenty-four years later. It’s the challenge I like, it’s something different every day. Stiletto heels are our bread and butter, the cracks in the pavements have been good for us. And the recession has been helping too, we get a lot more quality shoes in for repair when in the past people would just throw them away.”
At the end of our pilgrimage we had worn out plenty of shoe leather, yet it had been more than worth it to encounter all these celebrated cobblers, and be party to some of the unique insights into human life and society which shoe repair brings. It is a profession that affords opportunity for contemplation as well as the engaged observation of humanity, which may explain why each cobbler I met was both a poet and a showman to a different degree. I admired them all for their independence of spirit and ingenious talent, devoted to the mundane yet essential task of putting us back on our feet when we come unstuck and our soles wear thin.
Opposite Liverpool St Station
David Williams at Liverpool St Shoe Repair, third generation from a family of saddlers.
In the Arcade, Liverpool St Station, with the new tarpaulin fitted ready for the Winter.
Gary at Shoe Key, “Time wounds all heels.”
Mike Harding at Shoe Key.
Michael’s Shoe Care in Camomile St sells trophies given as rewards for hitting corporate targets.
George at Michael’s Shoe Care, Camomile St
Kiri & George are a mean shoe repair team. “It’s total football,“ says Kiri.
At Shoe Care in Hackney, “We got a lot more quality shoes in for repair these days.”
John Veitch of Shoe Care
Ken Hines at Well Heeled in Bethnal Green
Old Charlie’s hammer, “It was eighty years old when he gave it to me thirty five years ago.” said Ken.
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
Columbia Road Market 58
It was the first cold morning of the season, and Kenny Cramer was in hasty conversation with some of his fellow stallholders when I arrived at the market. Once they had concluded their chat, I took the opportunity to speak with Kenny and in the course of my interview discovered that the chilly atmosphere in the market today was for reasons other than meteorological. But first Kenny outlined his family’s involvement in the market over the the last three generations.
“This business is family run, my grandad Bill before me and my dad Ron and then onto myself today. We’ve been here since the market began, over sixty years. I first came when I was six, it wasn’t what it is now, there were only about twelve stalls then. After finishing school at seventeen, I came down here to work with my dad. We run a flower shop during the week in Lodge Avenue, Dagenham and the only day I get off is Tuesday, depending on how busy we are with weddings and funerals.”
Usually stallholders speak with pride when they describe how their family history is interwoven with that of the market, yet I discovered a reticence with Kenny which I had not encountered before, so I asked about the next generation. “I’ve got one boy, he’s at college studying IT and computers,” Kenny explained,“But I wouldn’t want him to go into the market. Things are not going to last here.” And he revealed that all the traders had been to a meeting with the council on Tuesday where they were told that within weeks big changes are coming to Columbia Rd Market over which they have no control.
“Nobody’s happy. Nobody wants it. None of us has got no say. All of us went to the meeting, but everything has already been decided. It will be the end of the flower market,” he confided to me, his eyes blazing with withheld emotion. We stood for a moment without speaking in the midst of the market and then I walked round to the front of the stall to talk with Kenny’s father Ron to learn his opinion on this unexpected development. I found the senior Mr Cramer hard at work organising the flowers before the customers arrived, yet although he turned away from his task to greet me when I approached, I discovered the emotion of the situation was such that he could find no words to express his feelings adequately. He stood in dignified silence and looked me in the eye with regret, before returning to the consolation of his work.
Alarmed at what I had discovered and realising why the traders were in conference when I arrived, I crossed the road to speak with Carl Grover who was busy wrapping up bunches of Amaryllis for sale later in the morning. He confirmed what I had been told, adding that the market is going to be extended to each end of the street, trolleys will no longer be permitted on the pavements and there is the possibility of other traders being introduced selling different commodities. Most frustratingly, the flowersellers are not being informed yet of the specific nature of the changes thus preventing their objection. “There’s a question mark hanging over the future of the market.” Carl announced with a weary grimace, and a glance over my shoulder to check that his parents Mick & Sylvia Grover the herbsellers were not within earshot. “Show me a long-established market like this where they have made changes for the better. The age of traditional markets is coming to an end.” he added with a shrug.
It was apparent from everyone I spoke to this morning that this week’s “consultation” meeting had been used to announce changes which are being decided without the participation of the traders. Over recent weeks, I have been learning of the beauty of the human culture manifest in Columbia Rd Market and the families who have built it up over generations of hard work, turning up in all seasons to provide flowers to the people of the East End, and making a modest living but never a fortune. Unquestionably, these people have earned the moral right to decide the destiny of their flower market and the fate of their respective pitches that sometimes, like Albert Dean, have been in their families for as many as four generations. “Hopefully they will listen to us,” said Carl Grover with a bright grin of fragile optimism.
Photograph copyright © Jeremy Freedman
