At Eastbury Manor House
Some tickets are available for The Gentle Author’s Tour this Saturday 18th May
If you are seeking an afternoon’s excursion from the East End, you can do no better than visit Eastbury Manor in Barking, which is only half an hour on the District Line from Whitechapel yet transports you across four centuries to Elizabethan England.
Once Eastbury Manor stood in the centre of its own domain of rolling marshy farmland, extended as far as you can see from the top of its pair of octagonal turrets, but today it sits in the centre of a suburban estate built as Home for Heroes in the twenties in the pseudo-Elizabethan style, which casts a certain surreal atmosphere as you arrive. Yet by the time you have entered the gate and walked up the path lined with lavender to the entrance, the mellow brick facade of Eastbury Manor has cast its spell upon you.
Built in the fifteeen-sixties by Clement Sisley, Gentleman & Justice of the Peace, Eastbury Manor is among the earliest surviving Elizabethan houses, combining attractive domestic interior spaces with an exterior embellished by showy architectural elements in the renaissance manner. This curious contradiction of modest form and ambitious style speaks of Sisley’s eagerness to impress as a self-made property developer and landowner. He owned a house in the City of London and thus Eastbury grants us a vision of how those lost mansions that once lined Bishopsgate and Leadenhall St might have been.
Formerly part of the lands of Barking Abbey, after the Dissolution the property was sold to an absentee landlord before it was acquired by Clement Sisley in 1556. From apothecary bills, we know he fell ill and died in September 1578, bequeathing arms, weapons, armour and dags (guns) to his son Thomas ‘to him and his heirs forever at Eastbury’, in the hope that the manor might become a family home for generations to come.
Yet within only a few years Eastbury Manor was tenanted by John Moore, a Diplomat and Tax Collector, and his Spanish wife Maria Perez de Recalde. They were responsible for commissioning the lyrical and mysterious wall paintings, depicting an unknown European landscape rich in allegorical potential, glimpsed through a classical arcade of baroque barley-sugar-twist pillars.
Over two hundred years, the old house spiralled down through the ownership of a series of families with connection to the City of London until it became a farm, with animals housed in the fine Elizabethan chambers, and was threatened with demolition at the beginning of the last century.
Octavia Hill and C R Ashbee of the Survey of London, who had been responsible for saving Trinity Green Almshouses in Whitechapel, began a campaign to save Eastbury Manor by seeking guarantors to purchase the property from the owner. Once they had done so, the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings arranged for the National Trust to accept ownership of the building in 1918. Thanks to the initiative of these enlightened individuals a century ago, we can enjoy Eastbury Manor today.
It is a sublime experience to escape the blinding sunlight of a summer’s afternoon and enter the cool air of the shadowy interior with its spiralling staircases and labyrinth of chambers. Ascend the turret to peer across Barking to the Thames, descend again enter the private enclosed yard at the rear, enfolded by tall ancient walls, and discover yourself in another world.
Eastbury Manor in 1796
Nonagenerian guide Dougie Muid welcomes visitors to Eastbury Manor – ‘Children often ask me if I have been here since the house was built’
Visit Eastbury Manor, Eastbury Square, Barking, Essex, IG11 9SN
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Christopher Marlowe In Norton Folgate
On my tour we visit Norton Folgate where Christopher Marlowe lived
SOME TICKETS AVAILABLE FOR SATURDAY 18th MAY
“What nourishes me destroys me” – Christopher Marlowe aged twenty-one in 1585
Towards the end of the sixteenth century, Shoreditch and Norton Folgate comprised theatre land for Elizabethan London, with a monument in St Leonard’s Church today commemorating the actors who once lived locally and tax records suggesting William Shakespeare was a parishioner of St Helen’s, Bishopsgate, in 1598.
A warrant issued in September 1589 for the arrest of the mysterious yet charismatic tragedian & poet Christopher Marlowe confirms that the twenty-five year old writer was resident in the Liberty of Norton Folgate. He shared lodgings with fellow playwright Thomas Kyd and his Cambridge friend Thomas Watson, the poet, lived nearby. Marlowe’s plays were likely to have been performed at The Theatre in New Inn Yard and The Curtain in Curtain Rd at this time.
“Thomas Watson of Norton Folgate in Middlesex County, gentleman, and Christopher Marlowe of the same, yeoman….were delivered to jail the 18th day of September by Stephen Wyld, Constable of the same on suspicion of murder” reads the warrant.
The story goes that Marlowe was set upon in Hog Lane – now Worship St – by William Bradley, an innkeeper’s son, over a unpaid debt and Thomas Watson intervened with his sword to protect his friend, stabbing Bradley to death. Although Marlowe took flight, he was arrested and imprisoned in Newgate with Watson for a fortnight. On 3rd December, they were tried and, after Watson’s claim of self-defence was accepted, both were discharged with a warning to keep the peace.
But in May 1592, Marlowe was summoned again to appear at the Middlesex sessions for assaulting two constables in Holywell Lane, Shoreditch – when the constables attested that they went in fear of their lives because of him. Once more, Marlowe was required to keep the peace or to appear before the magistrates at the next general session and receive a penalty of twenty pounds. There is no record whether he ever answered to this charge.
The final years of Marlowe’s life are traced through a series of violent encounters with the law, yet between 1588 and his death at twenty-nine in 1593, Marlowe wrote Edward II, Doctor Faustus, The Jew of Malta and The Massacre of Paris – which means that we may conclude that all or at least part of these plays were written while he was a resident of Norton Folgate.
A manuscript page from The Massacre at Paris, in Christopher Marlowe’s handwriting or that of his secretary Hugh Sanford, which may have been composed while Marlowe was resident in Norton Folgate
Worship St (formerly Hog Lane) where Christopher Marlowe was accosted in 1589 by innkeeper’s son William Bradley, over an unpaid debt, and Marlowe’s friend Thomas Watson killed Bradley. The tower on the right is the European headquarters of Amazon.
Holywell Lane where Christopher Marlowe assaulted two constables in May 1592
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In Search of Shakespeare’s London
Stepney Old People’s Welfare Association
SOME TICKETS AVAILABLE FOR SATURDAY 18th MAY
Roger Preece, Master of the Royal Foundation of St Katharine invited me to Limehouse to explore the archives, where I found this wonderful album of photographs documenting the activities of the Stepney Old People’s Welfare Association from the decades after the war.
The Welfare Association was the enlightened brainchild of John Groser, Master of the Foundation from 1947. For its first fifteen years, the Association was run from the Foundation and these photographs date from that era. As well as social events, the Association offered a meals on wheels service and home visits, developing a pattern that was widely adopted by other similar organisations across the country. It continues today as Tower Hamlets Friends & Neighbours.
An Australian by birth, Groser was appointed curate in Poplar in 1922 but dismissed in 1927 for his left-wing views, before moving to Christ Church, Watney St, where he also served as President of the Stepney Tenants’ Defence League. He stayed in the East End for his whole working life and his progressive initiatives at St Katharine’s were the natural outcome of his beliefs as a Christian and a Socialist.
There is so much joy in these glorious pictures, which acquire a certain poignancy when you realise that these people were born in the nineteenth century, lived through two world wars and the blitz in the East End. The fortitude in their faces is tangible as is their desire to have a good time, whether a card game, a dressing up contest or an egg and spoon race. These were years of austerity but they all have pride in their appearance in warm coats and hats, tailored suits and flowery dresses. Their physical expressions of affection and delight in collective activities speak eloquently of a strong sense of community forged through hard times.
Celebrating the Coronation
A beano
Podiatry
Caretaker at St Katharine
Queen Mother intervenes in a game of bridge
Queen Mother visits St Katharine’s Chapel
Dressing up contest
Morris dancing
Egg and spoon race
Speech by the Mayoress
Recipient of a bouquet
High jinks at St Katharine’s
Father John Groser
The Royal Foundation of St Katharine and the Yurt Cafe continue to serve local needs through the Limehouse Aid voluntary network, the foodbank and providing space and retreats for community groups and individuals.
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At John Keats’ House
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“Much more comfortable than a dull room upstairs, where one gets tired of the pattern of the bed curtains” – Keats was moved to this room on 8th February 1820 at the onset of tuberculosis
I set out with the intention to photograph the morning sunshine in John Keats’ study at his house in Hampstead. Upon my arrival, the sky turned occluded yet I realised this overcast day was perhaps better suited to the literary history that passed between these walls two centuries ago. The property was never Keats’ House in any real sense but, rather, where he had a couple of rooms for eighteen months as a sub-let in a shared dwelling.
Born in a tavern in Moorgate in 1795, where the Globe stands today, and baptised at St Botolph’s Bishopsgate, John Keats was ridiculed by John Gibson Lockhart in Blackwood’s magazine in 1817 for being of the ‘Cockney School,’ implying his rhymes suggested working class speech. Qualifying at first as an Apothecary and then studying to be a Surgeon, in 1816 John Keats sacrificed both these professions in favour of poetry. “It is a better and a wiser thing to be a starved Apothecary than a starved Poet, so back to the shop Mr John, back to plasters, pills, and ointment boxes,” wrote Lockhart condescendingly, but Keats was not dissuaded from his chosen path.
Early on the morning of 1st December 1818, after passing the night nursing his brother Tom through the terminal stage of tuberculosis at 1 Well Walk, Hampstead, John Keats walked down the hill to the semi-detached villas known as Wentworth Place to visit his friend Charles Armitage Brown. He invited Keats to move in with him, sharing his half of the house and contributing to the household expenses.
John Keats’ arrival at Wentworth Place was also the entry to a time when he found love with Fanny Brawne, who moved in with her mother to the other half of the villa, as well as his arrival at the period of his greatest creativity as a poet. It was a brief interlude that was brought to an end in early 1820 when Keats discovered he had tuberculosis like his brother, from whom he had almost certainly contracted the infection.
Within three weeks of moving in, Keats suffered from a severe sore throat and worried for his own health as he struggled to complete his epic ‘Hyperion,’ yet his spirits were raised by an invitation for Christmas from Mrs Brawne at Elm Cottage and the growing attachment to her daughter Fanny, whom he had previously described as “animated, lively and even witty.”
In April, the tenants vacated the other part of Wentworth Place and Mrs Brawne moved in with her daughters, which meant that John Keats met the eighteen-year-old Fanny Brawne continuously in the gardens that surround the house. At any moment, he might glance her from the window and thus their affection grew, leading to the understanding of an engagement for marriage between them. This romance coincided with a flowering of creativity on Keats’ part, including the composition of of his celebrated ‘Ode to a Nightingale,’ inspired by hearing the nightingale sing while on a walk across Hampstead Heath
Yet Keats spent the summer away from Hampstead, visiting the Isle of Wight, Winchester and Bath, while engaging in an emotionally-conflicted correspondence with Fanny and pursuing the flow of poetic composition that had begun in the spring. Although Keats wrote to Brown of his attraction to return to Fanny, admitting “I like and cannot help it,” perversely he took rooms in Great College St rather than moving back to Wentworth Place. But on Keats’ return to Hampstead to collect his possessions on 10th October, Fanny Brawne opened the door to him and he was smitten by her generosity and confidence, and his hesitation dissolved. He moved back to Wentworth Place almost at once and presented Fanny with a garnet ring, even though he could not afford to marry.
Living in such close proximity to the object of his affection led Keats to adopt a vegetarian diet in the hope of lessening his physical desire. During the long harsh winter that followed, Keats was often isolated at Wentworth Place by heavy snow and freezing fog, making only occasional trips down to London to visit literary friends. Catching a late coach back to Hampstead, Keats had left his new warm coat behind at Wentworth Place and sat on the top of the coach to save money. Descending in Pond St, Keats felt feverish but, by the time he reached Wentworth Place, he was coughing blood and realised he had suffered a lung haermorrhage. Yet he wrote that all he could think of was, “the love that has been my pleasure and torment.” He was twenty-four years old.
At first Mrs Brawne tried to keep Fanny and John Keats apart in the tiny house and he wrote her twenty-two letters in six weeks, but it proved impossible to sustain the separation and she permitted her daughter to visit him every day while he was recuperating. Keats could not see her without recognising that death would separate them and he wrote a poem entitled ‘To Fanny’ in recrimination against himself.
The tragedy of the situation was compounded when Brown, Keats’ landlord, decided to lease his part of Wentworth Place, forcing Keats to leave in the spring. At the beginning of May, he moved to cheaper lodgings in Kentish Town, still within a mile of Fanny Brawne. In July, ‘Hyperion’ was published but by then he realised was living in the shadow of death and told a friend he was suffering from a broken heart.
In August, Keats went to Wentworth Place in distress and laid himself upon the mercy of Mrs Brawne, who took him in and permitted him to live under the same roof as her daughter for a few weeks before he travelled to Italy for his health. On Wednesday 13th September 1820, John Keats walked with Fanny Brawne from Wentworth Place to the coach stop in Pond Place and they said their last farewells. Fanny went home and wrote “Mr Keats left Hampstead” in her copy of the Literary Pocket Book that he gave her for Christmas 1818. They did not meet again and Keats never returned to Wentworth Place, dying in Rome on 23rd February 1821.
Within decades, the railway came to Hampstead and then the tube train, and the village became a suburb. An actress bought Wentworth Place, redeveloping it by combining the two houses into one and adding a large dining room on the side. In 1920, the house was threatened with demolition to make way for a block of flats. However, funds were raised to restore the house as a memorial to Keats. Thus you may visit it today and enter the place John Keats and Fanny Brawne fell in love, and where he wrote some of the greatest poems in our language.
John Keats in 1819 when he lived at Wentworth Place
Wentworth Place, completed 1816 as one of the first houses to be built in Lower Hampstead Heath
John Keats lived here
In John Keats’ study
The right hand room on the ground floor was John Keats’ study and the room above was his bedroom
Keats’ room where he learnt he had tuberculosis which had killed his brother Tom a year earlier
“Dearest Fanny … They say I must remain confined to this room for some time. The consciousness that you love me will make a pleasant prison of the house next to yours.” 4th February, 1820
In Fanny Brawne’s room
The boiler for hot water. The house had no running water which had to be brought from the pump.
The Mulberry tree is believed to have been planted in the seventeenth century and predates the house.
The death mask in John Keats’ bedroom at Wentworth Place
The font at St Botolph’s, Bishopsgate, where John Keats was baptised in 1795
Visit Keats House, Keats Grove, Hampstead, NW3 2RR
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How Mile End Place Was Saved
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Philip Cunningham sent me his account of living in Mile End Place in the seventies when it was under the shadow of redevelopment
In the sixties and seventies, planners were still pursuing the rebuilding programme that began after the Second World War. Percy Johnson-Marshall, a leading London County Council planner opined that unfortunately there was too much pre-war building left in the East East, which made comprehensive planning really difficult. It was as if would have preferred a few more Nazi bombs to have dropped. The attractive pair of terraces of nineteenth century cottages at Mile End Place where we lived were destined to be demolished to provide a bigger car park for Queen Mary College.
The residents would have been ‘decanted’ into a single tower block but fortunately for us the local council and the LCC had run out of blocks. After some time, the government introduced grants to install bathrooms and eradicate the ‘slums’. As a resident of Mile End Place, I applied for such a grant and met with a completely hostile response from council officers. ‘They’re comin’ down! Take the two hundred pounds now, ’cause if we start pullin’ ’em down and you are still there you won’t get two pounds then. If we come to your house and you’re still in it you won’t get two hundred pounds, you’ll get nuffink.’
Yet we persisted and eventually got the grant because they could not decide when the street was due to be demolished. We were poor in those days and if it had not been for Mr Marcus in the off-licence taking post-dated cheques, we would have had no food on the table. He said the same thing every time we cashed a cheque, ‘The banks only offer you an umbrella when the sun’s shining!’ God bless him.
We had to match the grant and, to find our share, I borrowed money off my brother and mother. The work to install the bathroom was slow and we had a new-born baby, but eventually the work was done and then we had an indoor toilet, shower and bath. No more running out to the loo in the pouring rain.
Time passed and one day there was a knocking at our front door. It was a council officer. ‘You’ve had a bathroom built and I’ve got to inspect it.’ he said. “Do come in” I replied. He looked at the bathroom. ‘Very good,’ he said, ‘but I’ve got to look upstairs too.’ As he went up stairs he said, ‘These are steep, you should have a handrail.’ I said I was having one made out of mahogany and it was coming next week. ‘Very good’ he concluded.
He told us the future of the street was to be discussed at a council meeting that evening. That night our street was taken off the slum clearance list. This ignited fury in some residents and we were abused by neighbours for having deprived them of their luxury flats. The other side of the street had been entirely sold off already, but then individual houses came up for sale and the character of the place changed entirely.
Tenants could now demand their landlord install a bathroom and one neighbour, Lou Rieggio, did this. He was temporarily rehoused in a council flat while it happened and then refused to move back. I met him in Bethnal Green and he declared, ‘Phil, we’re living in absolute luxury. We got a sink in our bedroom with hot and cold water!’ I met him again two years later and he declared ‘Phil, that was the worst mistake of my life. You remember when I used to go out and clean my car? Well, I went down the other day with a bowl of suds but forgot the sponge. I went in to get it and, when I came back, the bowl had vanished. It’s an absolute nightmare. Piss and shit on the stairwell. The windows are broke and rattle all the time. You can hear people in the corridors all night long. That was the biggest mistake I ever made, moving out of Mile End Place.’
I was sorry for him but there was nothing I could do.
Found under the floor
The arch leading to Mile End Rd
Photographs copyright © Philip Cunningham
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William Morris In The East End
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If you spotted someone hauling an old wooden Spitalfields Market orange crate around the East End, that was me undertaking a pilgrimage to some of the places William Morris spoke in the hope he might return for one last oration
William Morris spoke at Speakers’ Corner in Victoria Park on 26th July & 11th October 1885, 8th August 1886, 27th March & 21st May 1888
The presence of William Morris in the East End is almost forgotten today. Yet he took the District Line from his home in Hammersmith regularly to speak here through the last years of his life, despite persistent ill-health. Ultimately disappointed that the production of his own designs had catered only to the rich, Morris dedicated himself increasingly to politics and in 1884 he became editor of The Commonweal, newspaper of the Socialist League, using the coach house at Kelsmcott House in Hammersmith as its headquarters.
As an activist, Morris spoke at the funeral of Alfred Linnell, who was killed by police during a free speech rally in Trafalgar Sq in 1887, on behalf of the Match Girls’ Strike in 1888 and in the Dock Strike of 1889. His final appearance in the East End was on Mile End Waste on 1st November 1890, on which occasion he spoke at a protest against the brutal treatment of Jewish people in Russia.
When William Morris died of tuberculosis in 1896, his doctor said, ‘he died a victim to his enthusiasm for spreading the principles of Socialism.’ Morris deserves to be remembered for his commitment to the people of the East End in those years of political turmoil as for the first time unions struggled to assert the right to seek justice for their workers.
8th April 1884, St Jude’s Church, Commercial St – Morris gave a speech at the opening of the annual art exhibition on behalf of Vicar Samuel Barnett who subsequently founded Toynbee Hall and the Whitechapel Gallery.
During 1885, volunteers distributed William Morris’ What Socialists Want outside the Salmon & Ball in Bethnal Green
1st September 1885, 103 Mile End Rd
20th September 1885, Dod St, Limehouse – When police launched a violent attack on speakers of the Socialist League who defended the right to free speech at this traditional spot for open air meetings, William Morris spoke on their behalf in court on 22nd September in Stepney.
10th November 1886 & 3rd July 1887, Broadway, London Fields
November 20th 1887, Bow Cemetery – Morris spoke at the burial of Alfred Linnell, a clerk who was killed by police during a free speech rally in Trafalgar Sq. ‘Our friend who lies here has had a hard life and met with a hard death, and if our society had been constituted differently his life might have been a delightful one. We are engaged in a most holy war, trying to prevent our rulers making this great town of London into nothing more than a prison.’
9th April 1889, Toynbee Hall, Commercial St – Morris gave a magic lantern show on the subject of ‘Gothic Architecture’
1st November 1890, Mile End Waste – Morris spoke in protest against the persecution of Jews in Russia
William Morris in the East End
3rd January & 27th April 1884, Tee-To-Tum Coffee House, 166 Bethnal Green Rd
8th April 1884, St Jude’s Church, Commercial St
29th October 1884, Dod St, Limehouse
9th November 1884, 13 Redman’s Row
11th January & 12th April 1885, Hoxton Academy Schools
29th March 24th May 1885, Stepney Socialist League, 110 White Horse St
26th July & 11th October 1885, Victoria Park
8th August 1885, Socialist League Stratford
16th August 1885, Exchange Coffee House, Pitfield St, Hoxton
1st September 1885, Swaby’s Coffee House, 103 Mile End Rd
22nd September 1885, Thames Police court, Stepney (Before Magistrate Sanders)
24th January 1886, Hackney Branch Rooms, 21 Audrey St, Hackney Rd
2nd February 1886, International Working Men’s Educational Club, 40 Berners St
5th June 1886, Socialist League Stratford
11th July 1886, Hoxton Branch of the Socialist League, 2 Crondel St
24th August 1886, Socialist League Mile End Branch, 108 Bridge St
13th October 1886, Congregational Schools, Swanscombe St, Barking Rd
10th November 1886, Broadway, London Fields
6th March 1887, Hoxton Branch of the Socialist League, 2 Crondel St
13th March & 12th June 1887, Hackney Branch Rooms, 21 Audrey St, Hackney Rd
27th March 1887, Borough of Hackney Club, Haggerston
27th March, 21st May, 23rd July, 21st August & 11th September, 1887 Victoria Park
24th April 1887, Morley Coffee Tavern Lecture Hall, Mare St
3rd July 1887, Broadway, London Fields
21st August 1887, Globe Coffee House, High St, Hoxton
25th September 1887, Hoxton Church
27th September 1887, Mile End Waste
18th December 1887, Bow Cemetery, Southern Grove
17th April 1888, Mile End Socialist Hall, 95 Boston St
17th April 1888, Working Men’s Radical Club, 108 Bridge St, Burdett Rd
16th June 1888, International Club, 23 Princes Sq, Cable St
17th June 1888, Victoria Park
30th June 1888, Epping Forest Picnic
22nd September 1888, International Working Men’s Education Club, 40 Berners St
9th April 1889, Toynbee Hall, Commercial St
27th June 1889, New Labour Club, 5 Victoria Park Sq, Bethnal Green
8th June 1889, International Working Men’s Education Club, 40 Berners St
1st November 1890, Mile End Waste
This feature draws upon the research of Rosemary Taylor as published in her article in The Journal of William Morris Studies. Click here to join the William Morris Society
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Among The Pagans At Beltane
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When my friend Geraldine Beskin, the witch, who runs the Altlantis Bookshop invited me to attend the Pagan Pride Parade at Beltane, I knew it was too good an opportunity to miss. From far and wide, emerging from their secret groves and leafy bowers, the pagans converged upon Red Lion Square. They dusted off their antlers, wove their garlands of green and desported themselves in floaty dresses to meet the morn. Many were old friends who have gathered here annually in this quiet corner of the old square in Holborn for years to celebrate pagan rites, and they were eager to embrace the spirit of the occasion, joining hands and frolicking mischievously in a long line weaving in and out of the crowd to the rhythm of the tabor.
On my arrival, I had the honour of shaking hands with the druid of Wormwood Scrubs, attired in an elegant white robe adorned with a fabulous green beetle. “I studied theology but I lost my faith,” he confessed, raising his eyebrows for dramatic effect, “but in 1997, I was rehoused next to Wormwood Scrubs and there was a crescent-shaped line of trees outside my house and – for some reason I don’t understand – I went out to greet the dawn and discovered I had Druidic tendencies.” Next I met Carol, an ethereal soul with ivy woven in her long flowing hair, in an ankle length emerald crushed velvet dress and eau de nil cape. “I feel so tremendously privileged to know that I am not on my own, that I am loved and protected.” she said, clasping her hands, casting her eyes towards the great trees overarching the square and smiling affectionately. Leaning against the railings nearby was Vaughan – naked from the waist and swaggering a pair of horns at a jaunty angle, he was eager to show me his panpipes. “I love Nature,” he declared, beaming, “I keep my bees and chickens and I grow herbs. I love collecting my eggs and I make my own remedies – it’s such a natural way of life…”
The cheery atmosphere was pervasive, though I was a little alarmed by the police van and officers placed strategically around the square, conjuring visions of all the pagans getting arrested for misrule and ending up in a cell. But Geraldine Beskin reassured me the police were there to stop the traffic to allow the pagans’ free passage through Holborn and up Southampton Row to Russell Square. “Once upon a time we wouldn’t be allowed to appear in public, but these days we are more accepted.” she revealed, flashing her sparkling eyes,“The council have given us their approval, now they realise we are not devil worshippers.” Geraldine Beskin led the Pagan Pride Parade in partnership with Jeanette Ellis who started it many years ago, the first of its kind in the world. And when the heavenly orb reached its zenith these twin goddesses gave the nod to the officers, stepping forth regally as the police motorbikes roared into life to escort the procession of ladies in flowing gowns and gentlemen with horns protuberant.
They were a joyous sight with their coloured robes and long hair drifting on the breeze, as they advanced up Southampton Row and streamed into the gardens of Russell Square where they circled the fountains. Before long, an audacious red-haired maiden in a blue satin gown was prancing barefoot in the water to the beat of a drum, then a dog and other pagans followed to enjoy a good humoured splashing match. “We’re celebrating male energy and the sap rising at this time of the year,” Geraldine explained to me in delight, as we surveyed the watery mayhem erupting before our eyes.
Geraldine Beskin – “the council have given us their approval, now they realise we are not devil worshippers.”
J.T.Morgan, the Druid of Wormwood Scrubs – “for reasons I don’t understand I went out to greet the dawn.”
Jeanette Ellis started the Pagan Pride Parade fourteen years ago.
Vaughan Wingham -“I’m proud to be pagan”
Carol Mulcahy – “I feel tremendously privileged…”
Pagans celebrate in Russell Square.
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