Bishopsgate bathhouse frolics
This extravagant domed orientalist edifice topped by the crescent moon is what you see above ground in the churchyard of St Botolph’s Bishopsgate, but it is the mere portal to a secret subterranean world beneath your feet. These Turkish baths were built in 1895 by Henry and James Forde Neville, and clad with dazzling ceramic tiles worthy of the Alhambra – manufactured in Egypt in the Turkish style and shipped over. As you descend the spiral staircase inside, note the ceramic motif of the hand of Fatima raised in blessing.
In 1963 when Geoffrey Fletcher author of “The London Nobody Knows” passed by, the brass plate with the words NEVILLE’S TURKISH BATHS was still here, but by then it was only in use as a storage space. “Still eloquent of the vanished days when a corpulent company director would while a way an afternoon and a little avoirdupois in these exotic surroundings before taking himself to his green and pleasant villa in Denmark Hill”, he wrote.
Bathhouses have always been locations for illicit sensuous encounters and I was tempted to speculate upon the erotic history of Neville’s Turkish Baths which now, like steam itself, has utterly evaporated. In fact, I had just realised that I needed to get out more, when I received an invitation to the Boom Boom Club held every Thursday night at the Bathhouse – which is now open for coffee by day and as a bar at night.
I am very grateful to my hosts for this opportunity to see the wonderfully atmospheric bathhouse interior full of life, and though the club was a little more KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE than MRS HENDERSON PRESENTS, there was an undeniable to poetry to the authentically crummy comedians, still carrying the torch for Archie Rice. The club promises a gin-soaked evening and I’ve no doubt that getting tanked is the best way to enter into the spirit of things. So that next day you wake, as I did this morning, with just a partial memory of the night before – recalling only images of glittery burlesque showgirls worthy of Walter Sickert.
Albam, a bold enterprise
The man with the broom is James Shaw, who two years ago founded the clothing company Albam in partnership with Alastair Rae. By chance, I walked into their shop in Beak St, Soho on the very first week they opened in October 2007 and met James and Alastair, tentative yet enthusiastic about their new venture. I loved the pared-down modern design of their clothes, elegantly simple, sensibly priced and made to last. And mostly manufactured here in Britain by long-established companies with a craft tradition. In short, Albam is one of only a few companies where a man could happily dress himself entirely from their shop and always look great. I remember going away and telling my friends about this wonderful shop but secretly thinking they were too good to last. It was the worst possible moment to start something, I thought, and a cynical voice was telling me that flashier, cheaper clothes usually sell better.
Sometimes it is good to be proved wrong. It was a real delight to meet James two years later, super-positive and flushed with success, as Albam open their second store, here in the Old Spitalfields Market – conveniently placed just across the road from St John Bread & Wine and the Golden Heart.
What I have realised is that Albam’s lean aesthetic suits the mood of our times perfectly. Over these two years, their clothes have subtly evolved as the designs get refined each time a batch comes from the factory. However, although these clothes are flattering and they really fit, it is not just about looking fashionable this season, it is about looking good in clothes you can wear until they fall apart.
I particulary liked the way James and Alastair were always there in the tiny Beak St shop, running up and down stairs getting different sizes for customers from the store in the cellar. It is a lovely thing to be able to buy clothes from the person who designed them and have a conversation about what you are buying. James spends two days a week at the factories in Nottingham and the challenge, he says, is to keep the whole operation tight – so that he can listen to customers in the shop and then talk to the people who make the clothes too, thereby ensuring that Albam is creating the clothes people really want to wear. The basement of the Spitalfields shop is now their design studio and office, so I look forward to seeing them here in the shop and around the neighbourhood too. Fancy a pint at the Golden Heart, lads?
Albam’s style inspirations are Steve McQueen and Paul Newman. James’ blue eyes glittered with emotion as he produced a book from beneath the counter of William Claxton’s photographs of Steve McQueen, to show me the picture below taken in 1964. Somehow they discovered that the beautiful shawl neck cardigan Steve wears in this photograph was made by a British company. Now in an astonishing coup, they have persuaded this company to make a limited number of these exact same blue cardigans which you can buy in their shop from early November for £155 each. Courtesy of Albam, this is your once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to release your inner Steve McQueen.
The Carpenters Arms, Gangster Pub
When this photo was taken, The Carpenters’ Arms in Cheshire St was the most notorious pub in London – owned by the gangster twins, Reggie and Ronnie Kray who bought it in 1967 for their mother Violet. They grew up in house just a hundred yard away at 178 Vallance Road, went to Wood Close School in Brick Lane and as youngsters frequented the Repton Boys’ Boxing Club (London’s oldest boxing gym, established in 1884 and still in existence) midway between the pub and their home. This was their manor, they hung their boxing gloves over the Carpenters’ crest behind the bar and such was their gallows humour that (so the story goes) they had the counter made up from coffin lids.
The Krays were pair of cruel psychopaths who became the most infamous of East End gangsters and bizarrely sought out the society of celebrities in the vain hope of drawing attention from their litany of crimes. It is strange to me that Barbara Windsor (someone for whom I have great respect) can claim to have known nothing of the brothers’ criminal activities while she was dating Reggie. Eventually, both twins ended up convicted with life sentences for murder and the whole story came to its grim conclusion when Reggie Kray’s funeral cortege passed by the Carpenters’ on its way down Cheshire St on 11th October 2000.
Nowadays, the Carpenters’ is a welcoming place with a fashionable clientele and an impressive range of over fifty different ales from all over the world, landlords Eric and Nigel keep it as fresh as a pin and there is always a large display of fresh flowers on the bar.
Before they took over, Eric and Nigel were regular customers here and when the previous management went bankrupt early in this decade, they struggled for years to obtain the lease, fighting off property developers who wanted to turn it into flats. When they moved in, it had been shut for four years and the place was stripped out, only the bar counter remained. Constructed of panels of glossy heavy timber – this could be the Krays’ coffin-lid counter. Nigel told me the Krays decorated the place in a faux Regency style with striped wallpaper to match their West End nightclub, and he pointed to a chip in the paint on one of the cast iron roof pillars revealing the burgundy colour scheme of that period.
Nationwide, thirty six pubs are closing every week and in this climate a pub has to be special to survive. But I have every confidence that, in this current celebrated incarnation under Eric and Nigel’s joint landlordship, the Carpenters will be here for us for a long time. I like to pop in regulary for a drink early in the week on a quiet night and now, apart from a discreetly placed print of the long-departed evil twins, you would never guess at its sinister past.
Steve Benbow, homes wanted for bees
This is Steve Benbow, the urban beekeeper and he needs homes for his bees. No doubt you’ve heard of the drastic decline in the bee population and I am sure you are also aware that our very existence depends on bees to pollinate the plants that grow our food. Steve explained to me that GM crops and pesticide spraying are making life difficult for bees in our countryside, so he is trying to find locations for one hundred beehives in London by next Summer. The city is the future for bees, he says.
If you have a garden, or a yard, or a rooftop, or any secure exterior space measuring five square metres that could offer a home to five hives, Steve wants to hear from you. He would require access once a week during the Summer to tend the hives and pay rent to you in jars of delicious honey. Be assured, his bees are carniolans – a gentle species that will not cause a hazard.
I invited Steve over to Spitalfields last Sunday to take a look at my garden in the hope it might be suitable for beehives, but unfortunately he says there is not enough sunlight. So I am hoping that there are some other people in the neighbourhood that can help out instead.
Steve has been producing London honey for years and he says the vegetation and green spaces here make it ideal for bees. Some readers may remember him selling his honey in the Spitalfields Market in the past. Steve runs the London Honey Company and currently has hives placed on the roof of Fortnum & Mason (to whom he is the official beekeeper), at the Barnes Wetland Centre, on a roof in Tooley St and on barges by Tower Bridge. London honey is prized for its complexity of taste and honey from each borough is inflected with different qualities, Piccadilly honey has a hint of lime while Tower Bridge honey has a whiff of toffee. I want Steve to place hives here in the neighbourhood so I can discover the unique flavour of Spitalfields honey.
If you can help by providing a home for Steve’s bees please email steve.benbow@btinternet.com
St John, Go Nuts for Doughnuts!
In the past, I was never that crazy about doughnuts and though I can appreciate the pop sensibility of Dunkin Donuts and Krispy Kremes that I encountered in America with their infinite permutations of sprinkles and coloured icings, I never wanted to eat them.
Disenchantment set in at an early age. From the works of Richmal Crompton and other favourite childrens’ authors, I learnt that doughnuts were something completely delicious that all children loved to eat, but then my expectations were crushed once I actually tasted one. It was horrible, a greasy sticky lump of sponge filled with synthetic cream and a squirt of sickly red syrup at its heart. Like Proust with his madeleine, I can remember it now, only I should rather forget.
But then last week as I was buying my daily loaf at St John Bread & Wine in Commercial St, one of the waiters dropped a hint that Mr Gellatly was baking doughnuts at the weekend and my curiosity was piqued. I decided – in the interests of keeping an open mind – to give doughnuts a second shot. On Sunday on the dot of ten, opening time, I was there at St John to inspect the doughnuts, a pile of freshly baked custard-filled ones nestling together like eggs in a basket. Even as I paid for mine (£2 each), another customer arrived and went straight for the doughnuts, so I knew something was up.
Once I got home, it all went into slow motion. The world dissolved as I bit into my doughnut and the intensity of the moment of consummation exploded to fill my consciousness entirely. In that first bite, there was the delicate nutty flavour of the outside mingling with the feathery sponge of the inside and then both of these mixed with the rush of delicious custard. It wasn’t too sweet, and the texture of the sponge was ideally contrasted with both the sugary exterior and the creamy custard interior.
Then I woke, as if from a dream, the world came back to me and I realised my face and hands were covered in sugar. Now I understand what all the fuss was about. Now I know, this is what doughnuts should be like!
Be warned though, Mr Gellatly has a strict baking regimen, he only bakes doughnuts on Sundays and from the beginning of December, these will be replaced by mince pies – which means you have just six opportunities left this year to get your hands on a St John doughnut.
Roa, the squirrel and the rat
I saw this handsome squirrel as I was walking down Redchurch St on my way to pick up some hummus from Teresa last week. It is ideally placed beside the old tree and I like the skillful way the aerosol has been used to create the effect of an ink drawing – it makes a perfectly seasonal image with the Autumn leaves beneath. As I continued on my way home down Brick Lane, I noticed a hungry rat (see below) drawn by the same hand, placed beneath the sign for Bacon St, his eyes gleaming in excitement as if he has caught a whiff of bacon.
Then, passing the Brick Lane Gallery, I saw a whole pile of rats painted on the gallery wall and in the basement I discovered a smaller version of the squirrel from Redchurch St. I learnt that these lively drawings of vermin were by the prolific Belgian street artist Roa who has painted menageries on derelict buildings in Brussels and Ghent, all inflected with an attractive dead-beat humour. In common with the drawings here, they are ambivalent creatures, charismatic yet sinister too and full of life.
I cannot conceal my personal admiration for these two particular vermin for their wily intelligence and tenacious hold on life. It was very perceptive of Roa to paint them as his response to the neighbourhood because we have them both in abundance here.
By the time you read this, the exhibition will be gone, but I hope Roa’s squirrel and the rat will stay with us for a long time to come. They look at home in the street, their natural element, rather than on a clean white gallery wall.
Columbia Road Market 8
There was a nip in the air this morning and, as I walked out under a clear Autumn sky, I could see my own breath. At the market, two of the stallholders were dressed as witches, which reminded me that it is nearly Halloween and inspired me to buy a bunch of Chinese Lanterns (Physalis) to dry. Then I found the plants were on sale and remembered that my grandmother grew them in her garden in Chard. She used to dry them every year and I was captivated by the exoticism of the lanterns displayed in an old copper jug in her hallway.
Apparently Physalis likes sun or partial shade, so I decided to have a go at growing them myself for next year and I bought a plant for £4.
