Matthew Reynolds, the Duke of Uke
This charismatic fellow with the lively eyebrows is Matthew Reynolds, the self-styled Duke of Uke, proprietor of the ukelele and banjo emporium at 22 Hanbury St. “Every day we’re still here surprises me!” he said brightly, introducing the tale of how he started his singular business from nothing, before revealing,“It took a couple of years before I could get a night of sleep.” That was just four years ago now but, thanks his buoyant confidence and zeal, this shop with a rehearsal room and recording studio in the basement has acquired a big reputation as the destination of choice for everyone that loves these underdogs of the musical instrument family. It is a true community hub, full of musicians coming and going, creating music and giving lessons too – as well as a wonderful friendly place to drop in and admire the huge display of ukeleles in diverse sizes, shapes, colours and prices to suit every pocket. Some are so dinky, cute and garish they look more like toys than serious musical instruments. You can see one in the photograph made of a cigar box.
I always poke my head around the door whenever I am passing in the hope of catching a spontaneous concert, because if one person is playing a ukelele then you can bet someone else will snatch another instrument from the wall and join in. There are usually interesting people hanging around in here, they might not all appear remarkable at first glance, but once they take an instrument in hand a sublime transformation comes upon them. At any time of the day you are likely to stumble upon a happy musical party at the Duke of Uke. If I see an excited crowd on the pavement outside pressing their faces against the window, then I elbow my way to the centre of the throng, because it means someone famous is giving an impromptu ukelele solo inside. Sparing yourself the melee of the fans, you can click on the following names to see films of recent performances at the Duke of Uke by Pete Doherty, The Mystery Jets, Le Volume Corbe and Allo’ Darlin’.
Sure enough, when I arrived at the shop for my interview, customers Charlotte (a ukelele novice) and Christopher (a professional guitarist) who had just met, were jamming playfully together on their ukeleles. Charlotte who is evangelical in her advocacy, discovered the ukelele only recently when a friend bought one for her son, but she soon got one for herself and now has an amateur ukelele band composed of a half-dozen friends and relations who participated in the performance last year by the Ukelele Orchestra of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” at the Albert Hall. Immaculately dressed in tweeds, Matthew presides with a magnanimous grin from behind the counter in the manner of an old school publican, sympathetically allowing his customers make themselves at home and have a good time with the ukuleles. But only the tiniest cue is required to encourage Matthew himself to take his ukelele in hand and demonstrate the melodic flights that can be conjured by a master in a few adroit gestures.
With modest erudition, Matthew gave me whistle-stop tour of the history of the ukelele which originated when three Portuguese guitar makers emigrated to Hawaii, taking the machete or small guitar with them, there the royal family became besotted with these instruments, renamed as ukeleles. The 1916 Panama Exhibition in San Francisco introduced the craze to America and the fad lasted until the nineteen fifties when ukeleles were manufactured in a plethora of designs, and popular radio and television programmes broadcast lessons in how to play.
What is it that gets people about this little instrument that is so cheeky and cute, yet capable of poetry and pathos too? Being straightforward, Matthew tells he loves the ukelele because it is “a really simple instrument that has never reached its full potential,” continuing with a hint at the instrument’s unlikely sex appeal,“It is promiscuous, anyone can find a partner in a ukelele.” he says. There is something both comic and cheap about the ukelele, the perfect instrument for those early twentieth century sentimental songs. Yet, even though the honest ukelele has – just like those popular songs of yesteryear – acquired a greater emotional resonance over time, it never lost its sense of fun.
So Long, Rossi’s Cafe
After more than half a century of business, these are now the last days of Rossi’s Cafe in Hanbury St which closes forever on Friday. Opened by the Rossi family as an Italian cafe in the nineteen fifties and run by Johnny Rossi until his death nine years ago, this venerable Spitalfields institution has been upheld and thrived under the management of Harold and Jenny Londono from Colombia – who have become popular hosts in their own right, loyally serving the original clientele from the days of Mr Rossi. Opening six days a week at six in the morning, Rossi’s was a central meeting place in Spitalfields for more than a generation, held in affection by the stalwarts who came here for breakfast, lunch and a vivid social scene their whole lives.
Luzangy, Harold’s daughter, kindly served me a cup of tea in the beautiful fifties interior of the cafe, as I sat enjoying the vaporous warmth. Harold joined me, explaining that since the landlord refused to renew the lease for the cafe and, after a petition and a court appeal failed, they have no choice but to close. It is understood that the property can be more profitably let as office space, now that Spitalfields has gone up in the world, but no office, however sympathetic, can replace the rich social milieu that Rossi’s supports.
Then a friendly gentleman who has been coming through the door of Rossi’s Cafe for more than twenty years walked up to the table and into our conversation, desiring to make his voice heard. “Do you come here every day?” I ventured, “Unfortunately!” he replied with an ironic grimace. “And what do you have?” I enquired, “The full poison on a regular basis.” he reported gleefully, yet with a hint of elegy in his voice. “We know everyone, they’re lovely people, exceedingly friendly,” confided Harold to me later.
It is not so long ago that Rosa’s Cafe in Hanbury St, and The Market Cafe in Fournier St shut, places that once served the porters in the days of the fruit and vegetable market. When The Market Cafe closed, Gilbert & George started going to eat at Rossi’s twice every day, for breakfast at six thirty and lunch at eleven thirty. “If they are in town, they will be here,” confirmed Harold proudly. I raised my gaze to the familiar scene of diners hungrily tucking into cooked breakfasts before hurrying off to work, and old friends sipping tea and passing the time of day without any imperative of time. All embraced within the warmth of a traditional fifties cafe interior, lovingly kept and perfectly clean. Next week this scene will be gone and the daily performance will end. Where will Gilbert & George and all the other regulars go now? John and Jimmy (pictured below) have been coming here over forty years.
This is an emotional moment for the staff and customers of Rossi’s Cafe, and rightly so because they are drinking tea on the edge of a cliff that is about to collapse and there is nothing anyone can do about it. “We are going to miss our customers, we are going to miss the place. We tried very hard to stay,” admitted Harold in reluctant acceptance. He gets up at quarter to five in the morning, six days a week, to drive here from his home in Pimlico to Spitalfields and open the cafe. If he goes to Smithfield Market to buy sausages, bacon and ham then he rises even earlier. Harold was never going to get rich running Rossi’s Cafe but it gave him and his family a modest living, provided a egalitarian space where everyone could afford to eat. Many in Spitalfields will feel the lack of it once it has gone and the long-established social network that attends it is lost forever.
Pictured behind the counter today, here are all the staff of Rossi’s Cafe, Betty, Jenny, Harold, Fanny, Luzangy, Fabio and Jolio, putting a brave face on the situation as Jolio, the kitchen comedian, skylarks with a plate of cheese to lighten the moment. Harold and his wife Jenny occupy the centre of this photo, just as they have carried the family business, with the support of Harold’s sister Fanny (who stands in front him) and Harold and Jenny’s daughter Luzangy (standing next on the right), one of their two children who help out when not attending university. I was touched by Harold’s dignified self-effacing manner, now that the long fight to save the cafe is over. He and Jenny are already searching for new premises and I know they their customers will follow them if they can re-open elsewhere in the vicinity, so we must wish them well and hope to see them again soon. But in the meantime, we have two days to go round there and pack the place out, giving Harold and Jenny and their team a worthy send off in appreciation of the service they have given to Spitalfields.
Graham Bignell, New North Press
There is a certain magnetism about printshops that I cannot resist, so when I visited the New North Press for the first time at the end of last year to meet Richard Ardagh, I was eager to return and have a chat with Graham Bignell who founded the press in 1986 and has amassed a formidable collection of old wooden and metal fonts. “It was a long process,” he said, outlining how he began, “because you have to acquire type. I advertised in print magazines and I bought a whole print workshop from John Wellbourne in Southend – two Heidelberg presses and a fantastic collection of type. It is not easy dealing with old printers,” he explained diplomatically “because they don’t retire, they just carry on…”
Printers, I soon understood, are a breed apart. For Graham Bignell, printing was a passion that became a vocation that became his life. Clearly, the smell of printers’ ink can be as addictive to some as that of greasepaint is to actors. From the gleam in Graham’s eyes as he described the first acquisition of type, initiating a collection which has grown and grown over the past twenty years, I discerned a compulsive side to the pursuit of letterpress printing. “Five years ago, Ron Stamp of Cafe Press in Uxbridge rang me to say – I’ve got some stuff in sheds down the back…” continued Graham enigmatically, with a smile and a pause for dramatic effect, before announcing in triumph,“It was a goldmine of typographical material!”
I know I too am susceptible to this same urge because whenever I come across single blocks of wooden type for sale it irks me to see the letters split up and their function destroyed. I want to buy all the stray type and reconstruct the complete typefaces so they can have a new life. Consequently, it made feel good just to see all the neat trays of old type that Graham has rescued and put back to use, in this loving sanctuary for old and neglected fonts. More than this, I am delighted to report that letterpress printing is enjoying a resurgence and Graham opens his workshop up to students who find they return to their computers with a better understanding of typography once they have actually shuffled blocks of type around.
Graham’s occupation requires a rare combination of both the mental and the physical, the aesthetic and the practical manifested in a flexible mind and a steady hand. As well as being the one who chooses the typeface and decides upon the composition of type upon the page, the letterpress printer needs dexterity to work the printing press and set the type in the frame. It is all part of the same job. Typography for letterpress demands considerable powers of imagination to envisage the design of a page because the actual arrangement of words and white space is only revealed when it is printed on paper. It takes years of experience and a certain unquantifiable knack to master the idiosyncrasies of the press, and judge all the variables that must be controlled to arrive at a perfect print. This is the magic of printing.
While Graham spoke, I cast my eyes around the workshop – the walls decorated with old wood block posters in frames, the ceiling festooned with proofs of new prints drying in a rack, and the space divided by tall cabinets of drawers of type arranged around the fine nineteenth century iron presses that are the central focus of activity. Every spare surface was covered with intriguing paraphernalia, wedding invitations and correspondence cards, rolled posters and discarded pulls of type, wooden cases of intricately arranged tiny lead alloy type shining like fish scales, a recent copy of the British Medical Journal with Graham’s typographic cover design, some of Graham’s beautiful Christmas cards that he printed and never sent, and a stack of lively examples of the classy artists’ books that Graham produces to commission. It is the workplace of a happy man.
Dereliction of care
Not so long ago, almost all of Spitalfields was shabby or derelict but today there is very little that has not been cleaned up. Dereliction is now the exception where it was once the rule, and I have become a connoisseur of the tragic poetry incarnated in these rare anachronisms. Just like those ambivalent gypsy children who came to the aid of the upright protagonists in Enid Blyton novels, many buildings in Spitalfields have been grabbed by the collar and scrubbed within an inch of their lives to make them acceptable at the tea-table. It would be disingenuous not to embrace these edifices that have been rehabilitated, but sometimes the patina that records the history of human presence gets lost – which is why I am drawn to these pitiful ruins, because they still hold their mystery intact, even if the fabric is falling apart.
At 4 Princelet St the patina has been scrupulously maintained and the house regularly serves as a location for film and television dramas. This is where Sharon Stone tied Hugh Dancy naked to the bed in Basic Instinct 2, where Little Dorritt had coffee with Arthur Clennam and where Rupert Pendry Jones discovered one of the victims of the Ripper copy-cat in “Whitechapel” last year. It is a familiar sight to see actors in full nineteenth century costume, enjoying a cigarette or talking into a mobile, on the doorstep here between takes. Once, I overheard a couple of visitors on the pavement outside, innocent of the deliberate preservation of the house in this state, debating whether they could get it cheap, considering that it would need a lot spent on it but concluding it might be a good investment once it was cleaned up. That day is long past.
To many people, properties that have no human life are rendered invisible, blurry holes of emptiness in the neighbourhood. So, in a small selection that is entirely subjective and far from comprehensive, I decided to take a single walk, photographing for you some buildings that deserve better. Multiply these a hundred-fold and you would have the neighbourhood thirty years ago. I hope that illustrating the qualities of these stubbornly neglected edifices, restoring their visibility, might encourage someone to cherish them for their intrinsic worth. Although I am not claiming all of these buildings are of historical or architectural importance, each has a modest dignity which complements the place and it would enrich the city if they were sympathetically restored. Above all, I know these buildings will not remain in this state forever, so I consider it my duty to record these last shabby remnants as they are today.
The first stop on my walk was Toynbee St, just a hundred yards from Christ Church Spitalfields, where there is this early twentieth century two-storey building with the unusual proportion of a long barn or stable block, filling the eastern side of the street. The ground floor comprises a row of shops, mostly boarded up now, and on the first floor, workshops or living spaces with wide casement windows. This attractive property belongs to the council and sits decaying when it could be repaired and put back to use.
Next I walked over to Elder St, where at the junction with Commercial St is the gaping facade of a nineteenth century house with fragments of brickwork structure visible behind. Rebuilding this property would be most effective way close the gap in a run of nineteenth century buildings, thereby restoring the streetscape.
Continuing onwards up Great Eastern St, there are these two monumental nineteenth century warehouses, with an extension comprising workshops at the rear and bare remnants of the ground floor facade of a curved building at the street corner. It was here I took the photo at the top of the article, holding my camera through a gap in the hoarding. Both buildings have well-proportioned frontages with cornices and fine detailing but have rotted so long the floors have fallen in. The attendant at the car park behind told me the owner was under no pressure to do anything with them but sent surveyors to check the structure regularly. This seemed particularly absurd given the collapsed state of the floors but maybe he just wants to be sure he will not find himself liable for damage if the buildings collapse into the street?
This derelict terrace at the junction of Redchurch St and Bethnal Green Rd includes two eighteenth century weaver’s houses. Dan Cruickshank visited these the day before I interviewed him last year and enthused to me about the architectural detail that survives here.
I climbed up a step ladder in the car park to take this photo of the back yard of one of the terrace of three old house in Sclater St that are surrounded in scaffolding and have been boarded up as long as I can remember. It is amazing what you can discover if you look over a fence.
Finally, there is this railway building in Pedley St, just off Brick Lane, with its fine curved windows and door, that still has its decorative lamp fitting above it. This is a property that could be suitable for any manner of uses and bringing it back to life would lift up this sad alley, that primarily serves as a toilet at present.
Once I had taken these pictures, the light was fading, the rain was coming on and it was time to go home and end my short melancholic tour of dereliction. As I stood in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil for tea, I realised there were plenty I had missed and, spreading the radius further, there were more I would like to have photographed. Also, I did not include buildings in the Bishopsgate Goods Yard or the Truman Brewery because these sites raise many other questions. Those pictured are examples where the possibility for restoration is apparent, they are structures that could become serviceable again and are buildings worthy of keeping. I hope none are left to fall down or neglected until the case for their demolition becomes persuasive.
However, the neighbourhood is full of eagle eyes and, even as I took my pictures, others were doing the same. Photographing derelict buildings in Spitalfields has become a popular sport over these last thirty years, though, like some rare species, there are less and less to photograph as time passes, attracting proportionately more and more photographers. All these buildings pictured are spoken for and there are plans for some – in fact, I hope to report to you about one in particular shortly. We shall wait and watch for developments.
Columbia Road Market 19
A respite has come, after weeks in which the oppressive cold has filled me with the overwhelming urge to make a hot water bottle and take to my bed at three in the afternoon, I woke before dawn this morning, restless with thoughts and plans. Walking up the road to the market early, I discovered that now the snow is gone the puddle under the railway bridge is back, so I had to wait for a gap in the traffic and sprint under the bridge to avoid getting drenched by a wave of spray from a passing car. The first thing I saw at the market were Daffodils from Lincolnshire and from Cornwall, and although there were only a fraction of the stallholders and as yet no customers, there was a prevailing atmosphere of optimism. “It’s not raining and it’s not cold , no excuses this week!” I heard one stallholder declare in expectation of a healthy day’s trading.
To celebrate this change in the weather, I bought cut flowers, these Narcissi from Tremelethen Farm, St Mary’s in the Scilly Isles, three bunches for £2. Their heavenly scent will fill my small drawing room and remind me that there are warmer climes where Spring is happening already.
The Golden Heart, 1986
Here, as promised, is Mike Myers’ pub profile of The Golden Heart in Commercial St, opposite the market, from “Spitalfields News”as originally published in February 1986:
“Den and Sandra Esqulant have run The Golden Heart for seven years. During that time Spitalfields has changed quite a bit and the pub has altered accordingly. Out went the public bar with its pool table, dart board and large colour TV. In came the Spitals Wine Bar with waitress service, a “very high standard of food, good wine” (no bottles of Hirondelle suspended over fibre optics here), and a wicker fan from the Kings Rd. They were the first to open a wine bar in Spitalfields and the first to serve a Beaujolais Nouveau breakfast last November – an event covered by the local press.
The Golden Heart is a chameleon-like pub with its character changing with each session. It opens at six in the morning and is soon full of bustling market men and Spanish lorry drivers, who apparently prefer coffee to beer. A typical market pub in fact. Lunchtime sees the pub filling up with chartered accountants and in the evening the pub is used mainly by local residents. So it could be a metaphor for the whole of Spitalfields – that is if you’ve drunk enough Beaujolais Nouveau and are feeling suitably pretentious.
The saloon bar has black flocked wallpaper, table tops in metal, red carpets, gilt framed mirrors and a “real” gas fire. Like any other Trumanized pub in fact. The only exceptional thing about it are the signs above the toilets – “Dames” and “Hommes” they read, instead of Ladies and Gents. Was this a concession to the Common Market? I asked Sandra, who has dark hair and eyes, and bears a striking resemblance to the barmaid in Eastenders. “No,” she said, “We have an old French name, so I wanted to add a bit of France to the bar.”
Had she any plans for the future? “Yes, lots but I’m not going to tell you anything,” she replied brusquely, pouring another glass of wine as if to mollify her refusal to reveal anything further. “You should see it in a few months though,” she added. Do they get any prostitutes in the pub? “No, never, they are not allowed to come in. We’d rather have an empty pub. I like to keep a high standard. A pub should be an extension of your home.”
Both Den and Sandra are attached to Spitalfields. “We love the people, the market, the area, it has lots of character and everyone is very neighbourly.” Den and Sandra are a friendly couple and it is their presence that turns the pub from an ordinary Truman’s pub, wine bar notwithstanding, into a jolly sort of place to have a drink in…”
When I met Mike Myers, the Spitalfields crooner, who edited the “Spitalfields News” for two years in the eighties, we searched in vain through his personal archive to find this article. Mike thought he probably gave his only copy to Sandra in 1986, but thanks to the Local History Collection at the Bancroft Library you can read it today. Once I opened the copy of “Spitalfields News,” there was Sandra prominent on page three.
Although the picture is feint and grainy, there is no doubt Dennis and Sandra make a happy couple and I think Sandra looks pretty good, fashion-forward in an eighties mode with her Princess Diana style ruffle collar. Not yet the Queen of Spitalfields we know today, but already a princess in waiting. She seems to have shown Mike a little bit of attitude when he went to interview her early in 1986, but we all mellow with time, and neither she nor Mike knew that he would become a regular, still coming back for a pint a quarter of a century later.
Reading the feature now, I am struck by the novelty of European things. The United Kingdom joined the European Union in 1973 and wine bars were all the rage throughout the eighties as drinking wine became a more sophisticated alternative to an honest pint. No doubt Sandra is relieved not to open at six in the morning anymore, though she still retains an early licence. We shall not grieve for the flock wallpaper either. The French signs on the toilet doors remain, as does the “real” gas fire where Sandra’s dog Molly sleeps most nights, and The Golden Heart does feel like a private home. Back then, people were already talking about Spitalfields “changing quite a bit” just as they do today, though regrettable prostitution is still part of our neighbourhood.
Yesterday, I dropped into The Golden Heart around five o’ clock when Sandra was busy serving pints to the thirsty office workers. Once there was an opportunity, I handed her a photocopy of the story, unfolding it onto the counter and, amid the clamour of the Public Bar, she read it through to herself with her hand upon her cheek in quiet concentration. Sandra remembered the moment when the picture was taken and placed her fingers affectionately upon the image of Dennis,who died last year, “He never changed” she said, “I still have that sweater, I always bought him intarsia cashmere sweaters from Ballantynes.” I asked Sandra about her old French surname, mentioned in the article, and she confirmed that she understands Esquilant is of Huguenot origin.
I had not realised that The Golden Heart was the first pub in London to host a Beaujolais Nouveau breakfast, “We used to have two chefs and Edith Piaf blazing until five in the morning, and all the directors of Trumans got drunk and collapsed in the brewery,” she recalled with pride. Reconsidering her comment about the prostitutes, Sandra told me candidly, “We used to be friends and I protected them when they needed it.”
I think it was a cushy job Mike had going round writing pub profiles and now that most of the ones he wrote about have closed it has become an important social record. Maybe I can follow his example, writing pub profiles for “Spitalfields Life”? There are plenty of bars left in the neighbourhood for me to work my way around.
Graffiti at Arnold Circus
Since I wrote about the historic graffiti on St Paul’s Cathedral last year, I have been searching for some closer to home and this week I got a tip-off to look on the Boundary Estate. So I took my umbrella and walked through the rain up to Arnold Circus to investigate. I love these tall red brick buildings constructed in 1902 around the circular raised park, which is shortly to be restored under the supervision of the Friends of Arnold Circus. There is something warm and humane about their vernacular style, with steep pitched roofs that recall Norman tithe barns and their intricate layout which feels like the plan of an ancient castle or medieval city.
From the Circus, I walked down Navarre St and on the right came to Wargrave House, which is currently being renovated and is covered in scaffolding. This was where I was told to look. The first I noticed was G.GOLDSTEIN 1950 AGED 12 and I halted in surprise, although the graffiti had been there sixty years it looked spontaneous and fragile. Immediately I wondered, where is G.Goldstein – now aged 72?
Quickly, more caught my eye, all at child height and some incised deeply into the bricks. As I took out my camera and began snapping, I became aware of two workmen with brushes touching up the bricks, they were a few yards to my right and edging towards me as I was taking my pictures. With a flash of emotion, I thought, is this the last moment to capture these inscriptions before they are erased forever? But once the first workman arrived, I showed him the graffiti and he lit up with delight, bringing his pal over to see the names, written before any of us were born. We shared a reverential moment of silent awe, before the guys reassured me that they were simply tinting some of the bricks to restore the tone of the wall and the inscriptions would not be affected.
So then the three of us set to work, conveniently sheltered from the rain by the scaffolding, the workmen tinting the bricks and me recording the dozens of names on the wall. You can see a few of my pictures below. Some people just left their surname and initial, some their full name, some the date, some the date and time, and a few their date of birth. I was interested by those who had chosen to give the day of the week and exact time, commonly 3:30pm, because I assume they had just come out of Virginia Rd or the Rochelle School. These timed inscriptions serve to pinpoint a single moment, whereas those where the age is given record a time of life and those with the date of birth simply declare “I exist.”
Most are from the nineteen fifties and sixties but the oldest complete inscription I can be sure of is Roy Lyons 3 June 1947, although there are two worn initials from the second decade of the twentieth century for which the final digit of the date is gone, CW 191?
The nature of the names is revealing too, Goldstein and Rosenfeld are Jewish surnames, Kelly and Murphy are Irish, while Bertrand and Lyons suggest French Huguenot origin. The egalitarian mixture of names collected together on the wall in Navarre St now comprises a map of the different cultures of the peoples who have passed through this neighbourhood and of whom little else remains.
I walked all around the building and examined some other streets but although there were signs of worn graffiti, I could find none with the clarity of the names on the Navarre St side of Wargrave House. I am fascinated by the survival of these modest inscriptions, but I do not know if they survived because that street is sheltered from the elements, or if more names were written there because it is the quietest street.
The question I have now is, does anyone know where Richard Mills, R.Rosenfeld, P.Kelly, G.Goldstein, Mark & Sherri Bertrand, Lily Sampson, Roy Lyons, Albert Harris, A.J.A Bedford, A.Silkoff, Peter Keogh, Shirley Wiseman, T.Nile, and C.Jones are today? A reward will be given for anyone who can help me find them, because I think it is time we caught up with these young vandals. I want to confront them with their handiwork of half a century ago and ask them to explain themselves to us.
