Bentley & Bramble, Spitalfields' twin goats
With the Spitalfields City Farm still reeling from the break-in and nocturnal abduction of a ferret last week, I think Helen Galland, the animals’ manager, was relieved to take a break and enjoy a relaxed chat about the psychological dynamic between Bentley & Bramble, the twin goats that are such popular personalities at the farm. Bentley, of the shaggy locks and extravagant goatee pictured below, and his sister Bramble, the model of inscrutable charm pictured above, were born here in 2005 into the Shoreditch pedigree herd. Living off surplus vegetables from Sainsburys in Whitechapel and stale beigels from Mr Sammy’s Beigel Shop in Brick Lane, the lucky siblings enjoy a fine life down on the farm, constantly surrounded by young admirers.
“Even when they were kids, you could tell that Bentley was going to be the friendly one because he would always jump up for a cuddle, whereas Bramble was more reserved, and that’s carried through into their adult years because Bentley will always come up to strangers, but Bramble likes to get to know people a little first.” revealed Helen, introducing the disparity of character in broad terms.
Widening her eyes in amusement, she added,“Bentley has been castrated which makes him gentler and less testosterone-charged, although he sometimes gets a bit carried away during the Autumn breeding season and thinks he’s a Billy Goat, so then we separate him from the girls to give them a break. He wees on his beard and rubs it against them, visitors are not immune from his attentions either.”
“Bramble has a little face that makes her look suspicious of everyone but she does enjoy being stroked once you have made friends with her,” Helen continued with an empathetic grin,” She’s very fat since giving birth to her two kids, Clover & Camomile, who have gone to live at the Hackney City Family, and now she shares a pen with Ursula her mother and Demeter her younger sister from a different father, a very modern family really.”
The premise for my curiousity was the annual Goat Race to be held at the farm on Saturday 3rd April, scheduled to coincide with that famous Boat Race down on the Thames, and this year it will be between Bentley & Bramble. Bets are already being placed and I was eager to gather a little background to the competitors’ long-held sibling rivalry, a compelling psychodrama that will be played out in front of spectators on the running track this Easter.
“We keep Bentley in a separate pen,” Helen told me, explaining the living arrangements necessary to maintain domestic harmony at the farm,“because when he’s with the girls he needs to prove that he’s the top man but Bramble will always challenge him, she’s the alpha female. They tease each other, Bramble will chase him from the food bowl, and she’ll always be on the top of the climbing frame because he’s not as good at climbing as she is. Bentley will try to climb up after her and collapse in a heap. Bramble always wins the upper hand.”
Helen confided two revealing anecdotes about Bentley. When she tried to steer him backwards recently, Bentley simply pushed forward using the powerful muscular plates in his neck, causing Helen to get tossed over his head – not an isolated event apparently. Also recently, Bentley gorged on a pile of green apples that made him sick with an acidic stomach, a dangerous condition for a ruminant animal, but this would not stop him eating them all over again such is his lack of mental retention, Helen confirmed. Meanwhile, Bramble got a taste for competition last year at the Rare & Traditional Breeds Show at the Weald & Downland Museum where she won second prize in the Best Goat (compact breeds) category, and now she has the appetite for it Bramble will be disappointed with anything less than first prize in this contest.
I was beginning to get a handle on the precise nature of the complex rivalry, intensified because the competitors are twins. Although the extroverted Bentley has greater physical confidence (in spite of his diminished testosterone levels), he has not always shown he has the wit to rival his more introverted sister, the overweight yet nimble and shrewdly competitive Bramble. He needs to assert his status as flamboyant solo male now, but Bramble has ambition to prove she is every bit as good as her show-off brother and cannot disappoint her loyal cheerleaders, Ursula and Demeter.
Polarising spectators, between those who want Bentley to show he has still got what it takes and those who expect Bramble to deliver a decisive win for the sisterhood on Easter Saturday, this is going to be a thrilling race. Personally, I cannot decide which creature has the more powerful motivation to seek victory. But, just between you and me, in photographing the goats yesterday, I spent a pleasant half an hour chasing the fleet-footed Bramble round her large grassy pen and, on the basis of what I observed, if you push me to make a choice, I know which I would pick as my favourite to win.
Which one are you backing?
Des & Lorraine’s collection
On Saturday morning I went round to visit Des and Lorraine’s junk shop in Bacon St – sandwiched between a second-hand catering equipment dealer and a tattoo parlour, you might not even notice the discreet entrance if you did not know it. Although I had admired the crow painted upon the double doors by the street artist Roa, I was unaware of the wonders that are contained behind this unassuming frontage.
Des led me through the low-ceilinged narrow passage lined with old wardrobes into the shop itself. At first, as you enter a shadowy antechamber, you realise the ceiling is higher and hung with things that give the feeling of being in a deep forest with heavy branches overhead. Then you find yourself in an old stable with a cobbled floor, a corrugated iron roof and spaces opening up on all sides, each crowded with furniture accumulated in the gloom, giving way to indeterminate darkness.
This is where Des and Lorraine have dealt in junk for the last thirty years. Without windows, the chill is tangible, and I understood why Lorraine is commonly seen wrapped in a hat and scarf, and whenever possible sits in the car outside during the Winter months. They are busy people, constantly coming and going, collecting and delivering, and it took me several days to get this opportunity to speak to Des when he had a moment, yet even now he was hovering, as customers came and went throughout our conversation.
I was touched that Des describes himself as dealing in junk because, while antique dealers consider themselves superior within the hierarchy of professionals, for the inquisitive customer junk possesses the greater romance. With antiques there is an implication of higher monetary value but with junk it is all about the intrinsic poetic quality. So, to my mind, it is greatly to his credit that Des is unapologetically a junk dealer.
Wherever you look in Des and Lorraine’s magnificent junk shop, the detail is overwhelming and you must be sure to look upwards because there is a panoply of old stuff hung above, creating the impression of an eccentric galaxy of objects in a frozen moment. Like his friend Brian in Shadwell who I wrote about last year, Des likes to collect, but where Brian likes effigies and life-size model animals, Des collects old toys and other curios that look good hanging in the roof. The airplanes and vehicles create the sense of motion in Des’ universe, while the other items, like the signs and musical instruments, the gas mask and the giant potato peeler – just visible at the top of the photo above – give it a surreal poetry that is all its own. Gazing up into this thicket is like looking into a dream, yet Des appears to be a down-to-earth fellow. “Certain things I like to keep. Most of this stuff here is from childhood. A lot of people ask to buy these things but they are not for sale. It’s all stuff that’s become collectible. It’s stuff I bought, except the horse which belonged to my kids and they left it out in the rain.” he explained to me, surveying his marvellous collection with proprietorial satisfaction.
Seized by an idea, “Let me show you one of the strangest things I ever found,” Des said and, visibly excited, began burrowing through a stack of old boxes. Pulling out an old holdall, he produced a slim booklet and held it open to show me a photograph of a mermaid. I scrutinised his mild features for any hint of irony that might reveal he was pulling my leg, but his brown-eyed gaze was without any concealment. I was baffled. “You’re kidding me?” I said, but he shook his head. “Where did you get it?” I asked. “I found it, in the course of my work.” he explained dispassionately, “This was while ago, but it cost me quite a lot of money at the time.” I was disarmed. Des continued, “It has a spine running the length of its body and some scientists from Cambridge University verified it by carbon dating as over two hundred years old.”
As the conversation spun into the unknown territory, towards a weird place familiar only to Des, I asked, “Where is it?” Pre-occupied with sorting rusty old spanners, he indicated a dusty corner casually,“I used to have it set up there but now it’s at home,” he said, “I’ll send you picture from my phone this evening.”
Willingly consenting to the notion of a mermaid photographed by a mobile phone, I gave Des my number and said goodbye. The picture which you can see below arrived that evening, Des’ mummified mermaid in a glass tank sitting upon his dining table. Not wishing to be a killjoy, I shall leave you to draw your own conclusion upon its authenticity as a mermaid, but from this picture I do believe it is an authentic specimen of some kind from a nineteenth century display, a cabinet of curiosities or a freak show, and that itself is good enough for me.
Be assured, Des and Lorraine are happy to allow customers to rummage in their shop, as long as they ask permission first. You really need to go round for yourself to this last outpost of the mysterious kingdom of junk, because who knows what you might find there.
Columbia Road Market 27
The market was busy again this morning by eight, with eager gardeners who have been persuaded that it is time to commence Spring planting. Although the crowd was sufficient to encourage me to get up earlier next week, it was not long before these honest Forget-me-nots (Myosotis) caught my eye and I bought six for just £4, enough to to give me a few clumps this Summer and to naturalise in future years. The very name Forget-me-not defines a certain summery blue and as the months wear on the flowers develop subtle mixed tones of blue and pink. One of the first flower names I learnt, Forget-me-nots are one of those humble plants that have been cultivated in England since medieval times and of which you can truly say no garden should be without.
A Spring shirt from Liberty of London
I pulled this old Liberty shirt out of my cupboard in Spitalfields to celebrate a sequence of bright days that convincingly proposed the notion of Spring this week. If you look closely, you can see the collar is wearing through but this does not diminish my affection for this favoured garment that I have worn for years now, bringing it out just for these early months when the temperature starts to rise. Though I am not a flowery person and most of the few clothes I own are of undecorated design, there is a gentle lyrical quality about this pattern that appeals to me strongly.
When I wear this shirt with a dark grey or blue jacket, the colours really sing and I feel am doing my bit to participate in the seasonal change. For both men and women, the contrast of formal wear with a Liberty shirt can express dignified restraint while at the same time revealing a romantic attachment to flowers, plants, gardens and nature. A contrast that I recognise in my own personality. I love the conceit of having violets on my shirt when the violets in my garden are in flower and I enjoy the subtle tones of all the flowers portrayed, that remain as recognisable species while artfully stylised to make an elegant pattern. The evocation of the natural world in this simple design touches a chord for me and, as with so many things that trigger a powerful emotional response, I discovered that my passion for these floral patterns from Liberty goes back a long way.
When I came across the familiar photograph of my mother Valerie as a child which you can see below, I did a double-take when I recognised the pattern on the dress. It was a Liberty print, very similar to my Spring shirt which I hold in such affection. In that moment, I recalled that my grandmother Katherine once bought fabric at Liberty in London and had it made up into dresses for my mother. This was a gesture which made such an unforgettable impression on my mother that for her whole life she carried her delight in these cotton dresses, which were so magical to her as a little girl in Somerset in the nineteen thirties. Floral prints fed her innocent imagination, nurtured on the Songs of the Flower Fairies and in performing as one of Titania’s attendants in a school play.
A generation later, I grew up with the received emotion of this memory, a story my mother must have told me when I was a child. I thought I had forgotten, but I realised it was through an unconscious recollection of the photograph of my mother in the Liberty dress that I was attracted to this beautiful flowery shirt, without completely understanding the origin of my desire at the time.
The story was confirmed when my uncle Richard moved out of the house where he and my mother grew up, and in my grandmother’s dressing table, I found a small leather pocket diary from the nineteen thirties recording her London trip with the entry, “Stayed at Claridges. Ordered carpet and sideboard at Harvey Nichols and bought materials at Liberty.” My grandmother was the daughter of a diminished aristocratic family who married my grandfather Leslie, a bank manager, and adopted an autocratic manner to ameliorate her loss of status. Consequently, my mother, with admirable resourcefulness, ran away from home at nineteen to escape my bossy grandmother and married my father Peter, who was a professional footballer – an act of social rebellion that my grandmother never forgave.
Nevertheless, the taste I acquired for these elegant old-fashioned designs reflects the fondness my mother carried for that special moment in her childhood which she never forgot, when my grandmother showed maternal kindness to her little daughter in the gift of flowery cotton dresses. An act which came to represent everything about my grandmother that my mother could embrace with unqualified affection, and she encouraged me to remember the best of people too, a prerogative I claim in this instance as the sole living representative of these characters.
Today, I wear my Liberty shirt as the sympathetic illustration of a narrative which extends over three generations, culminating in my own existence upon this earth, and as I button my Spring shirt, before walking out to celebrate sunshine and a new beginning, I am reminded that I alone carry these emotional stories now, clothing me in the humble affections of my forebears.
Linda Carney, Machinist
This is the lovely Linda Carney working at her machine in Spitalfields in 1963 and looking glamorous in the same way Lynn Redgrave, Julie Christie, Rita Tushingham, Judy Geeson and Barbara Windsor did playing happy-go-lucky girls in all those films of London in the nineteen sixties, that are currently enjoying a big revival in popularity today. There is something about the combination of the kooky glasses, the stylish outfit and the optimistic humorous attitude in a mundane workplace that is so attractive, becoming an act of youthful defiance in itself.
Linda worked in factories making clothes all over Spitalfields, in Brune St above the Jewish soup kitchen, in Fournier St in what is now Gilbert & George’s studio and in Fleur de Lys St. It was at the latter address, she once spotted the long-haired seventeen-year-old Dan Cruickshank giving an interview to reporters on the doorstep, explaining why he was squatting an old building there, “I’m saving our heritage.” he declared. But Linda, with irrepressible ebullience, pointed her finger and called out, “You just don’t want to pay rent!” It was a scene worthy of the opening sequence of one of those sixties comedies and I can imagine Linda, tottering off down Fleur de Lys St, arm in arm with her girlfriends, all laughing like drains.
I met Linda at the raucous party in Shadwell, so this week she kindly walked over from her home in Cable St to meet outside the Jewish soup kitchen on Brune St and give me a picture of the neighbourhood in her time. “It still is busy here, but it was much more busy then because people started out earlier and worked longer hours.” said Linda, excited to return to her former workplace,“If you worked all night, you never felt on your own because you had all-night cafes servicing the market.”
Looking up and down Brune St, Linda got carried away describing the characters among the Jewish paupers coming to the soup kitchen from the surrounding streets of derelict tenements, while bales of cotton were carried in and our of the warehouse next door, supplies were delivered to the food warehouses in Tenterground, trucks caused chaos in the streets around Spitalfields Market night and day, hatters and buttonmakers and purveyors of ribbons and trimmings all worked frantically, pubs opened at dawn, furriers in Whites Row compared pelts by daylight, Coles’ poulterers in Leyden St slaughtered fowls to order, and further afield, the shoemakers of Hoxton and the furnituremakers of Bethnal Green were all at work too. Obviously this was only a fraction of the activity, but I think you can understand what Linda meant by saying Spitalfields was busier then.
Linda earned three pounds a week doing piecework for companies in Cutler St, who provided the cut pieces of cloth ready to sew. She and her co-workers made a hundred pairs of trousers in a day in the factory on the top floor of the soup kitchen. Assembling the clothes, one girl would sew the seams, another the buttonholes, another the buttons, the zipper and so on. “You couldn’t let anybody down. You couldn’t even go to the toilet” admitted Linda with a frown, showing me the scar where she caught her finger in a machine once and recalling in wry amusement that, in spite of her injury, the others were reluctant to stop the belt that drove all the machines, crying out, “Don’t turn it off! I haven’t finished my piecework yet!” “And that’s what made you a machinist” said Linda, in robust summary of her occupation.
“My mother was a seamstress for Savile Row, a tailoress from home, collecting her work from the West End. My grandmother rolled cigars at home, there was a big industry. It was a skill. Those skills are coming back, I think, because you see the girls today that are making their own clothes and selling them in the market. We used to make our own clothes too, because you need to have something a little different.”
Although Linda’s father worked in the Truman Brewery, his family were all dockers. She told me about the two floors of vaults beneath Wapping High St that stretch as far as Tobacco Dock, built by French prisoners of war imprisoned at the Tower of London. Apparently, these cellars were sealed up just as they were when the docks closed and remain untouched to this day, full of a vast stock of the best wine and champagne waiting to be discovered. “We’d go down to the lock-ups,” said Linda with a rapturous grin,“All the best stuff was there, cinnamon, paprika, saffron, rum, ivory, tea and champagne. I’ve drunk all the best teas in the world. If some spilt from a broken chest, you could get a handful for yourself.”
At this point in our pavement chat upon this sunny morning, Kweku, an African-American who lives in the ground floor flat of the converted soup kitchen, came outside for a cigarette and joined the conversation – which prompted Linda to turn to the subject of race, much to Kweku’s amusement. “We always had mixed race here because it was a port,” she declared, producing a photo of her multiracial school netball team from 1959 to show Kweku. “So we all got brought up together. I used to go to clubs to listen to ska and reggae, where coloured groups like the Stylistics were playing to a mixed audience, which the musicians liked because they couldn’t do it in America. We mixed a lot more than our parents thought, because we were enjoying life and we didn’t have any money. We had stop-overs, and a lot of us married Afro-Carribeans, Asians and Chinese. We were a melting pot.” I could see Kweku’s eyes widening at Linda’s open-hearted enthusiasm. With her exuberant humanity and brave liberal nature, Linda is the real life manifestation of the free-thinking fictional heroines of those nineteen sixties movies, incarnating the best of that remarkable era when youth found its voice in this country.
Touched by Linda’s monologue, Kweku generously invited us into his flat to take a look. We entered the central door that once led to the factory floors up above, rented out to support the soup kitchen. This was the door Linda passed through when she came to work every day. She was entranced, “It feels strange but homely, because it is so familiar” she said. Clasping her hands in delight and raising her eyes to explore the space, Linda explained to Kweku that, when it was the soup kitchen, one side of his flat was used for distributing clothes and the other side for food.
To my surprise, Linda recalled the familiar smell of bacon here in the early mornings, as the Jewish workers in the kitchen used to enjoy making themselves illicit bacon sandwiches, she confided. Then before we left, completing the sentimental pilgrimage, Linda revealed that she last walked through this hallway in 1968, causing Kweku to blush, because I suspect this was long before he was born. Mesmerised by each other, as Linda and Kweku shook hands in farewell, two worlds met for a moment, distant by birth yet united in natural sympathy and mutual curiousity.
Linda Carney in Brune St
Colour photographs by Sarah Ainslie ©
The Heroes Of Postman’s Park
Taking the opportunity afforded by the Spring sunshine yesterday, I enjoyed a stroll from Spitalfields through the City of London to visit Postman’s Park, a tiny enclave of green between St Bartholomew’s Hospital, the Barbican and St Paul’s Cathedral. Created in 1880 as a place of recreation for postmen, it is across the road from where the statue of Sir Rowland Hill, inventor of the postage stamp, stands outside the former sorting office. Of itself this is a quaint notion but it is not what attracts me to this melancholic shady corner, full of ferns, evergreen shrubs and dark fishponds. I have been a regular visitor here ever since I first discovered it years ago when I had an office in Clerkenwell where I used to go and write. Whenever I did not know what to write, I went out for walk. So, as you can imagine, I went for a lot of walks and this was how my curiosity for the City arose.
In 1900, the Victorian artist George Frederick Watts created a Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice here, a wall of ceramic plaques with a lean-to shelter, commemorating those who lost their lives trying to save others. Undoubtably, it is a noble enterprise but I am not sure that my fascination with this strange Memorial is entirely noble. The Memorial is a catalogue of calamity, in which people meet their deaths in a variety of dramatic ways that induce awe and wonder. As you scan the plaques, taking in the fires, drownings, poisonings and other accidents, each appears more extraordinary than the one before, encouraging a certain morbid instinct that is innate to human nature. Before long, you are connoisseur of calamity and you have shuffled the plaques into a hierarchy of strangeness.
To my eyes,“Sarah Smith, the Pantomime Artiste at Prince’s Theatre, who died of terrible injuries received when attempting in her inflammable dress to extinguish the flames which had enveloped her companion, January 24 1863,” will always be in the limelight in death, just as she was in life, because of the theatrical nature of her demise which evokes those famous images of Loie Fuller, only with flames replacing the billowing dress. This Memorial, commemorating events that are reminiscent simultaneously of both the Final Destination movies and Hillaire Belloc’s Cautionary Tales, appeals to me because every plaque is an elliptical drama which allows my imagination scope to conjure the images and imagine the whole story for myself. Edward Gorey might have illustrated a handsome book picturing these memorable disasters.
Watts believed that his heroes provided models of exemplary behaviour and character but I think that this amassing of examples proposes a certain ambiguity. Inevitably, you ask yourself whether this is a Memorial to courage or to foolhardiness. You might even go further and suggest that these dramas illustrate the porous line between courage and stupidity, which by its nature is a fine distinction. I have brought people here to this Memorial who have been overcome with laughter at the outrageousness of it. The surfeit of tragedy tips over to become high comedy, like too many tabloid disaster headlines side by side.
Death spares no dignity, and a sewage works is an unfortunate place to drown just as an explosion in a sugar factory has undeniable bathos. Looking at the dates, which are primarily from the second half of the nineteenth century, you wonder if this was an especially dangerous time to live. Though, if you dwell on the Memorial further you cannot but conclude that life itself is dangerous, human existence is frail, and we live in a world where arbitrary accidents happen continously. All of which is quite normal and self-evident, as the news reminds us daily.
If the facts are sparse, as they are here, they can take on an unintentional significance when, for example, people are reduced to their professions. Police Constable George Funnell was a hero because he went back to rescue a barmaid after saving two others from a fire in Hackney Wick, which prompts the question – Was he a hero specifically because he saved the barmaid? Further questions arise with John Cranmer, a clerk for the London County Council, who rescued a stranger and a foreigner at Ostend. Is this stranger and foreigner, one or two individuals? And was it more or less heroic, to rescue a person (or persons) who was (or were), by implication, merely a stranger and a foreigner?
I do not wish to diminish the seriousness of these real tragedies that are only rendered bizarre by our distance in time and the unique context of their collective presentation. The many tragic deaths of children and young people recorded here speak poignantly across the years, Elizabeth Boxall of Bethnal Green, aged seventeen, who died trying to save a child from a runaway horse, William Donald the nineteen-year-old railway clerk who drowned in the River Lea saving a lad from “a dangerous entanglement of weed” and eleven year old Solomon Galaman who died of injuries after saving his little brother from being run over in Commercial St, “Mother I saved him but I could not save myself.”
My grandmother had a print of George Frederick Watts’ painting “Hope” in her dining room and it fascinated me as a child. Here was a woman, representing hope, blindfolded and swathed in a muslin dress, carrying a lyre with just one string, while sitting on a rock in the lonely ocean as the tide rose around her. It was an absurdly aestheticised image that spoke of hopelessness as much as hope. George Frederick Watts chose a certain moment in the narrative to present as “poetic”. If the sequence were animated, then the water would rise and the woman would struggle and die while fighting for her last breath. But the reality of drowning would not be a desirable image that my grandmother could put on her dining room wall to glance at each Sunday before she carved her joint of beef.
The same disconnect exists in this Memorial in Postman’s Park. There is an uneasy disparity between the notion of tasteful remembrance of individuals, who demonstrated lofty ideals of courage and self-sacrifice, and the absurd catalogue of real accidents. However, this disparity does not make these people any less heroic, it just reminds us of the untidy and undignified nature of death, over which we have little control, but which permits certain people to reveal brave spirits and sometimes get remembered for it too.
Be assured, I took extra care in crossing the busy streets as I walked back on my return journey through the City to Spitalfields.
Philip Pittack & Martin White, cloth merchants
When Charles Dickens visited this corner of London in 1851, he wrote an account of visiting a silk warehouse, so I was intrigued when Miss Willey of Old Town, told me about the last remaining cloth warehouse in Spitalfields, Crescent Trading in Quaker St run by Philip Pittack & Martin White, who describe themselves as clearance cloth merchants. Between them, these two agreeable gentlemen possess more than one hundred and twenty years of experience in textiles. Philip is the third generation to work in the industry and Martin’s mother’s family were in the same trade too.
Philip Pittack, the handsome fellow pictured above with the scissors, began working for his father at the age of fourteen, pursuing the same trade as his grandfather from a premises in Mare St, Hackney. Together they travelled around the country, buying up waste textiles from cloth mills and selling it on to be reconstituted and woven into new fabric. It was in effect recycling, before the term was invented. Fifty years ago, he moved into his current business, being a clearance cloth merchant, buying surplus from mills when too much was manufactured or when it came out the wrong colour. For the past eighteen years, he has been working in partnership with Martin White, operating out of an old stable block backing onto the railway, just of Brick Lane. When they opened here, there were as many as thirty other cloth warehouses in Spitalfields but today Crescent Trading is the only one.
These two men, Messrs Pittack & White, should be on the stage because they both have such a natural gift for repartee, keeping the funnies coming and flirting outrageously with all the fashion students and young designers that are their primary customers, and who are reduced to helpless giggles by the jovial routines. Ten years ago, Crescent Trading sold wholesale, no order less that £100 was accepted and they would not cut a roll of cloth, but today everyone is welcome. And, although Philip and Martin regret the scaling down of the trade, I can see that they enjoy the endless parade of youngsters who come through the door, eyes boggling at the possibilities offered by all this cloth.
Because Crescent Trading only deal in clearance, including clearance stock from their competitors’ warehouses elsewhere in London, this really is the cheapest place to buy fabric – while equally, much of it is excess from mills’ special orders, often for companies like Prada and Chanel, which means you can discover cloth of the highest quality that might not be available anywhere else, and much of it is manufactured in this country too. In fact, Crescent Trading is a key part of our local economy because this is where all the smaller fashion companies and designers-starting-out come, relying on being able to buy tiny amounts of superfine quality at rock bottom prices.
I was honoured to be invited into the inner sanctum of the office, a makeshift construction of a room with a wide window looking out onto the warehouse, a cosy homely place with worn carpet tiles, bottles of HP sauce, jars of cashew nuts, tabloid lovelies taped to the wall, a great big map of Britain with pins in it, Philip’s son’s graduation photo and collecting boxes for Jewish and other charities. This is where I enjoyed the privilege of a conversation with Martin White, who described himself as the Sorcerer of Fabrics. I hope Philip will forgive me if I say that Martin is unquestionably the more stylish of the pair, obviously taking a great deal of care with his appearance, quiffed grey hair, dark raincoat, monocle dangling and pearl tiepin glinting. Philip introduced his business partner affectionately thus, “Rather than sit at home, Mr White prefers to work, utilising his expertise in the textile industry.” which caused Martin to smile regally, raising his eyebrows with pride.
Describing his years in the trade from the pinnacle of his current position, Martin said, “I started in 1946, when there were still coupons on fabrics and I have seen all the changes since that time. I was dealing in fabrics, my mother’s family were always in the business. I started on my own buying and selling. There used to be a lot of cloth mills in this country then, producing woollens, cottons, silks and synthetics but now almost all of them have gone. There are no cotton mills anymore and just a few woollen mills. A linen mill we dealt with in Ireland sold all their looms to India recently. China will take over the textile industry because they can copy anything, but they will never be able to match the quality of wool suiting from the mills in Huddersfield and Bradford which is the best in the world, because of the water. You’ve heard of ‘the old mill by the stream’ ?”
At this point, a female customer arrived and Martin raced out to the warehouse floor, leaving me puzzling over this enigma. So I followed him, to witness the performance, entering mid-dialogue, “You look like an honest girl” quipped Philip, graciously. “I was told about these two charming gentleman,” replied the girl, holding her own creditably. “My friend told me about this brilliant place.” she added with a broad smile, rolling her eyes to take in the vast array of textiles piled in every corner. Then, before she could say another word, Philip turned to me with a gleeful smirk, spreading his arms in extravagant triumph at this spontaneous expression of the evidence of their own fabulousness, “Hear that – Out of the horse’s mouth!” Turning back in an instant to the woman with a theatrically subservient gesture, he said, “No offence intended to the young lady…” The apology was duly accepted with a quiet nod of appreciation and once the comedy overture was complete, and the participants were now as old friends, trading commenced, rolls of fabrics flew around, measured and cut into shape with expert grace.
The young woman sauntered from the warehouse in satisfaction at her unbelievable bargains, just turning at the door as she entered the Spring sunlight, to give a sentimental wave to the fine gentlemen who had made her afternoon. It was a wave reciprocated in unison by the comedy duo, who turned back to me rubbing their hands in satisfaction at the exchange, though I could not tell if it was due to the transaction itself or simply in delight at the social encounter, or both. It was a moment from a classic British sit-com.
I seized the chance to enquire about the specific quality of the water in the North of England that plays such a significant party in the exemplary quality of the wool suiting produced in Huddersfield and Bradford. My query was the cue for an elaborate charade in which Philip and Martin enacted each stage of the process of textile production, from the spinning of the woollen yarn, through the dying and the weaving, every aspect of which requires washing. “Even we don’t understand it,” admitted Philip with uncharacteristic modesty, “It’s like the whisky in Scotland, the water is everything.” taking the opportunity to show me the stack of crates of Springbank malt whisky from the Campbeltown distillery that is his personal supply, stowed in a discreet corner, as a tested and reliable method to keep warm in the bone-chilling climate of the old warehouse. “In Summer, people think we have air-conditioning,” declared Philip breezily, “but it’s just the eighteen-inch thick walls!” always looking on the bright side, even standing swaddled in his duvet coat, as we shivered together in the office that seemed even colder than the rest of the building, if that were possible.
As you may have already surmised, the next chapter in the history of Crescent Trading is already dawning, because the venerable building that makes such a beautiful cloth warehouse is to become a hotel and Philip and Martin have no choice but to leave in a matter of months. This is in spite of an undertaking by the powers-that-be that the area is zoned as for light industrial use, “Money talks and bullshit walks, if you pardon my French!” said Philip, in desultory summary of the circumstance. There is a possibility Crescent Trading can move across the road to a modern unit, with half the space at twice the rent, where maybe they could share with Paul Gardner, the paper bag seller, who is also under pressure to leave his building in Commercial St, where his great-grandfather James Gardner commenced trading as a Scalemaker in 1870.
The rise of the neighbourhood has given landlords an appetite to increase revenue from properties, but if as a result we lose crucial businesses (like Crescent Trading and Gardners) that support the unique small enterprises in the East End, then we destroy a community which gives the place part of its distinctive life. Over all the years, these dignified small tradesmen of Spitalfields have been earning a modest living while providing an essential service to many, and I cannot resist admitting to you that I feel they deserve better now.
In coming weeks, I will report developments in this story but in the meantime you can enjoy this lively short film about Crescent Trading by clicking here.
Bolts of superfine quality wool suiting.
Rolls of silk.
Martin measures out cloth.
The last pallet of silk in a warehouse in Spitalfields?
