The Spitalfields Bellringers
Last night, the sound of bells was blowing in the wind as I walked out of my door into the rainy street, passing a line of visitors with umbrellas on a tour in the dark, before I entered the tall gates at the rear of Christ Church Spitalfields – where at the back door, Alan Regin (pictured below), who has been the Steeple Keeper here for the past twenty years, was waiting for me. Alan led me through the dark empty church, up a wide wooden staircase and through a small door leading to a narrow stone staircase, spiraling upwards through the thick wall of the tower. At the top of the steps, we passed through a tiny exquisite eighteenth century wrought iron gate and walked along a short shadowy passage to discover the bright loft, high in the steeple, where eight bellringers stood in a circle, swinging the ropes up and down with concentrated skill.
Mary Holden who stands central in the picture above and is Master of the Society of Cumberland Youths (a society of bellringers founded in 1746), took a break to come over and explain that her ringers are responsible for ringing the bells in three London churches, St Leonards Shoreditch, St Martin-in-the-Fields and here. She told me they have rung the bells at Christ Church Spitalfields since the eighteenth century and the circular plaque you see in the photo commemorates a three-hour and twenty-four minute peal of bells they rang in this tower in 1845. “The bells here are lovely, they have a really nice tone, and are well-maintained so they are quite easy to ring” enthused Mary, who is a passionate third generation bellringer. Then, within minutes, the two-hour session was over and the thirsty ringers all vacated the loft at once, making their way swiftly to The Pride of Spitalfields, which I am informed is the bellringers’ long-standing destination afterwards – where they like to meet with the employees of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry to enjoy a professional debate of the niceties of campanology over a few pints.
Alan and I were left alone to stand for a moment, and savour the resonance of this beautiful space with its single half-moon window, which indicates the position of the loft if you are looking up at the tower from the street. I learnt there have been three sets of bells here in its history. The original peal of twelve was destroyed in the great fire of 1836, to be replaced by a peal of eight cast in Whitechapel that lasted until the nineteen twenties, then the tower became silent until 1971 when the current peal of eight bells (cast by Gillet & Johnston in 1919) was acquired second-hand from the demolished church of St Stephens in Clapham.
As we switched out the lights, closed the little iron gate and descended the narrow stone staircase, Alan accounted for the wear upon the steps by telling me that in olden times the ringers wore hobnailed boots. “You get into some very interesting places,” he said, elaborating on his delight in bellringing. Then, continuing, as we reached the foot of the stairs, “I started when I was seven at Otterham in Surrey”, he confided, “I had an elder brother who was a bellringer and he encouraged me, and as soon as I got hold of a rope I was hooked!” We paused on the landing for a moment and he pointed out a panel commemorating The London Surprise Major when the bells were rung by eight ringers for eleven hours and thirty-five minutes non-stop in 2005 with Alan himself ringing the tenor. I expect they were thirsty afterwards that day.
Finally, as we walked back through the dark church, Alan told me about The Golden Heart Surprise Major. “We really feel part of the community here in Spitalfields, and I remember talking to Denys Esquilant and he said how much he enjoyed hearing the bells here on a Sunday morning.” said Alan, explaining the origin of this composition – which celebrates the life of Denys Esquilant who died last year, and the thirty years that he and Sandra ran the Golden Heart together in Commercial St. You can watch a film of Sandra Esquilant (whom I have dubbed the Queen of Spitalfields) up in the tower, attending the inauguration of The Golden Heart Surprise Major by clicking here. Be sure to look out for Alan ringing on the right of the circle of ringers.
I would like to salute Alan Regin who has undertaken the honorary role of Steeple Keeper here in Spitalfields with good humoured equanimity for two decades, he has obviously done his job well because the steeple looks better now than it ever did, and it was a rare honour for me to end the year by visiting the inner enclave of this famous edifice in such good company.
James Mason in Spitalfields, the London Nobody Knows
One day in the early spring of 1967, when the first leaves were showing but snow was still piled up in yards, James Mason came knocking on the door of 29 Hanbury St (where the Upmarket building now stands) and in this picture you see him asking the householder if he can look in her back yard, which was the site of the second Ripper murder. I think she makes a fair show of being surprised at his request, when he can hardly have been the first Ripper tourist to knock on her door. It was all part of the filming of The London Nobody Knows based upon Geoffrey Fletcher’s book of the same title.
In a series of books and a regular column in the Telegraph that added up to a life’s work, Geoffrey Fletcher set out to make an affectionate record of all the corners of old London that were being neglected and devalued while the cultural focus was upon modernity at any cost. He wanted to record these precious fragments of the past before the wrecking ball destroyed them forever. Illustrated with his own delicate line drawings, copies of Geoffrey Fletcher’s books can still be found in public libraries and make fascinating guides today because – in spite of everything – most of the London nobody knows is still there. He doubted very much that the house I live in today here in Spitalfields would survive more than a few years – this was at least thirty years ago. Geoffrey Fletcher was an unashamed sentimentalist and I love him for seeking out the poetry in ordinary common things. In fact, reading his books was one of my inspirations to begin writing these posts to you every day.
Brandished an umbrella, with well-polished handmade brown shoes and a cloth cap to signify class solidarity, James Mason makes an amiable guide to Geoffrey Fletcher’s sixties London. He takes us from the old railway goods yard and a tragically abandoned music hall in Camden Town to the perky Kings Rd fashion parade, by way of a Salvation Army hostel and Kensal Green Cemetery, before ending up in Spitalfields. Here they filmed meths drinkers fighting on the steps of the synagogue in Brick Lane, old men collecting discarded cabbages at the Market, garment workers outside their workplaces in Fournier St, and tenement children playing raucous singing games and scrapping on the pavement.
Director Norman Cohen’s film is an unlikely charismatic amalgam of sixties whimsy and realist documentary footage of markets, street performers, hostel dwellers and drunks. These last two subjects are the most memorable, as candid yet humane testimonies of the hopeless and the dispossessed. It is in this rare footage that the film achieves its lasting value, tenderly witnessing the existence of these seemingly innocent lost refugees from an earlier world, who became casualties in the postwar years.
If you wonder what it was like here forty years ago. If you would like to be personally escorted around Spitalfields in the spring of 1967 by James Mason, it can be arranged this weekend. Make your way to the ICA Cinema in the Mall where there is a rare opportunity to see “The London Nobody Knows” on a big screen on 2nd and 3rd January.
Knees-up at the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Social Club!
On an especially cold afternoon just before Christmas, I walked over to the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club in Pollard Row to meet the personalities behind the cult reputation of this legendary venue. As I stood outside freezing on the pavement, taking in the club, I thought that it looked like something out of a novel by Arnold Bennett – apart from the twenty five foot yellow flower on the side painted by Banksy.
Then the door was thrown open and I was quickly hustled inside by Warren Dent and Charlotte West-Williams, both bundled up in their overcoats. As we walked into the atmospheric dark empty dancehall I could see my breath, it was no warmer inside than outside, because they only turn the heating on at night. Once the lights came on, I discovered that although the club has been going since 1896, it was as if time mysteriously stopped here somewhere in the nineteen fifties. This charming palace of pleasure and seduction is still furnished with old red carpet, formica and leatherette – the club that time forgot.
Warren, a fancy pants events-organiser with the same furrowed brow, curly hair and droll romantic attitude as the young Orson Welles, explained to me that several years ago when it was due to be closed he pleaded with the few remaining senior members to save it. “Give me a try and I will turn the place around!” he declared with nonchalant heroism. Granting his wish, those senior members retreated into their inner sanctum of a private bar in the basement, giving Warren carte blanche to organise hullabaloo for a younger crowd upstairs. Successfully reinventing the place for a new generation, he has pulled it off with a witty cocktail of burlesque parties, game nights, fancy dress events and arty-farty mischief – mixing together traditional East End club performers with the new fashionable crowd to create a common ground where everyone can have fun together.
While Charlotte (the sassy manager) switched the heating on, and various spotlights and strings of fairy lights flashed into illumination, Warren ran through his line up for New Year’s Eve with the inspired rhetoric of a fairground caller. As I listened, I cast my eyes around the empty dancehall with the bar at one end and stage framed with a heart in pink lights at the other. The presence of all the expectation and delight that generations of Bethnal Green folk have brought to their mating rituals in this sacred place was almost tangible. I have never been in an empty space that was so full of people. I could feel the place coming to life as Warren, his eyes shining with affectionate anticipation, described his star attractions, conjuring Mike Myers, the eighty-year-old crooner (who lives upstairs in the Spitalfields Market) and Igor, the Russian accordion virtuoso. At once, I was hooked.
When every source of heat and illumination had been turned on, Charlotte tossed her long glossy chestnut hair in triumph and, with characteristic professional efficiency, came to join the conversation at the table just in time for my portrait of this pair of professional party animals, as they braced themselves for one last long night before the Christmas break. It was clear that these two love their club. So, when I asked them about the downside of their work, they searched their minds, exchanged a glance, and smiled, before explaining graciously that the promoters of the different nights become friends and party together till very late in the night, so that Warren and Charlotte find themselves working eighteen hours in the day sometimes.
I was awestruck at their stamina, and grateful to make my way home through the frozen streets to Spitalfields to light the fire and settle down at my day’s end, while their night was just beginning. But I have made a resolution to return and write first-hand accounts for you of some nights at the Working Men’s Club next year. Meanwhile, if you have not made plans yet, Warren and Charlotte promise “A classic New Year’s Eve” and are waiting to introduce you to Mike and Igor, the crooner and the accordionist. Find out more at www.workersplaytime.net
The white vans of Whitechapel
The white vans of Whitechapel have become the premium vehicle for street art here in the neighbourhood recently, in a similar way as the subway carriages became the focus for graffiti in New York in the nineteen eighties. Whenever I walk back after hours to Spitalfields from the Genesis Cinema through Whitechapel Market, I see all the vans lined up along the curb beside the closed-up stalls. There are always several dozen parked on Whitechapel High St and in the surrounding streets, belonging to the stallholders who use them as stockrooms on wheels. They can collect new stock in the van and then by parking at the curbside next to the stall, it is very efficient to unload onto the stall what can be sold each day. Naturally, this creates tremendous competition for the ideal parking spots and only by parking overnight can the stallholders be sure of their spaces. For such limited usage, new vans are not required, just something with enough life in it to make occasional trips round the neighbourhood – indeed there are a couple with deflated tires, indicating that they go nowhere. So the ultimate result of these particular circumstances at the market is a line of crummy old vans stretching the length of Whitechapel Market.
But some bright spark has the seen the unlikely creative potential in this low-cost storage requirement that became a parking problem. And the sad empty market has been enlivened by a changing gallery of paintings upon what are now “white vans” in name only – and by day the drama of the market itself has acquired a colourful new backdrop.
There is more going on with these idiosyncratically intense pictures than I understand, or can decipher, but their energetic, grotesque and humorous imagery, and the recurring imperative message to “GET UP!”, fascinate me. Sometimes, each side of a van has been painted by a different artist resulting in striking contrasted perspectives from different angles. Out of nowhere, these vividly painted vans have introduced an unexpected whiff of the circus and the fairground to the everyday market, which is the richer for it. While I understand some owners may feel their white vans are being ruined – equally I cannot resist celebrating these paintings as manifestations of the irrepressible imaginative spirit that ceaselessly seeks opportunities for expression, humanizing a mundane environment and delighting the eye with such playful work.
Christmas Greetings from Spitalfields
Simply by turning this old Sunderland lustreware pot (with the Sailors Farewell used as illustration to yesterday’s post) through 180 degrees, I am able to turn my thoughts away from those terrible murders here in the vicinity in December 1811 to reveal my personal message to you for the festive season 2009. The streets of Spitalfields are silent and empty now as they are at no other time of the year. The Golden Heart is closed. The bakery at St John is shut. Mick is gone from Brick Lane. Mr Ali is no longer selling peacock feathers. No-one labours at Labour & Wait. Shelf is shelved. Ryantown is shuttered. Leila has locked her shop. Jill has journeyed north. Teresa has turned in. Dusk gathers in Puma Court. Trees glimmer in the upper windows of Wilkes St. And upon the dark streets, tiny courts, narrow alleys, hidden gardens and secret yards, over all the glistening roofs of the ancient neighbourhood peacefully sleeping, the lonely spire of Christ Church stands sentinel.
Oranges & lemons say the bells…
When Richard Ardagh was a child, he attended St Clement Danes School in Hertfordshire and once a year the whole school went down to the church of St Clement Danes in the Strand for a special service to commemorate their founding by the churchwardens in 1844. One of the songs they sang every year was “Oranges and lemons say the bells of St Clements…” a traditional rhyme referring to the different peals of bells at six churches in the vicinity of the City of London. Everyone knows the game in which the singers file in pairs through an arch made by two players facing each other and on the final word ” …dead” they drop their arms to trap the pair passing through. This pair form another arch, so you get a line of arches and intensifying experience for those left in the game.
There has been enormous speculation about the origin of this, including child sacrifice, public executions and Henry VIII’s marital strife, but these final lines are not present in the earliest printed version of 1744 in Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book, suggesting they were added later : Two Sticks and Apple, Ring the Bells at Whitechapple / Old Father Bald Pate, Ring the Bells at Aldgate / Maids in White Aprons, Ring the Bells at St Catherines / Oranges and Lemmons, Ring the Bells at St Clemens / When will you pay me? Ring the Bells at Old Bailey / When I am rich, Ring the Bells at Fleetditch / When will that be? Ring the Bells at Stepney / When I am old, Ring the Bells at St Paul’s.
Many years after leaving school, and studying Fine Art and then Graphic Design at Central St Martins, Richard Ardagh found himself living by Brick Lane in Bacon St and, passing St Leonard’s Shoreditch regularly, the rhyme came back into his mind. So when the possibility of collaborating with Graham Bignell at the New North Press came up, it was a natural choice to make a print of “Oranges and lemons…” and they discovered they had tapped into something popular because the limited edition of 150 sold out.
“We found we both shared an interest in East End history, and nursery rhymes seemed a good starting point – things that were in the common consciousness but that people didn’t know what they meant”, Richard told me when I visited him at the New North Press in Coronet St beside Hoxton Sq last week, as we stood chatting between the magnificent Albion Printing Press and the drawers of Graham Bignell’s precious collection of wooden type stacked up to the ceiling. This was the press they used to print “Oranges and Lemons…”, though the ambitious scale of the print itself (over a metre high) required printing the text in two separate panels and putting the paper through the press twice.
Richard clearly relished the opportunity to try out some of Graham’s historic display faces. “Showing off typefaces gives you an excuse to use different tones of voice, it was almost a conversation”, he said, enthusing about his collaboration with Graham whom he spoke of reverentially. “I think of it as an apprenticeship in letterpress”, he added before lapsing into silence as he placed a piece of paper in the press.
It was a privilege to observe the atmosphere of the printers at work. A thoughtful, slightly built man, softly-spoken, with short curly blonde hair, a straggly beard and long fingers, Richard cuts an almost monastic figure working here at the press with quiet concentration. And when he pointed out a picture on the wall of William Morris working in his printing shop, that he likes to keep in the corner of his vision, I realised that Richard would be completely at home there.
Richard and Graham chose to follow the success of “Oranges and lemons…” with a second large letterpress print, “Pop! goes the Weasel”, another rhyme with an East End connection. “I cycled past the Eagle every day, so I found myself humming it!” admitted Richard. “Pop” means to pawn and “weasel” is Cockney rhyming slang, “weasel and stoat” for coat. With raffish unsentimental humour, this nursery rhyme, about pawning a coat to buy drink, speaks of a life of poverty that was the commonplace in this neighbourhood in the mid-nineteenth century when it originated. If you go to the Eagle in Shepherdess Walk beside the City Rd, which was established as a music hall in 1825 and rebuilt as a pub in 1901, they still have the text on the bar room wall.
I admire what Richard and Graham are doing because they are craftsmen working with skill and understanding of this arcane medium, and this gives the work a dignity and rigor that transcends the proliferation of wood block pastiche that I have seen around. If you want to see the process for yourself you can watch a film of Richard and Graham at work printing “Pop! goes the Weasel” by clicking here. A few copies are still available from New North Press, and you can examine Richard Ardagh’s complete portfolio of work at www.elephantsgraveyard.co.uk
How Raymond’s shop became Leila’s shop
The top photograph of 15 Calvert Avenue is believed to have been taken one Sunday in 1900 around the time Prince Edward and Princess Alexandra came to open the Boundary Estate, and I snapped the lower photograph last Thursday, more than a century later. One day, Joan Rose visited Leila’s Cafe next door at 17 Calvert Avenue and brought out the old photograph (which she always carries in her purse) to show Leila McAlister, explaining that the little boy standing in the doorway was her father. A copy now hangs proudly in Leila’s Shop, and served as the inspiration for our escapade last week when a class from Virginia Rd School in Arnold Circus turned out to assist and we stopped the traffic to take the new picture.
Joan (unmarried name Raymond) told me that her father Alfred was born in 1896 and is approximately six years old in the picture. The woman beside him in the doorway is Phoebe Raymond his mother, Joan’s grandmother, and the man on the left is his father, Joan’s grandfather Albert Alfred Raymond (known as Alf), the first proprietor of the newly built shop. They all lived in the flat up above and you can see their songbird in the cage, a cock linnet.
Phoebe has her smart apron with frills and everyone is wearing their Sunday best – remarkably for the time, everyone has good quality boots. I like the sacks with SPITALFIELDS printed on them, indicating produce from the fruit and vegetable market half a mile away, and the porters’ baskets which Leila still uses today. You can see the awning has been taken up to permit enough light for the photograph and then it has rained. We had the same problem with the weather, but were blessed with a few hours between a sleet shower and a blizzard to snatch our picture.
Joan Rose told me she believes her family are of French Huguenot origin and the original surname was Raymond de Foir, which means the people you see in the old photograph are probably descended from the Huguenot immigrants that came here in the eighteenth century. What touched me most was to learn from Joan that Alfred her father (pictured here eternally six years old in his Sunday best on the threshold of his father’s shop), went off to fight in the First World War and, aged twenty-two, was there at the battle of the Somme when so many died, but returned to run the shop in Calvert Avenue carrying on his father’s business in the same premises until his death in 1966. Joan grew up here and attended both Virginia Rd School and Rochelle School on either side of Arnold Circus. Although she now lives in west London, she remains involved with her old neighbourhood today as Honorary Patron of the Friends of Arnold Circus.
I am very grateful to Leila McAlister and to Robert Bradshaw, manager of Leila’s shop (pictured on the left of the new photograph in the same spot as his predecessor a century ago), for kindly organising the picture last week and also to the school pupils for participating with such enthusiasm (their teacher stands in the shop doorway). Leila and Robert handed out chocolate brownies and tangerines on the pavement after the photograph was taken and a spontaneous Christmas party ensued, demonstrating that the exuberant energy of children remains a constant across the span of history defined by these two pictures.
