Pavement Pounders
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The work of Geoffrey Fletcher (1923–2004) is an inspiration to me, and today I am publishing his drawings of London’s street people in the nineteen sixties from Geoffrey Fletcher’s Pavement Pounders of 1967.
Charlie Sylvester -“I’m Charlie Sylvester, Charlie of Whitechapel. I’ve been on the markets over forty years. I can’t keep still too long, as I have to serve the customers. Then I must take me pram and go fer some more stock. Stock’s been getting low. I go all over with me pram, getting stock, I sell anythin’ – like them gardening tools, them baking tins and plastic mugs. All kinds of junk. Them gramophone records is classic, Ma, real classic stuff. Course they ain’t long playing? Wot do you expect? Pick where you like out of them baking tins. Well, I’ll be seeing you next you’re in Whitechapel. Don’t forget. Sylvester’s the name.”
Peanuts, Tower Hill – “We’ve only been doin’ this for a few months, me peanut pram and I. I only comes twice a week, Saturdays and Sundays. Sundays is best. It’s a hot day. Hope it will stay. I’m counting on it. How many bags do I sell in a day? I’ve never counted ’em. All I want is for to sell ’em out.”
Doing the Spoons, Leicester Sq -“I’ve been in London since 1932, doin’ the spoons, mostly. I does it when I’m not with the group – if they’re away or don’t show up. I’m about the only spoon man left. No, the police don’t bother us much – they know we’re old timers. We’re playing the Square tonight, later when the crowds will come.”
The Man with the X-Ray Eyes – “It’s the facial characteristics. I can usually guess within a year. It’s the emanations – that’s why they call me the man with the X-ray eyes. I’ve been doing it thirty-two years. Thirty -two years is a long time. I’m off-form today. Sometimes I am off-form and then I won’t take their money. I’m in show business. You see me on TV before the cameras. My show took London, Paris and New York by storm.”
Selections from ‘The Merry Widow,’ Oxford St – “You need a good breath for one o’ these. It’s called a euphonium. Write it down, same as when a man makes a euphemism at dinner. If I smoked or got dissipated, I couldn’t play. I can’t play the cornet, as it is, but that’s because I only have one tooth, as I’ll show you – central eating, as you say, Guv. I come from Oldham. When I was a boy of ten, I worked in Yates’ Wine Lodge, but I broke the glasses. I’m seventy-three now, too old for a job. But I don’t want a job, I have this – the euphonium. Life is an adventure, but things is bad today. People will do you down and not be ashamed of it. They’ll glory in it. Well, that’s it. My mother-in-law is staying with us so we have plenty to eat. She gives me the cold shoulder. I’m going for a cuppa tea. Have a nice summer and lots of luck.”
Lucky White Heather – “I’ve been selling on the London streets all my life, dearie. Selling various things – gypsy things – clothes pegs – it used to be clothes pegs. The men used to make them, but they won’t now – they’re onto other things. There wasn’t much profit in them, either. You sold them at three ha’pence a dozen. That was in the old days, dearie. Now I could be earning a pound while you’re drawing me. We comes every day from Kent. People like the lucky heather. But I’ll give you the white elephant – they’re very lucky. If they weren’t, we wouldn’t be selling them on the streets of London now, would we, dearie?”
Pavement Artist at Work, Trafalgar Sq – “I’ve been away two years, I haven’t been well, but I’m back again now. I’ve worked in other parts, but nearly always in London. Used to be outside the National Gallery, where I did Constable. I used to do copies of Constable. I do horses, dogs and other animals. The children like animals best, and give me money. I’m only playing about today, you might say. I haven’t prepared the stone. It gives it a smooth surface, makes the chalks sparkle. Makes them bright and clear, y’know. These pastels are too hard. I like soft ones, but everything’s gone up and I can’t afford them. Oh yes, I always clean off the stones. I won the prize for the best pavement artist in London.”
L.S.D. the Only Criterion, Tavistock Sq – “I’ve been here thirty years. I became a combined tipster and pavement artist because I had the talent, and because I believe in independence. Some people buy my drawings. I don’t go to the races now. I used to – Epsom, Ascot and all that. I have my regulars who come to see me and leave me money in my cap. That’s what it’s for. The rank and file are no good. It’s quiet Saturdays except when there’s a football match – Scoltand, say – and they stay round here. Weather’s been terrible – no-one about. Trafalgar Sq is where the money is, but they fights. I’ve sen the po-leece intervene when they’ve been fighting among themselves, and they say, ‘ere, move on, you?’ It’s money what’s at the bottom of it. Money an’ greed. Like I’ve got written here.”
The Best Friend You Have is Jesus – “Forty years I’ve been selling plants in London, and for over thirty years the Lord’s work has been done. In 1935, I was backing a dog – funnily enough it was called ‘Real Work’ – at New Cross. All at once, a small voice, the voice of the Lord, spoke to me and said ‘Abel (My name is Abel), I’ve got some real work for you to do.’ I gave up drink and dogs and got the posters on the barrow – the messages. I’ve been thousands of miles all over London doing the work of the Lord. London is wicked, and it’s getting worse. But God is merciful, and always gives a warning. It’s like Sodom and Gomorrah. The Lord says ‘Repent’ before His wrath comes. He could destroy London with an earthquake. Remember Noah? – how God wanted them to go in the Ark? But they wouldn’t. They said, ‘We’re going to have a good time…’ The Lord could destroy London with His elements. It dosen’t worry me as I’m doing the Lord’s work. Let these iris stand in water when you get ’em home.”
One Minute Photos, Westminster Bridge – “‘Happy Len,’ they call me, but my real name’s Anthony. Fifty years on the bridge. 1920 I came, and my camera was made in 1903. It’s the only one left. I have to keep patching it up. The man who made it was called ‘Moore,’ and he came from Dr Barnardo’s. They sent him to Canada, and he and a Canadian got together, a bit sharp like, and they brought out this camera. Died a millionaire. I’m seventy-three, and I’ve seen some rum ‘uns on the bridge. There was a woman who came up and took all her clothes off, and the bobby arrested her for indecent behaviour. Disgraceful. The nude, I mean. She was spoiling my pitch.”
Music in the Strand – “I had to make some money to live, and so I came to play in the streets. I’ve never played professionally, I play the piano as well but I never had much training. I’m usually here in the Strand but sometimes I play in Knightsbridge, sometimes in Victoria St. There’s not so many lady musicians about now. I only play classical pieces.”
Horrible Spiders – “Christmas time is the best for us, Guv, if the weather ain’t wet or cold. Then the crowds are good humoured. I like my picture and I’m going to pick out an extra horrible spider for you in return. I’ll tell you a secret – some of the spiders ain’t made of real fur. They’re nylon. But yours is real fur, and it’s very squeaky.”
Salty Bob – “Come round behind the stall and have a bottle of ale. It’s a sort of club, a private club. It’s a grand life sitting here drinking, watching the world go by. I’ve been selling salt and vinegar for fifty years and I’m seventy now. I’ve seen some changes. Take Camden Passage, it’s all antiques, like Chelsea, none of the originals left hardly. Let me pour you another drink. Here we are snug and happy in the sun. I’ve just picked up nine pounds on a horse, and I’ve got another good one for the four-thirty. Next time you’re passing, join me for another drop of ale. No, you can’t pay for it. You’ll be my guest, same as now, at our private club behind the bottles of non-brewed, an’ the bleach.”
Don’t Squeeze Me Till I’m Yours – “That’s a German accordion – they’re the best. Bought it cheap up in the Charing Cross Rd. I do the mouth organ too, this is an English one – fourteen shillings from Harrods. I began with a tin whistle and worked me way up. I’ve a room in Mornington Crescent. My wife died, luvly woman, thrombosis. I could see here everywhere, lying in bed and what not, so I cleared out. I got to livin’ in hostels. But I couldn’t stand the class of men. I work here Mondays, Fridays sometimes. I also work Knightsbridge and ‘ere. I work Aldgate Sundays. I do well there. I gets a fair livin.’ So long as I’ve got me rent, two pounds ten, and baccy money, I don’t want nothing else.”
A Barrel Organ Carolling Across a Golden Street – They received their maximum appreciation in the East End, in the days when the area was a world apart from the rest of London, and the appearance of a barrel organ in Casey Court, among patrons almost as hard pressed as the organist, meant an interval for music and dancing, while the poor little monkey, often a prey to influenza, performed his sad little capers on the organ lid.
Sandwich Man – Consult Madame Sandra – “It’s a poor life, you only get twelve shillings and sixpence a day and you can’t do much on that now, can you, sir? It was drink that got me, the drink. When I come off the farms, I became a porter at Clapham Junction, sir. I worked on the railways, but I couldn’t hold my job. So I dropped down, and this is what I do now. All you can say is you’re in the open air. Sometimes I sleep in a hostel, sometimes I stay out. Just now I’m sleeping out. It was the drink that done it, sir.”
Matchseller – “I was a labourer – a builder’s labourer – an’ I come frae Glasgow. I’ve not been down here in London verra long – eight years. Do i like it here? Weel, the peepull, the peepull are sociable, but they not gie you much, so you only exist. Just exist. I don’t sleep in no hostel, I sleep rough. I haven’t slept in a bed in four weeks. I sleep anywhere. I like a bench in the park or on the embankment. I like the freedom. Anywhere I hang my hat, it’s home sweet home to me.”
A Romany – Apart from the Romany women who sell heather and lucky charms in such places as Villiers St and Oxford St, the gypsies are rapidly disaapearing from Central London. Only occasionally do you see them at their traditional trade of selling. lace paper flowers of cowslips. Modern living vans are invariably smart turn-outs that have little in common with the carved and painted caravans of fifty years ago. They are with-it-gypises-O! Small colonies can still be found on East End bombsites, which the Romanies favour for winter quarters.
‘A Tiny Seed of Love,’ Piccadilly – “Oh yes, Guvnor, they’re good to me if the weather’s fine. Depends on the weather. I can’t play well enough, as you might say. I used to travel all over, four or five of us, saxo, drums, like that. Sometimes there was as many as eight of us. Then it got dodgy. I’m an old hand now. I’ve settled down. I got two rooms at thirty-two bob a week, Islington way. Where could you get two rooms for sixteen shillings each in London? I can easily get along at the price I pay. What’s more, I’ve married the woman who owns the house, too. She’s eight years older than I am, but we get along amicable.”
You may also like to read
Down Among the Meths Men with Geoffrey Fletcher
and take a look at
Cyril Mann, Painter
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CLICK HERE TO HELP ME STAGE DAVID HOFFMAN’S EXHIBITION IN OCTOBER
Tubby Isaac’s Jellied Eel Stall, Petticoat Lane, c. 1950
After serving as a Gunner in the Royal Artillery in World War II, Cyril Mann returned to live in a tiny flat in Paul St with his wife Mary and small daughter Sylvia in 1946. Close to where the Barbican stands today, this area at the boundary of the City of London had suffered drastic bomb damage and much of it remained a wasteland for decades. Roving around these desolate streets as far east as Spitalfields, Cyril Mann discovered the subject matter for a body of works which became the focus of a major exhibition at the Wildenstein Gallery in 1948.
Losing his hair in his thirties, Cyril Mann had the look of a man older than his years. Through the Depression he had been unemployed and close to starvation, yet thanks to a trust fund set up by Erica Marx he entered the Royal Academy Schools at twenty years old in 1931. For one so young, he had already seen a great deal of life. At twelve, he had been the youngest boy ever to win a scholarship to Nottingham College of Art, before leaving at fifteen to be a missionary in Canada. Quickly abandoning this ambition, he became a logger, a miner and a printer, until returning to London to renew his pursuit of a career as an artist. Ever restless, he moved to Paris after three years at the Royal Academy and there he met his first wife Mary Jervis Read.
Forced to leave his wife and baby when he was called up in 194o, Cyril Mann did not paint at all for the duration of the war. Back in London and battling ill-health, he set out to make up for lost time. The fragmented urban landscape of bombsites that was familiar to Londoners was new to him and, turning his gaze directly into the sun, he sought to paint it transfigured by light. Channelling his turbulent emotion into these works, Cyril Mann strove to discover an equilibrium in the disparate broken elements he saw before him, and many of these paintings are almost monochromatic, as if the light is dissolving the forms into a mirage.
During these years, Cyril Mann’s life underwent dramatic change. He obtained a teaching job at the Central School of Art in 1947 and exhibited at the prestigious Wildenstein Galery, showing his new works in 1948. Yet at the same time, his marriage broke down and he found himself alone, painting in the tiny flat in Paul St. Whilst critically acclaimed, his exhibition was a commercial failure because, in post-war London, nobody wanted to see images of bombsites and consequently these important works became forgotten.
Yet, through his struggle, Cyril Mann’s work as an artist had acquired a new momentum and, after 1950, a bold use of colour returned to his painting. In 1956, he was offered a flat in the newly-built modernist Bevin Court built by Tecton in Islington, where today a plaque commemorates him. In 1964, he moved east to Leyton and then Walthamstow,where he died in 1980.
At a time when all other artists turned away from painting the London streets, Cyril Mann made it his subject. While these pictures may not have suited the taste of the post-war capital, they comprise a unique body of work that witnesses the spirit and topography of these threadbare years. As his second wife, Renske who met Cyril Mann in 1959, assured me, “I believe he is the most significant London painter of the nineteen-forties, post-war.”
Cyril Mann preparing for his exhibition at Wildenstein Gallery in 1948
St Paul’s from Moor Lane, 1948
Cyril in his crowded flat in Paul St, c. 1950
Christ Church Spitalfields seen across bombsites from Scrutton St
Christ Church Spitalfields seen over bombsites from Redchurch St
Bomb site in Paul St with cat, c. 1950
Christ Church Spitalfields seen from Shoreditch
Bomb sites around Paul St, c. 1950
Christ Church Spitalfields from Worship St, c. 1948
Streetscape with red pillar box
East End shop
Trolley bus in Finsbury Sq, c. 1949
Finsbury Sq, c. 1949
Finsbury Sq, c. 1949
Red lamp post, Old St
Bombsite at Old St
Cock & Magpie, Wilson St, Shoreditch
St Michael, Shoreditch, c. 1948
St Michael and St Leonard’s Shoreditch from Leonard St, c. 1950
Angel Islington from City Rd, 1950
St James Church, Pentonville Rd, Islington, 1950
Cyril Mann (1911-1980)
Images copyright © Estate of Cyril Mann
Paintings by Cyril Mann can be seen at Piano Nobile Gallery
The Brady Girls At The Brady Centre
P. Lipman’s kosher poultry shop. One of the last remaining shops in Hessel St, Whitechapel.
Our crowdfund remains open until Tuesday 10th September at 3pm
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The Brady Girls with The Beatles, 1964
How glorious it is to publish these joyful photographs of the Brady Girls’ Club which are now the subject of an exhibition WE ARE THE BRADY GIRLS until 28th September at the Brady Centre, 192-196 Hanbury St. E1 5HU.
The Brady Girls’ Club ran from 1920 to 1970. Led by Miriam Moses OBE JP – the first female mayor of Stepney – the Club supported the community during the war years and after, offering shelter and practical help to hundreds of young women and families.
The exhibition features a collection of photography which was rediscovered in 2016 and has inspired a project funded by the Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe to record video histories of former members of the Brady Boys’ and Girls’ Clubs.
The Brady Girls dance
A Brady Club Social
The Brady Girls and Prince Philip
The Brady Girls drama class
The Brady Girls perform Shakespeare
The Brady Girls on holiday in Oberhofen, 1961
A Brady Girls hairdressing session
At the Brady Girls canteen
The Brady Girls at the beach
The Brady Girls sack race, 1941
The Brady Girls at Bracklesham Bay, August, 1948
The Brady Girls’ camp
The Brady Girls as flappers
The Brady Girls dance class, 1940s
The Brady Girls play at being mothers
The Brady Girl guides
The Brady Girls climb the stairs in Hanbury St
Photographs courtesy The Brady Archive
Derrick Porter, Hoxton Poet
Our crowdfund remains open until 10th September
CLICK HERE TO HELP ME STAGE DAVID HOFFMAN’S EXHIBITION IN OCTOBER
It is my delight to publish this profile of Derrick Porter whose new book of verse The Art of Timing is published next Monday 9th September at a joint launch event with Jude Rosen’s new collection Reclamations from London’s Edgelands at the Rose & Crown, 53 Hoe St, Walthamstow, E17 4SA. There will be readings and you are all invited to attend.
Derrick Porter
This is the gentle face of Derrick Porter, craggy and wise, framed by snowy hair and punctuated with a pair of sharp eyes that reveal a hint of his imaginative capacity. Standing against a rural backdrop upon the banks of the river Ching in Essex not far from High Beach where John Clare was confined, Derrick looks every inch an English poet and he is quick to admit his love of nature. Yet, although he acquired an affection for the countryside at an early age and Chingford is his place of residence, the focus of Derrick’s literary landscape and centre of his personal universe is his place of origin – Hoxton.
“It was a place we all wanted to get out of – it was a tough place to live,” Derrick confessed to me, recalling his childhood, “but the the culture of Hoxton and that era was my imaginative education.”
“My interest in literature stems from spending so many years in hospital up to the age of thirteen and they used to read to us – I looked forward to it so much, I learnt to love reading stories,” he confided, explaining that he suffered from tuberculosis as a child and was exiled from London for long stretches in hospitals. “They made us stay out in the fresh air which was the worst possible thing because it actually helped the germs to flourish, when the foggy atmosphere of London was much more beneficial to sufferers – but they didn’t understand that in those days.
My dad worked at the Daily Mail as a printer and my mum was a housewife, but I never saw him until I was six when he returned from the war. He had been captured by the Japanese and was held in a prisoner of war camp. At first, they sent him to America which was where they kept them to build them up again before they came home.
Before the age of ten years old, I lived in a prefab in Vince St next to the Old St roundabout and then we moved to Fairchild House in Fanshawe St. The prefabs were made of asbestos without any insulation and were very cold in winter. As children, we used to break off pieces of asbestos and throw them on to the bonfire to watch them explode. Maybe that affected my health? We had free rein then and we played in the old bombed buildings at the back of Moorgate – that was our playground.
At thirteen, I had an operation to have half of my lung removed and they told my mother that they didn’t know if I would recover. From then on, I took care of my own health and I became a fitness and health junkie. When I left school I thought I’d like to go back to the countryside and, when the teacher asked my ambition, I said, ‘I’m going to work on a farm,’ he told me, ‘You won’t find many in ‘Oxton, Porter.’ My father got me a job as in the general printing trade but it did my lungs in.
I always had this compulsion to get away from Hoxton and write. So I decided to emigrate to Australia on my own. I knew I had to get away. I was nineteen when I went for two years. I was engaged to be married but I broke the engagement and emigrated. I went to writing workshops in Australia and my earliest poems were written while I was there. I got a job as a printer on the Sydney Morning Herald. At first, they told me I couldn’t get a job without a union card, but then there was a bit of skullduggery. They took pity on me and, when I got a job, they gave me a card.
After that, I travelled in the USA with this small bag of my poems. Then, in Las Vegas, I stayed in this $1-a-night fleapit for three nights while I was waiting for the coach to take me to Los Angeles. Twenty minutes after I had boarded the bus, I realised I had left my bag behind with all the poems I had written in the previous two years. I cried, I felt so dismayed. It was a significant loss.
On my return, I moved into Langbourne Buildings off Leonard St in Shoreditch. I was surrounded by my friends and family and this was where I first joined a writing group. It was in Dalston and I started to write regularly. After seven years, I began to write some decent poems and then I read in the Hackney Gazette about Centreprise Literary Trust. So I went along there and met Ken Worpole, and gave him some of my poems. Then he got back in touch and said he’d like to publish them, and that was the first work I ever had in print.
By now I was twenty-nine and married with two young children, and we were offered the opportunity of swapping our flat for a house in Orpington. It was a fabulous house with a garden and we couldn’t refuse, but the rent was three times the price. We lived there for thirty-odd years and my poetry developed, I became a member of the Poetry Society and had my works published in magazines, although I rarely send my poems out because I always think I can do better.
I bought paintings from D & J Simons & Sons Ltd, picture frame and moulding makers, in the Hackney Rd and, when I moved to Orpington, I bought all their ‘second’ picture frames off them and sold them there. I started working for myself, buying reproduction furniture and selling it in Orpington Village Hall and I earned a living from that for twenty years. But all the time I was writing, writing and I had a lot of encouragement from people.
I rework my poems a lot because I’d rather have one good one than a lot of mediocre ones. I have written a lot of poems and discarded most of them because I’d rather just keep my best. I love letter writing and I believe it can be an art if it is done well. As long as I live, I’ll carry on writing.”
Derrick and his childhood friend Roy Wild on the steps of the eighteenth century house in Charles Sq where they played as children
Sitting Under a Tree in Charles Square
The clear urgency of the voice caused me
to look up, my finger marking the place
in the newspaper I was then reading…
How old do you think this tree is? it asked.
I said it was here when I was a boy.
Well, it won’t be for much longer, it said.
The owner of the voice began to circle
the tree before running his hands over
the gnarled trunk as if in search of a precise spot.
From under his coat appeared a long-handled axe.
It would be better if you moved, he said.
But not before the tree had endured
several blows…and a large, older woman, shouted
Are we to suffer this nonsense again?
Come home and do something useful for once.
Instantly the attack ceased and – without
another word passing between them – his steps
quickened to reach, if not overtake, the other.
My thumb then lifted from the newspaper
returning my eye to the Middle East
where, as yet, no allaying voice can be heard.
Derrick standing outside the flat at Fairchild House in Fanshawe St where he grew up
Derby Day in Fairchild House
Walking along our third floor balcony
I can see – before I enter the door – the piano
blocking the view into our living room.
You are watching the TV, circling horses
in The Sporting Life as John Rickman
calls home another of those certainties
you always said you should have backed.
From the kitchen the clang of pots
tells me it’s a Friday and mum’s busy
preparing a stew. A day perhaps
when sand had been kicked into my face
and I’d come home to pump iron.
If so, my bedroom door will be locked
and I’ll be lifting sand-filled-petrol-cans
hung along an old broom handle.
It’s also possible it’s the evening
of the Pitfield Institute’s Weight-Lifting final
when I won my only trophy. Or the day
cash went missing and I bought my first watch.
But as I turn the key and enter the door
I want it to be the day when even
the piano joined in…and Gordon Richards
rode Pinza to victory in the Derby.
The Apprentice
When Mr Hounslow asked the class what jobs
we had in mind, I answered,
Working on a farm, sir. “You won’t find many
in Hoxton” the reply. Come summer
I started work for a musical instrument
supplier in Paul Street, close to the old Victorian
Fire Station later re-sited in Old Street.
For one day a week I was promoted
to van boy and helped deliver to the likes
of Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in Soho,
a world far removed from that of Hoxton.
Here I saw the upbeat side of the business,
the posh shiny part that could open doors
if you had the right kind of connections.
After a year working with men who enjoyed
nothing better than to send the new boys out
to buy rubber nails and glass hammers,
if never themselves discovering who put
the mouse droppings into their biscuit tin,
I began to question where I was heading.
That summer – while on holiday in Ostend
with the Lion Club – my dad handed in
my notice…and when I returned, was told
I had to start work in the Printing Trade.
Its every aspect – machinery, ink, oil,
noise and dust, the very air – a sort of
road taken, as old Hounslow might have said,
for there being no farms in Hoxton.
Derrick Porter at Fairchild House, Hoxton
Poems copyright © Derrick Porter
The Art of Timing is available from Paekakariki Press
You may also like to read about
King Sour, Poet & Rapper of Bethnal Green
Jude Rosen’s Poems Of Place
Our crowdfund remains open until 10th September
CLICK HERE TO HELP ME STAGE DAVID HOFFMAN’S EXHIBITION IN OCTOBER
It is my delight to publish these five poems from Jude Rosen’s new collection Reclamations from London’s Edgelands published next Monday 9th September at a joint launch event with Derrick Porter’s The Art of Timing at the Rose & Crown, 53 Hoe St, Walthamstow, E17 4SA . There will be readings and you are all invited to attend.
Sculpture of porters in London Fields
Black Path
A rumour of a parting in the green sea –
Black Path, the ancient dirt track cut diagonally
from London to Walsingham or Waltham Abbey
known as the Templars’ Path or Porters’ Way
when hauliers drove reluctant cattle and sheep
to Smithfields market, and dragged hand-carts
filled with eggs and fruit and wilting cabbage
to Spitalfields. Black Path may have been named
after the plague or the trail across Black Breeches
or the bridge over Blackmarsh or ‘Blackbridge’
as Shortlands Sewer was known, or the clinker and ash
surface to the route laid down in the 18th century.
Dave’s mum recalled, when she was a girl around
1910, they still drove sheep to market
through Porters’ Field and when they built the prefabs
after the war, they left a diagonal gap
through the estate, in memory of the drove,
even though the practice had died out long ago.
The Tower
Flickering in the background on tv screens,
the Orbit’s red mesh whirls in a drunken coil,
its helter-skelter body torn and bashed,
a stripped tin can no one shows affection for
by hanging a football shirt around it
or leaving a pint of milk by a door.
The Orbit’s origins are concealed
in the iron ore from the Omarska mines,
scene of massacre in the Bosnian War.
The survivors who are denied a memorial
claim the Orbit – Arcelor-Mittal Tower –
as their own twisted monument in exile
standing on excavated ground that now
has been covered over with fresh soil.
Which Wick?
Wandering on Wyke Rd, you knew you were
in old country, a Latin vicus – settlement –
or a Viking vik – inlet or creek – the weak point
to invade, then a trading post. In Middle English
it became –wich in salt brine wells and spas:
Droitwich or Nantwich, or a –wich which was
a landing place for goods special to that place
like wool-wich –Woolwich – or a trait of the place
such as green-wich – Greenwich – or a -wick where
the village grew up around dairy farms like
Hackney Wick – the 13th Century ferm of Wyk –
or around dairy produce, cheese wick – Chiswick –
and goat wick – Gatwick. Just as a candle
dies down leaving only the trace of a wick,
when the land disappears, so too does the language.
Merisc
We slid off our cycles as we encountered
the slick mud on the path at the opening
to the water flats of the Lea Valley reserve,
the filtered silt preserving the life of birds.
An Asian man stopped me to ask the way
to Kingfisher Woods. The marsh, that in full
spring flush boasts a hundred football matches
in a day, this day was almost deserted.
The ground sprung up as we trudged, lifting us back
to the surface of the grass. It’s green, it’s so green,
Lucia gasped. Yes, these were fields of emeralds!
She strode across the territory, chanting
Marciare per non marcire – ‘March rather than rot!’
while the merisc stretched out, sublimely indifferent.
Incantation to the Marsh
Mossy carpet, grassy knolls, leaf-lined holm,
marshlands, harsh lands, green fable!
When I fall in a myoclonic jerk in dreams,
you’re there to catch me so I don’t fall through
the floodplains into a burial pit but
recover, without need of an archeologist.
Poems copyright © Jude Rosen
Reclamations from London’s Edgelands is available from Paekakariki Press
Nicholas Borden’s Stoke Newington Paintings
Our crowdfund remains open until 10th September
CLICK HERE TO HELP ME STAGE DAVID HOFFMAN’S EXHIBITION IN OCTOBER
Stoke Newington Old Church
I am delighted to announce a new exhibition by favourite painter Nicholas Borden and you are all invited to the opening at Everyday Sunshine Gallery, 49 Barbauld Rd, Stoke Newington, N16 0RT next Thursday 12th September from 6:30pm.
Through the past year, painter Nicholas set up his easel on the streets of Stoke Newington to produce a series of vibrant urban landscapes, transforming familiar scenes with his bold palette and dynamic compositions.
A graduate of the Royal College of Art, for the past decade Nicholas has been painting outdoors in the East End, manifesting the spontaneous life of the streets with consummate painterly ease, delighting in the quirky geometry and the curious divergent perspectives of the urban grain.
The spontaneous quality of Nicholas’ elegant pictures belies their sophisticated technique yet – more significantly – they display a joy in the medium which grants them a visceral, irresistibly sensuous appeal as paintings.
Clissold House
‘People outside and walking in the winter light’
Clissold Skate Park
Rose & Crown
Mind Charity Shop, Church St
‘The beautiful deep ultramarine blue used on the front contrasts with the warm orange and cadmium yellow of the interior’
The Auld Shillelagh
Church St Corner
Coffee House
‘This looks hip and clean from the outside. I hope I actually get to visit when there is a spare moment’
The Spence
Olive House, Church St
‘the overgrown hydrangeas are wonderful’
Cobbled Yard
Sutton House
Kynaston Allotment
‘Modestly and almost secretly positioned off the High St, these beautifully maintained little vegetable patches are looked after all hours of the day’
Brett Close
Fishmonger
Football Training in Victoria Park
‘Sunday league football is highly competitive’
Healthy Produce at the Farmers’ Market
‘Arrived here on a suggestion and was pleasantly surprised at the wealth of choice in healthy food’
Park With Swings
‘The almost flatness of the shapes and composition were my key fascination while working on this painting’
Yellow House, Neville Rd
‘The yellow frontage with the steps in the sunlight, painted one quiet morning when no-one was around’
Yorkshire Grove
‘A bit of colour in a challenging world. I came across this housing block whilst first visiting the area and the red frontage immediately grabbed my attention’
Red House
Farmer’s Market Stall
‘This painting was done in the colder winter months’
Canal Bridge
‘Painted in the last few winter months’
Blue Barge
Park Tavern
‘This fine pub in Victoria Park through trees in bright winter sunshine’
London Fields
‘This a place I have known for a large part of my life. A friend who lives nearby who told me that people stay all night there in the summer because no one locks it up after dark’
Victoria Park
Snowy Scene on the Roman Rd
Snowy Garden
Paintings copyright © Nicholas Borden
You may also like to take a look at
Twenty New Paintings by Nicholas Borden
Nicholas Borden’s Lockdown Paintings
Nicholas Borden’s Latest Paintings
Catching Up With Nicholas Borden
Nicholas Borden’s East End View
Nicholas Borden’s Winter Paintings
Nicholas Borden’s Spring Paintings
The Roundels Of Spitalfields
Our crowdfund remains open until 10th September
CLICK HERE TO HELP ME STAGE DAVID HOFFMAN’S EXHIBITION IN OCTOBER
Around the streets of Spitalfields there are circular metal plates set into the pavement. Many people are puzzled by them. Are they decorative coal hole covers as you find in other parts of London? Or is there a mysterious significance to them?
Sculptor Keith Bowler was walking down Brick Lane one day when he heard a tour guide explaining to a group of tourists that these plaques or roundels – to give them their correct name – were placed there in the nineteenth century for the benefit of people who could not read. Keith stuck his neck out and told the guide this was nonsense, that he made them on his kitchen table a few years ago. And although the tour guide gave Keith a strange look and was a little dubious of his claim, this is the truth of the matter.
“I was approached by Bethnal Green City Challenge in 1995, and I was asked to research, design and fabricate twenty five roundels. I was given a list of sites and I spent a few months doing it,” explained Keith summarily as we sat at the table where he cast the moulds for the roundels in the basement kitchen of his house in Wilkes St. Keith cut the round patterns out of board and then set real objects in place on them, such as the scissors you see above. From these patterns he made moulds that were sent over to Hoyle & Sons, the traditional family-run foundry by the canal in the Cambridge Heath Rd, where they were cast in iron before being installed by council workers.
The notion was that the pavements were already set with pieces of ironwork, made it a natural idea to introduce pieces of sculpture, and the emblems and locations were chosen to reflect the culture and history of Spitalfields. Sometimes there was a literal story illustrated by the presence of the roundel, like the match girls from the Bryant & May factory who met in the Hanbury Hall to create the first trade union. Elsewhere, like the scissors and buttons above in Brick Lane, the roundel simply records the clothing industry that once existed there. Once there were interpretative leaflets produced by the council which directed people on a trail around the neighbourhood, but these disappeared in a few months leaving passersby to create their own interpretations.
The roundels have acquired a history of their own. For example, the weaver’s shuttle and reels of thread marking the silk weavers in Folgate St were cast from a shuttle and reels that Dennis Severs found in his house and lent to Keith. And there was controversy from the start about the roundels, when two were mistakenly installed on the City of London side of the street in Petticoat Lane and at at the end of Artillery Passage in City territory, leading to angry phone calls from the Corporation demanding they be moved. Six are missing entirely now, stolen by thieves or covered by workmen, though occasionally roundels turn up and wind their way back to Keith. He has a line of errant roundels in his hallway, ready to be reinstalled and, as he keeps the moulds, plans are afoot to complete the set again.
Keith told me he liked the name “roundels” because it was once used to refer to the symbols on the wings of Spitfires, and is also a term in heraldry. There is a simplicity to these attractive designs that I walk past every day and which have seeped into my subconscious, witnessing the presence of what has gone. I photographed half a dozen of my favourites to show you, but there are at least eight more roundels to be found on the streets of Spitalfields.
On Brick Lane, among the Bengali shops, a henna stenciled hand
Commemorating the Bryant & May match girls, outside the Hanbury Hall on Hanbury St
In Folgate St, cast from a shuttle and reels from Dennis Severs’ House
In Brick Lane, outside the railings of Grey Eagle Brewery
In Princelet St, commemorating the first Jewish Theatre, where Jacob Adler once played
In Petticoat Lane, on the site of the ancient market
In Wentworth St, an over-vigilant council worker filled in this roundel as a potential trip hazard
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