Charlie Burns, King of Bacon Street
You may not have seen Charlie Burns, the oldest man on Brick Lane, but I can guarantee that he has seen you. Seven days a week, Charlie, who is ninety four years old, sits in the passenger seat of a car in Bacon St for half of each day, watching people come and go in Brick Lane. The windscreen is a frame through which Charlie observes the world with undying fascination and it offers a deep perspective upon time and memory, in which the past and present mingle to create a compelling vision that is his alone.
For a couple of hours yesterday, I sat in the front seat beside Charlie, following the line of his gaze and, with the benefit of a few explanations, I was able to share some fleeting glimpses of his world. The car, which belongs to Charlie’s daughter Carol, is always parked a few yards into Bacon St, outside the family business, C.E. Burns & Sons, where they deal in second hand furniture and paper goods. Carol runs this from a garden shed constructed inside the warehouse, and lined with a rich collage of family photographs, while Charlie presides upon the passage of custom from the curbside.
Many passersby do not even the notice the man in the anonymous car who sits impassive like Old Father Time, taking it all in. Yet to those who live and work in these streets, Charlie is a figure who commands the utmost respect and, as I sat with Charlie, our conversation was constantly punctuated by a stream of affectionate greetings from those that pay due reverence to the king of Bacon St, the man who has been there since 1915.
The major landmark upon the landscape of Charlie’s vision is a new white building on the section of Bacon St across the other side of Brick Lane. But Charlie does not see what stands there today, he sees the building which stood there before, where he grew up with his brothers Alfie, Harry and Teddy, and his sister, Marie – and where the whole family worked together in the waste paper merchants’ business started by Charlie’s grandfather John in 1864.
“We lived on this street all our life. We were city people. We all grew up here. We were making our way. We were paper merchants. We all went round collecting in the City of London and we sold it to Limehouse Paper Mills. There was no living in it. Prices were zero. Eventually we went broke, but we still carried on because it was what we did. Then, in 1934, prices picked up. We were moving forward, up and up and up. We carried on through the war. We never stopped. This was my life. We used to own most of the houses in this street. They were worth nothing then. They couldn’t give them away.”
Once the business grew profitable, the family became involved in boxing, the sport that was the defining passion of the Burns brothers, who enjoyed a longstanding involvement with the Repton Boxing Club in Cheshire St where Tony Burns, Charlie’s nephew, is chief coach today.
“Somehow or other, we got into boxing and then we were running the Bethnal Green Men’s Club and then we took a floor in a pub. We were unstoppable. We used to box the Racing Men’s Club. We used to box at Epsom with all the top jockeys. We made the Repton Boxing Club. I was president for twenty years and I took them to the top of the world. When we joined there was only one boy in the club. (He still comes over and sees me.) We built them up, my brothers, myself and friends. They all done a little bit of boxing.
We had some wonderful boxers come here. They were all poor people in them days, they were only too glad to get into something. We used to take all the kids with nothing and get them boxing. They played some strokes but they never did anything bad. Everything we done was for charity. We were young people and we were business people and we had money to burn.
All of the notorious people used to come to our shows at the York Hall. We had the Kray brothers and Judy Garland and Liberace. I remember the first time I met Tom Mix, the famous cowboy from the silent films. We met all the top people because this was the place to be. I had a private audience with the Pope and he gave me a gold medal because of all the work we did for charity.”
You would think that the present day might seem disappointing by contrast with vibrant memories like these, but Charlie sits placidly in the front seat of the parked car every day, fascinated by the minutiae of the contemporary world and at home at the centre of his Bacon St universe.
“This place, years ago, was one of the toughest places there was, but one of the best places to be.” he announced, and I could not tell if Charlie was talking to himself, or to me, or the windscreen, until he charged me with the rhetorical question, “Where else can you go these days?” I was stumped to give Charlie a credible reply. Instead, I peered through the windscreen at the empty street, considering everything he had said, as if in expectation that Charlie’s enraptured version of Bacon St might become available to me too.
Charlie reminded me again,“We were paper merchants. We were moving forward.”, as he did several times during our conversation, recalling an emotional mantra that had become indelibly printed in his mind. It was an incontestable truth. We were King Lear and his fool sitting in a car beside Brick Lane. Becoming aware of my lone reverie, Charlie turned to reassure me. “I’ll get some of the boys round for a chat and we’ll go into it in depth,” he promised, with quiet largesse, his eyes glistening and thinking back over all he had told me,”This is just a little bit for starters”.
On the wall of Carol’s shed, in the yellowed photo at the centre, taken in Bacon St in 1951, you can see Charlie’s brothers Alfie and Teddy, with Charlie on the right.
The Burns family in 1951, with Charlie again in the right.
The redoubtable Carol Burns in her shed with the photo of her Uncle Tony, president of the Repton Boxing Club, being honoured by the Queen.
Charlie’s good friend and neighbour Asad Khan sent in this photo of the two of them together.
Nathaniel's latest discoveries
If you should find yourself at a loose end in Shoreditch on a rainy Saturday afternoon, the very best thing you could do is to drop in to M.Goldstein, the quirky antique shop in the Hackney Rd where you can always be assured of engaging conversation and an intriguing display of Nathaniel Lee-Jones‘ latest unexpected discoveries.
With a glance at the cheery illuminated golden “M” from McDonalds in the window, I stepped from the drizzle into the narrow shop where Nathaniel has just installed the fixtures and fittings he salvaged from Bates, the Hatter of Jermyn St, now the company has been sold to Hilditch & Key, the shirtmakers. On one side, Pippa Brooks, Nathaniel’s wife and business partner, nimbly perched upon an old iron bench from Regent’s Park Zoo and engaged in animated chat with a pal, while opposite Nathaniel was happily preoccupied, rearranging his beloved trophies upon the mahogany shelves that he has rescued from one of St James’ most famous shops – thanks to his extensive and mysterious connections in Mayfair, Soho and the West End.
It was a charming scene, and I was a willing audience as Nathaniel started talking, cheeks glowing and eyes sparkling in excitement at his recent acquisitions. Explaining that the staff of Bates, the venerable Hatter, have moved up Jermyn St to Hilditch & Key (taking their hats and their mascot, Binky the stuffed cat, with them), Nathaniel produced a string of treasures they left behind, the shelves, the cabinets, the canopy, the chandeliers, the bags and the signs. Opening up cupboards, he revealed all the press-cuttings and photos, lovingly pasted there, recording the actors, celebrities, military and royalty who have worn Bates’ hats over the years. These are cabinets that held the hats that crowned the famous.
Turning from these items that speak of the elevated clientele of a West End hatter, my eye fell upon a hat with an entirely different history. A nineteenth century Billingsgate market porter’s hat, which Nathaniel also acquired recently. A utilitarian style of headgear that exists beyond the range even of Bates’ extensive collection. With a flat top designed to balance fish crates upon, made of thick leather on a wooden base, and held together by hobnails and bitumen, it is an astounding sculptural object. The deep channel within the brim was designed to catch any water that might spill from a fish crate and Nathaniel explained that if these hats sprang leaks, the skin of a Dover sole was used to seal the holes.
Nathaniel bought the porter’s hat from a photograph, bidding over the phone, from an auction house in the North, and a surprise awaited him when it arrived and he put it on. “It fits me like a glove!”, Nathaniel declared in triumph, snatching the lumpy black hat from its stand and placing it upon his head with an exultant grin to illustrate the point, and, in doing so, producing a painterly image that evoked another century and another world.
I was fascinated to hold the market porter’s hat in my hands and see it close up, nearer to the weight of a helmet that a hat, it was nevertheless expertly balanced. The purposeful yet irregular shapes of leather that enfolded the crown creating curved ridges, lined with heads of gleaming hobnails and daubed with layers of bitumen to create a form and surface that was distinctly fishlike. There was bare wood inside the hat and upon the worn flat top, where the boxes sat. As much as the hat bore evidence of use, it revealed careful maintenance too, because this was an essential piece of kit for a porter, whose livelihood depended on it. No longer manufactured after 1957, Nathaniel wondered if it might be rare, though since the word went round, several porters have rung to claim, “I’ve got one too!”
In a flash of inspiration, Nathaniel has a plan – the Billingsgate porter’s hat is to become the first of a display of different headgear to fill the glass-fronted cabinets from Bates, which are designed to show hats. I could already sense the excitement as he explained his vision and, since he has an incomparable genius for seeking out unlikely and wonderful things, in future I shall keep my eye upon M.Goldstein, awaiting the latest discoveries in Nathaniel’s hat collection.
Nathaniel in his nineteenth century Billingsgate porter’s hat
A Billingsgate porter photographed by Bill Brandt in 1936
Columbia Road Market 34
For just £3 I bought this magnificent pelargonium The Marquess of Bute from Lyndon this morning at Columbia Rd. This particular pelargonium with its satin petals in deep sensuous Victorian tones has been a star of the market scene over many recent Summers. I bought some two years ago which I enjoyed over two successive Summers before they became casualties of last Winter.
Lyndon, who hails from New Zealand and always has one of the most reliably interesting selections of plants in the market, told me that it was bred by the wealthy nineteenth century industrialist John Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute, who used the coal from his Welsh mines to heat his glasshouses where he employed some of the greatest botanists of the day. Apparently, the deep crimson hue with its paler trim is bred to evoke the ecclesiastical tones of a Cardinal. The Marquess whose interests included medievalism, the occult and linguistics, as well as horticulture, and whom Lyndon alleges was the lover of the Princess of Wales, entered into partnership with the great architect William Burges to create two of the finest buildings of the late Gothic revival, Cardiff Castle and Castle Coch.
Henceforth, I shall nurture this pelargonium on my kitchen window sill to encourage lush Victorian fantasies of my own, while I am washing the dishes.
Bill the Ostler of Spread Eagle Yard
Last week, I wrote about Pearl Binder, the artist and writer, who lived in the seemingly idyllic Spread Eagle Yard in Aldgate during the nineteen twenties and thirties while studying at the Central School of Art. Binder was a life-long socialist, whose political beliefs were informed by her formative experiences in the East End.
This week, I am publishing these excerpts from her pen portrait of Bill the Ostler, who with his wife Emmie, was Pearl Binder’s neighbour in Spread Eagle Yard. It was originally included in her book “Odd Jobs”” published in 1935. This is a plain story, revealing the effects of the shift from horsepower to the petrol engine upon the life of a modest couple with little control over their destinies. A tale of the shifting labour market as a consequence of industrial and technological change, that became all too familiar as the century wore on, but no less devastating for those at the mercy of these changes.
Pearl Binder’s self-effacing protagonists, like Arnold Bennett’s dignified characters, draw us to empathise with feelings that are all the more poignant for being understated or withheld.
Bill began work as a butter-slapper in the local branch of the Home and Colonial. Later he drifted into driving vans for one of the City straw merchants. After twenty-five years of van-driving, his feet had become so crippled that the Governor gave him the job of Ostler instead.
As Ostler, Bill, together with his wife Emmie, was sent to live in the horse-keeper’s cottage in the Governor’s straw yard. He applied himself to his new job with patient industry, spreading his affection for his own horse over twelve. His duties consisted in feeding and grooming the twelve cart-horses, cleaning the stables after the last load of hay had been weighed and stacked in the hay-loft and acting as a caretaker when the office was closed. He received a small wage and lived rent-free.
The proud heraldic eagle, which gave the Yard its name, spread its stone wings above the big clock in the north wall of the Yard. Over a hundred years ago, the clock had stopped at twenty-five minutes past nine. The Yard had once been the inn yard of the old Spread Eagle Inn.
The sweet smell of the hay in the lofts and the peaceful cooing of the pigeons in the Yard seemed so remote from the cosmopolitan roaring of the City, just outside the gate, that Emmie used to imagine herself in the country. In the cool of the evening, Bill would take his stumpy pipe and sit outside the Yard, in the door-way of the big gate, watching the swirling life of the city go by and resting his aching feet after his day’s work.
He never tired of the endless procession: modish little Jewesses from Whitechapel escorted by bold-eyed sweethearts with bravely padded shoulders, noisy children from Leman Street, their smooth Egyptian heads sticking precociously above English gymnasium tunics and cheap Norfolk suits, sad-eyed Malay sailors on their way to the East India Dock Rd, swarthy turbaned Lascars carrying brand-new cardboard suit-cases, argumentative Irish labourers on their way to Shadwell public houses, silent Chinese from Pennyfields, hurried businessmen from the City, and the rector from St Mary’s.
Early in June, the governor’s clerk informed Bill that the business was closing down and that the Yard was going to be let. The increasing motor traffic was making the sale of hay unprofitable.
The sun shone dazzlingly in the Yard on the day of the auction, and the heavy air, pungent with hay barely stirred. Bill had risen especially early to sweep and sand the Yard. Lovingly he groomed the horses to immaculate satin, and in their fine tails he plaited braids of straw.
The sale began. One by one, Bill led out the gleaming cart-horses for inspection, each with a numbered paper disc newly stuck on its flank. When all the horses had been sold, the carts were quickly knocked down. After that the bales of hay were disposed of in an off-hand manner, as though of little significance.
The Governor said that they could go on living in the cottage, for the time being at least. The Yard itself was not yet sold. In the meantime, they could remain there and keep an eye on the place. But no wages. He advised Bill to apply for the dole. When the dreadful day came to sign on at the Labour Exchange, he was so ashamed and nervous that he could hardly hold the pen in his hand to write.
Emmie tried to be cheerful. She vowed that Bill would soon be in work again. His character and his copperplate handwriting were in his favour. But he was getting on for sixty and his feet were against him. She tried to persuade him to take a walk every day, for the good of his health, across Tower Bridge towards Bermondsey, or in the other direction as far as the Whitechapel Library, where the workless men crowded outside the entrance round the Want ads, displayed under a wire frame.
November saw the hasty installation of a fun fair. The Yard buildings suffered the indignity of orange-coloured paint. The proud stone creature above the silent clock was daubed with aluminium. Ringed round with electric globes, the clock itself stared down from this disguise, its hands fixed immovably at nine-twenty-five. The cottage was festooned with coloured electric lights, and even Emmie’s sandstoned front step, hollowed out by two hundred years of footsteps, was smeared over with silver paint. The whole Yard looked startled and outraged like a dignified old lady forcibly tricked into wearing flashy modern clothes.
The fun fair opened at last. The twentieth century swarmed in from the street and ran riot over the eighteenth. Outside the gate glittered LUNAPARK in red and white electric bulbs, and inside the Yard blazed with coloured points of light, containing here and there a sudden blank where the hasty work had fused. The alley entrance to the Yard was decorated with a row of wildly distorting mirrors, which proved such a big attraction that the gangway was constantly blocked. Bill did not like the invasion. His dignity and his quiet were gone. There was no more smell of horses in the Yard.
The new boss promised to give Bill some sort of job when the fair started. The white faced boy asked Emmie if she could provide him with a bite of dinner each day. He could afford sixpence. Emmie contrived to cook up a daily plateful of meat and vegetables, which the boy fell upon ravenously. In between mouthfuls, he informed her that his father had been dead some years and that he, being the eldest of six children, was the mainstay of his mother. He said he had been at work four years already and was seventeen.
The scattered morsels of food presently attracted swarms of hungry rats, and the boss, cursing at the expense, ordered Bill to put rat poison in all the corners. Bill’s new job was to sweep up the Yard every night when the fair ended and to act as caretaker at all times. Wages one pound a week, less insurance, and the cottage rent free again. Little as it was, he and Emmie were both deeply relieved. It was less than the dole, but more respectable.
With the loss of his job as an Ostler, separated from his intimate working relationship with horses, Bill became an anachronism of an ancient world, and, in retrospect, the Lunapark funfair reads as both emblematic and prophetic of the modern world. His story is a fable that stands for a million other personal tragedies of dislocation that continue around us today, whenever the lives of small people are sacrificed to big changes beyond their control.
All this Pearl Binder witnessed in the place she first took lodgings when she came to the London as a young woman, the fate of Spread Eagle Yard – the hay yard that became a theme park – was a microcosm of the twentieth century itself.
Bill the Ostler
From Spitalfields to the Isle of Sheppey
Standing here among the intricate chimneypots and crenellated turrets upon the roof of Shurland Hall on the Isle of Sheppey, there are expansive views across the Thames Estuary and the North Sea in one direction and over the Isle of Harty towards the Kentish Weald in the other. Caught in a sheltered dell beneath a gentle ridge, adjoining an old duck pond and surrounded by rolling fields, it is a favoured spot for a house, and I was delighted to spend an afternoon at Shurland, courtesy of the Spitalfields Historic Buildings Trust who have spent the last five years renovating this ancient edifice.
Standing on the roof, listening to the chorus of bird song, surrounded by trees coming into leaf, and observing the towering clouds that manifest the weather for the next few hours heading towards me over the ocean, I was aware of constants that would be familiar to any of the residents over the last thousand years of habitation. A Danish Prince Hoestan built his fort on this site in 893 and King Canute resided there in 1017, with the De Shurland family arriving at the time of the Norman Conquest. Hoestan, Canute and the De Shurlands would not have seen the fields and the distant caravan park I could see, but otherwise they would recognise the view, the background sounds and aroma of pollen on the Spring breeze. When Margaret de Shurland married Sir William Cheyne in the twelfth century, the Cheyne Family became the Lords of Shurland, reaching their zenith when Henry VIII came to visit with his new wife Anne Boleyn.
Henry VIII’s visit was the occasion of the building of the wings on either side of the gatehouse that stand to this day, now the great house that once existed behind the gatehouse is long gone, evidenced only by a fragmentary ruin of a door frame that the legendary monarch entered with his ill-fated wife in 1532. It was the expense of this visit that led to the decline of the house, accelerated by the stipulation of Elizabeth I that Shurland maintain a garrison to defend the valuable trade in wool and sheepskin, from which the island takes its name. Over successive centuries, the house was let to tenant farmers, becoming a barracks in the First World War and finally derelict for much of the last century, when rumours of a ghostly lady dressed in black silk were whispered in the nearby village of Eastchurch, and barn owls took up occupation in the turrets.
As you walk uphill to approach the mellow red brick and ragstone Tudor gatehouse with its raffish towers at Shurland, there is such an undeniable grandeur that you almost expect trumpets to emerge from the turret windows to sound a fanfare. Yet once you are inside the door, you find yourself in a domestic entrance that adjusts your expectations, offering a home for your umbrella and boots, and promising a quiet cup of tea by the fire, rather than the audience with the stroppy overweight monarch, which you had feared.
The gatehouse is only one room deep and behind it is the grassy courtyard that once led to the great house. The ground levels off here, and with the rear of the gatehouse facing South, there is a milder climate, sheltered from the wind at this side. My hosts, Tim Whittaker and Oliver Leigh-Wood of the Spitalfields Trust, left me to wander around while they set to work, Oliver patching up an old wall and Tim scattering grass-seed. I discovered that the gatehouse itself offers four large austere rooms, leading off a medieval staircase enclosed in a turret – two rooms on two floors on either side, all with windows at front and back, plain stone fireplaces and tall windows.
By contrast, the East wing has been reinstated with an eighteenth century staircase salvaged from Hatton Garden, connecting more domestic-scaled bedrooms, kitchen and bathroom. This reconception of the house permits the gatehouse rooms to be used for more formal living and the other end to become the domestic hub of the household. Now that the work reaches completion and the Hall is up for sale, these spaces cry out for life, because the house is ready to become a family home again.
The Spitalfields Trust have painstakingly put the whole place back together, stabilising the structure, adding new floors, windows and roof, and using their unique collective body of experience to make sure that all aspects of the work are in harmony with the building. Even the mortar, mixed with lime and crushed seashells matches the original, reminding you in the essence of the structure, that the name Shurland derives from “Shoreland”. Everything new that you can see has been done using materials that match the originals, letting the place speak for itself – because with so much history this is a building with plenty to say.
The flat roof is a great vantage point to observe the passage of distant traffic in the estuary, it creates an attractively slow-moving focus of attention. But once the future resident has become sated with this lazy amusement, they will cast their eyes down upon the large sheltered space at the rear of the house, enclosed by a perimeter wall. The potential for a garden is god-sent. Indeed, the name of Sissinghurst has been envoked as a precedent for what could be attempted to enfold the rich palimpsest of these walls with plants and flowers. So the future owner will need green fingers, as well as a healthy bank balance.
The completion of Shurland Hall is the culmination of the most ambitious project to date for the Trust, originally formed over thirty years ago to save the old houses in Spitalfields. In this instance, they have rescued a building with a venerable history that had been reduced to a mere shell and ensured its future as a dwelling for generations to come.
If you are interested to buy Shurland Hall contact spitalfieldstrust@hotmail.com
Looking through the arched doorway that Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn walked through in 1532.
John Howard, the carpenter who has reconstructed all the woodwork at Shurland Hall.
Oliver patching up an old garden wall.
Spitalfields Antique Market 7
This charismatic chatty young Italian is Giovanni Grosso, who sells immaculately fine gloves, hand-made in the nineteen fifties by his father Alberto, the renowned glovemaker of Naples – a rare opportunity to purchase this precious stock, since Alberto ceased glovemaking in the nineteen seventies. Giovanni himself is a talented sculptor who showed me some tiny cameos he has carved with astonishing skill into seashells. Currently serving an apprenticeship in stone carving with Raniero Sambuci, Giovanni explained to me that he came to London because “…in Naples, unless you compromise with the mafioso you leave!”
This noble man with the face of saint from a Romanesque cathedral is John Andrews, who deals in “vintage fishing tackle for the soul” and is the author of “For All Those Left Behind,” a memoir about his father and fishing. Learning that angling is a dying art, I was hooked by the melancholy poetry of John’s collection which speaks of the magnificent age of British fishing between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth century. “I am addicted to buying and selling it, and I live in my own little world,” confessed John, which sounded so attractive to me that I accepted his invitation to join a fishing trip immediately. See his collection for yourself at www.andrews of arcadia.com Trousers by Old Town.
This is the distinguished Mr Singh, expertly modelling a dress sword which belonged to the Lieutenant General to the Tower of London between 1880-90, a very fine example of its kind, that was once presented to Lord Chelmsford. “I must differentiate myself from the general public and I do it by an emphasis on quality,” explained Mr Singh modestly and, as I cast my eyes upon his impressive selection of antique silver cutlery, I found no reason to disagree. If you see Mr Singh, impeccably dressed English gentleman, and dealer in militaria and classy bric-a-brac, either here in Spitalfields or at St James, Piccadilly, be sure to pay your respects and wish him “Good day”.
This is the lovely and innately sassy Amelie Kondzot who brings a modish touch of French glamour and sophistication to the old Spitalfields Market, dealing in her select vintage French women’s fashions. “Every two months, I go back to see my family and get new stock,” she explained in her softly spoken tones – that draw you closer to catch her words – before confiding shyly, “I do have a big wardrobe of clothes, shoes and bags!”, rolling her dark eyes while blushing at her own admission. Let us indulge her penchant, because no-one can deny Amelie possesses a certain irresistible feminine chic which we need more of in Spitalfields.
Photographs copyright © Jeremy Freedman
The Secrets of Christ Church, Spitalfields
There is a such a pleasing geometry to the architecture of Nicholas Hawksmoor’s Christ Church, Spitalfields, completed in 1729, that when you glance upon the satisfying order of the facade you might assume that the internal structure is equally apparent – but in fact it is a labyrinth inside. Like a theatre, the building presents a harmonious picture from the centre of the stalls, yet possesses innumerable unseen passages and rooms, backstage.
When I joined the bellringers in the tower at New Year, I noticed a narrow staircase spiralled up further into the thickness of the stone spire, beyond the one I had climbed to the bellringers’ loft. Since then I have harboured a burning curiousity to ascend those steps, and yesterday I returned to climb that mysterious staircase to discover what is at the top. As you ascend the worn stone steps within the thickness of the wall, the walls get blacker and the stairs get narrower and the ceiling gets lower. By the time you reach the top, you are stooping as you climb and the giddiness of walking in circles permits the illusion that, as much as you are ascending into the sky, you might equally be descending into the earth. There is a sense that you are beyond the compass of your experience, entering indeterminate space.
No-one has much cause to come up here and, when we reached the door at the top of the stairs, Iesah Littledale, the head verger, was unsure of his keys. As I recovered my breath from the climb, while Iesah tried each key in turn upon the ring until he was successful, I listened to the dignified tick coming from the other side of the door. When Iesah opened the door, I discovered it was the sound of the lonely clock that has measured out time in Spitalfields since 1836 from the square room with an octagonal roof beneath the pinnacle of the spire. Lit only by diffuse daylight from the four clock faces, the renovations that have brightened up the rest of the church do not register here. Once we were inside, Iesah opened the glazed case containing the gleaming brass wheels of the mechanism, turning with inscrutable purpose within their green-painted steel cage, driving another mechanism in a box up above that rotates the axles, turning the hands upon each of the clock faces. Not a place for human occupation, it was a room dedicated to time and, as intervention is required only rarely here, we left the clock to run its course in splendid indifference.
By contrast, a walk along the ridge of the roof of Christ Church, Spitalfields, presented a chaotic and exhilarating symphony of sensations, buffered by gusts of wind beneath a fast-moving sky that delivered effects of light changing every moment. It was like walking in the sky. On the one hand, Fashion St and on the other Fournier St, where the roofs of the early eighteenth century Huguenot houses topped off with weavers’ lofts created an extravagant roofscape of old tiles and chimney pots at odd angles. Liberated by the experience, I waved across the chasm of the street to residents of Fournier St in their rooftop gardens opposite, like one waving to people from a train.
Returning to the body of the church, we explored a suite of hidden vestry rooms behind the altar, magnificently proportioned apartments to encourage lofty thoughts, with views into the well-kept rectory garden. From here, we descended into the crypt constructed of brick vaults to enter the cavernous spaces that until recent years were stacked with human remains. Today these are large, apparently innocent limewashed spaces without any tangible presence to recall the thousands who were laid to rest here until it was packed to capacity and closed for burial in 1812 by Rev William Stond MA, as confirmed by a finely lettered stone plaque.
Passing through the building, up staircases, through passages and in each of the different spaces from top to bottom, there were so many of these plaques of different designs in wood and stone, recording those were buried here, those who were priests, vergers, benefactors, builders and those who rang the bells. In parallel with these demonstrative memorials, I noticed marks in hidden corners, modest handwritten initials, dates and scrawls, many too worn or indistinct to decipher. Everywhere I walked, so many people had been there before me, and the crypt and vaults were where they ended up.
My visit started at the top and I descended through the structure until I came, at the end of the afternoon, to the small private vaults constructed in two storeys beneath the porch, where my journey ended, as it did in a larger sense for the original occupants. These delicate brick vaults, barely three feet high and arranged in a crisscross design, were the private vaults of those who sought consolation in keeping the family together even after death. All cleaned out now, with modern cables and pipes running through, I crawled into the maze of tunnels and ran my hand upon the vault just above my head. This was the grave where no daylight or sunshine entered, and it was not a place to linger on a bright afternoon in May.
Christ Church gave me a journey through many emotions, and it fascinates me that this architecture can produce so many diverse spaces within one building and that these spaces can each reflect such varied aspects of the human experience, all within a classical structure that delights the senses through the harmonious unity of its form.
The mechanism of this clock runs so efficiently that it only has to be wound a couple of times each year.
Looking up into the spire.
A model of the rectory in Fournier St.
On the reverse of the door of the organ cupboard.
In the vestry.
Beneath the porch,two storeys of vaults descend into the earth.
For nearly three centuries, the shadow of the spire has travelled the length of Fournier St each afternoon.
