A cat on wheels in Whitechapel
As I was on my way back to Spitalfields after chatting with Tyrone at the Genesis Cinema, I came across Oscar the Russian Blue outside Budgens in Whitechapel while his owner had stepped inside to get a few things. Never before have I seen a cat in a buggy like this, but it was a miserable wet day and as I stood shivering in my damp clothes, I could not help thinking that Oscar looked quite comfortable in his red Santa suit trimmed with white – lounging there in a decorated carriage like an over-indulged Turkish sultan. After a few moments, Anne Smith, his adoring owner, came out of the shop and we enjoyed a brief conversation as we made our way together through Whitechapel Market. That is when I learnt he is a thoroughbred and she explained that he got his name, Oscar, because it was apparent early on that he was a natural winner. A piece of logic which I could hardly contradict from the visible facts. Then she asked me the name of my cat, Mr Pussy, and when I told her she shivered with disappointment, stopping in her tracks. “Oh poor thing!” she exclaimed, “Couldn’t you think of anything better than that?” Chastened by her remark, I did not know how to reply. So to cover the silence, Anne told me of her other cat Cruella, equally named for its natural tendency and which she had wisely left at home.
St Pauls Cathedral graffiti
Often I step into the porch at St Pauls Cathedral to pause for a moment when I am passing on my way, walking between Spitalfields and the West End. Sometimes I am sheltering from the rain, sometimes I stand and recall the birdseed seller in the magnificent opening shot of “Mary Poppins”, sitting on the steps of St Pauls singing “Tuppence a bag” – but mostly the reason I take a pause here is to marvel at the eighteenth century graffiti.
It can take thirty years or so for marble from a quarry to harden to its final consistency, and this explains how the graffiti of eighteenth century London has become preserved in the marble surround to the central door of Wren’s cathedral. Here you will find innumerable names overlaid upon each other with dates from the latter half of the eighteenth century, many inscribed in an elegant flowing cursive script. It reminds me of the work of Cy Twombly.
Some inscriptions are higher than the human arm could naturally reach and so I surmise that people must have stood upon boxes or each other’s shoulders to incise these names with iron nails or pocket knives, up above the rest. My particular favourite piece of graffiti is the bird with the bald human head pictured below. I like to think this might be an apprentice’s caricature of some pompous overweight employer.
Mostly, people go in and out of the cathedral through the smaller doors on the either side of the porch. The tall central door is only open on special occasions, so few ever notice this hidden graffiti, written all those years ago with such grace by Londoners long-forgotten. It takes a while to accustom your eye to deciphering these feint calligraphic lines that are almost unphotographable. For nearly twenty years now, I have been going back to look and each time some new detail becomes apparent. There is much more than I have been able to show you in these two pictures, so next time you are passing, be sure to take a moment to pause in the porch, take look for yourself and wonder.
Tyrone's cinema, the Genesis
It was only after Tyrone Walker-Hebborn actually bought the Genesis Cinema in the Mile End Rd that he learnt the full story. He took his father on a first tour of the newly-acquired building which had been shut for ten years. Carrying flashlights, father and son negotiated their way past sleeping tramps through into the shabby auditorium where a metre-high pile of guano lay beneath a hole in the ceiling, gaping to the sky. Then, using his torch, Tyrone’s dad pointed out two seats in the cinema. In an intimate moment, standing in the half-light, he explained to his son that this was where he and Tyrone’s mother always sat in the days when they were courting – she used to kick off her shoes during the feature and it was up to him to hunt for them under the seats when the lights came up, he said. This was all news to Tyrone, though now he understands why they named him after Tyrone Power, the swashbuckling movie star of the forties and fifties.
There are not many owner-managers of cinemas and for Tyrone it all came about quite unexpectedly. During the last recession, Tyrone found himself working for his dad’s roofing company and to ensure the survival of the business it seemed prudent to diversify. At first, he considered opening a gym but when he suggested a cinema to his girlfriend, she told him in no uncertain terms that he could never run a cinema. Thus, Tyrone’s fate was sealed and he set out to construct a cinema upon the site of his father’s business, Valentine House in Bow – a tale that both reveals Tyrone’s stubborn determination and confirms his father’s romantic nature in the choice of name for the headquarters of a roofing company. When planning was refused, Tyrone’s attention was drawn to the abandoned fleapit in Whitechapel. At this time when there was no cinema operating in Tower Hamlets, Tyrone saw the potential and he and his father were not intimidated by the holes in the roof either.
The current building was built in 1939 designed by W.R. Glen, opening as the Empire, but although films have been shown at this location for over a century, the first theatre actually opened on this site back in 1848 and legends such as Little Tich and Charlie Chaplin once performed there on stage.
For the first few years, as the building was put to rights, Tyrone ran the roofing business for half the day and then went over to the cinema to work as many hours as he could, even sleeping there on occasion. Tyrone decided to rename it the Genesis Cinema because it was a new beginning and because he is a closet Trekkie. In the nineteenth episode of the seventh season of “Star Trek: The Next Generation”, the Genesis Device was a technological innovation to alleviate sociological problems. But maybe you already knew that?
When it came to the opening of Tyrone’s cinema in 1999, Barbara Windsor (who had once attended the world premiere of Sparrows Can’t Sing there in 1963 with Reggie Kray) came back to cut the ribbon. Nowadays, the roofing business has been reluctantly closed down and, although he learnt on the job, Tyrone has become a well-respected figure in the British film industry, regularly seen at Cannes and other international festivals, scouting out films to show us here in Whitechapel – unlike the chains, he enjoys autonomy to screen what he chooses. Now we are in another recession and Tyrone is diversifying again. With inborn iconoclasm and the encouragement of Danny Boyle, Nick Moran and other industry insiders, he is launching Genesis Entertainment to produce his own films to show at the Genesis Cinema and elsewhere.
I want to salute Tyrone for his guts, in having the courage to take on a wrecked cinema and bring the place back to life. Thanks to his vision, we can enjoy the big commercial movies and small independent films too in our own local cinema at some of the cheapest prices in London and then simply walk home afterwards.
Piss-up at the brewery!
Twenty years have passed since the Truman brewery closed here in Brick Lane in 1989 and still much of it stands empty. It hard now the imagine the teeming life of the place that sustained itself over three centuries of brewing on this site. But thanks to the vast British Pathe online archive of news footage, I was permitted a startling glimpse of the lively community that was once here. Click to watch this brief riotous film from 1954, Trussing the Cooper, which records a traditional apprentice’s initiation ritual of humiliation. The apprentice, Gordon Wright of Bromley in Kent, is put in a barrel, covered with all kinds of filth and rolled around until he emerges coated in grime to be presented with a pint of ale, now a fully fledged cooper. It is a powerful cinematic cameo with a gleeful Dionysiac energy that cuts across the intervening half century, thrusting us into the joyful heart of their world. Whatever else was going on, these people certainly knew how to make their own fun – but I am glad I was not the one in the barrel. To his eternal credit, Gordon takes it all in great spirit. Maybe he had a couple of pints already to give him some Dutch courage?
Chris Dyson, architect
Here are two pictures of 11 Princelet St, on the left is 2006 and on the right is 2007, before and after. Only it is not that simple, because the picture on the right looks closer to how it would have looked when it was first built in 1719 before the windows were altered in the nineteenth century to create the aberrant elevation on the left – meaning these pictures could equally be labelled, after and before.
Whichever way you choose to see it, I think there is no doubt that the current version looks better, with the original grid of windows reinstated to match up with the buildings on either side. The previous elevation destroyed the rhythm of this old terrace upon the north side of Princelet St, which is now harmoniously restored, thanks to the work of architect Chris Dyson.
For several years I have been admiring Chris’ work, observing the progress of his various projects around Spitalfields, but I consider 11 Princelet St as his signature piece. So it was a treat to meet the genial architect there, in the building that is both his home and where he has his practice too.
It was in 1995, that Chris and his wife Sarah first enquired after the house which was derelict at the time, then they waited ten years before being invited to submit a sealed bid to the receivers within two weeks and got the house by a cat’s whisker. Salvaging as much as possible of the structure (including the rear elevation, staircase and some panelling), Chris reinstated what had gone in consultation with architectural experts – with Dan Cruickshank’s advice, he rebuilt the facade using new yellowish London bricks stained with bitumen. Walking around now, through into Chris’ practice in the workshop at the rear, I was struck by the elegant proportions of the rooms and the exciting sequence of different spaces he has devised. This is a million miles away from any “conversion”, everything feels completely natural, as if it always was like this.
Chris Dyson’s training at Glasgow School of Art and his experience working alongside architectural luminaries Jim Stirling and Terry Farrell, sharpened a natural ability to create humane well-proportioned spaces and a balanced aesthetic drawing upon an understanding of traditional skills and principles of vernacular design. In Spitalfields, it is a question of preserving the original quality of buildings while finding the best way of making them work as functional spaces today – a question for which Chris has to find a different answer every time.
Let me admit, I am hoping to persuade Chris to come and take a look at my old house. Currently, it is as I moved in and needs an experienced eye to work out how to fillet the twentieth century alterations from the property (including a plastic kidney-shaped bath where the kitchen table should be), and give the place its dignity back. In the meantime, while I am saving up, I shall be telling you the stories of each of the different properties that Chris is working on in Spitalfields, as they come to completion.
Architecture, I’m told, is one of the professions worst hit by the recession but Chris’ practice is flourishing – he has become the architect of choice for the renovation of old houses here and based upon the evidence of 11 Princelet St alone, it is a reputation justly deserved.
Brick Lane Market 1987
I bought these tiny hares made of alloy in the Coppermill Market on Cheshire Street on my first visit to Brick Lane Market in November 1987. At a Bonfire Party at Strand on the Green (a line of old houses built right into the river bank beside Kew Bridge) where I lived at the time, I met Joshua Compston who also lived there. He offered to show me the market, so next Sunday he hammered on my window before dawn, dragged me from my bed and we caught the first District Line train from Gunnersbury to Aldgate East.
We were both connoisseurs of grimy cafes at the time and I recall escaping out of the frost into a splendid example at 1 Cheshire Street, where the grease permeated the smoky steamy air with such ferocity that the first breath you took caused you to gag violently. But we toughed it out for the unlikely charisma of the clientele which comprised exclusively old men in caps with Frank Auerbach faces. Afterwards, we examined the tiny stalls with items laid out on the frozen bare earth between Cheshire Street and the railway line, each stallholder with their own light glimmering in the grey pre-dawn winter gloom. We walked back down Brick Lane, and then Joshua took me to visit Jocasta Innes in her remarkable old house on Heneage Street with the oval stairwell and the secret door disguised as a bookcase, leading through to the architect next door.
Joshua had great success as a gallerist and art entrepreneur but died in 1996, still in his twenties – and I had quite forgotten about that first visit to the market with him, until I found these hares in my desk drawer where they have been all this time. It was when Joshua introduced me to the market that I fell in love with this place, so I suppose you could say it is because of him that I am here in Spitalfields today.
Columbia Road Market 11
I had a big night out last night at The Carpenters Arms after the neighbourhood firework display. Even as I stumbled up the road to the market this morning in a haze, I could overhear the dogwalkers discussing those “Great Balls of Fire” that served as the theme for the display. This explanation all serves as my excuse for not getting to the market until well after 8 o’clock. It was very quiet when I got there, I think the entire neighbourhood is nursing hangovers after entering into the festivities engendered by last night’s display.
With a modest outlay of £3 I bought this tray of six primroses to naturalise in my garden. I remember that primroses grow quite happily in the shade of hedges and trees because that was where I used to pick them when I was a child in Devon. These particular specimens have been “forced” in a polytunnel, which is why they are flowering now but I expect they will quickly revert to a more natural scale in my garden.
