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At Bevis Marks Synagogue

January 30, 2025
by the gentle author

Built in 1701, Bevis Marks Synagogue is the oldest synagogue in this country and it has been continuously in use for over three hundred years, making it – according to Rabbi Shalom Morris – the oldest working synagogue in the world.

Its origin lies with Spanish and Portuguese Jews who came to London in the seventeenth century, escaping persecution by the Catholic Church and taking advantage of a greater religious tolerance in this country under Oliver Cromwell’s rule. When war broke out between England and Spain in 1654, Antonio Robles, a wealthy merchant, went to court to prove that he was Jewish rather than Spanish – establishing a legal precedent which permitted Jewish people to live freely in this country for the first time since their expulsion by Edward I in 1290.

By 1657, a house in Creechurch Lane in the City of London had been converted into a synagogue and the site of Bevis Marks was acquired in 1699. Constructed by Joseph Avis, a Quaker builder who is said to have refused any profit from the work, and with an oak beam presented by Queen Anne, the synagogue was completed in 1701.

Remarkably, the synagogue has seen almost no significant alteration in the last three centuries and there are members of the current congregation who can trace their ancestors back to those who worshipped here when it first opened – even to the degree of knowing where their forebears sat.

On the sunlit morning I visited, my prevailing impression was of the dramatic contrast between the darkness of the ancient oak panelling and the pale white-washed walls illuminated by the tall clear-glass windows, framing a space hung with enormous brass chandeliers comprising a gleaming forest of baubles suspended low over the congregation. You sense that you follow in the footsteps of innumerable Londoners who came there before you and it makes your heart leap.

The lowest bench for the smallest children at the end of the orphans’ pew

Rabbi Shalom Morris turns the huge key in the original lock at Bevis Marks

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Signs Of Life

January 29, 2025
by the gentle author

First Snowdrops in Wapping

Even now, in the depths of Winter, there is plant life stirring. As I travelled around the East End over the past week in the wet and cold, I kept my eyes open for new life and was rewarded for my quest by the precious discoveries that you see here. Fulfilling my need for assurance that we are advancing in our passage through the year, each plant offers undeniable evidence that, although there may be months of winter yet to come, I can look forward to the spring that will arrive before too long.

Hellebores in Shoreditch

Catkins in Bethnal Green

Catkins in Weavers’ Fields

Quince flowers in Spitalfields

Cherry blossom in Museum Gardens

Netteswell House is the oldest dwelling in Bethnal Green

Aconites in King Edward VII Memorial Park in Limehouse

Cherry Blossom near Columbia Rd

Hellebores in Spitalfields

Spring greens at Spitalfields City Farm

The gherkin and the artichoke

Cherry blossom in Itchy Park

Soft fruit cuttings at Spitalfields City Farm

Seedlings at Spitalfields City Farm

Cherry blossom at Christ Church

Along The Regent’s Canal From Shoreditch To Paddington

January 28, 2025
by the gentle author

The towpath fiddler in Camden

I continued my ramble along the towpath of the Regent’s Canal as far as Paddington Basin in the frost, picking up my journey where I cast off in Shoreditch. Swathed in multiple layers of clothing against the cold, I was alarmed to encounter rough sleepers under bridges when I set out but, as the temperature rose, I was astonished to discover a zealous sunbather in Camden. My most inspiring meeting of the day was with fiddler Lee Westbrook who, like me, had also been encouraged to venture out by the sunlight. His music echoed hauntingly under the multiple bridges at Gloucester Ave. And by the time I reached Paddington, it was warm enough to unbutton my coat before taking the Metropolitan Line back again to Liverpool St.

Approaching Bridport Place Bridge

De Beauvoir Rd Bridge

Approaching City Rd Lock

Lock keeper’s cottage at City Rd Lock

At City Rd Lock

Danbury St Bridge

Approaching the Islington Tunnel

Entrance to the Islington Tunnel

Lock Keeper’s Cottage at St Pancras Lock

Bridge at Royal College St

Canalside Terrace in Camden

At Camden Lock

At Camden Lock

Lee Westbrook

Mansions by Regent’s Park

Bridge into Regent’s Park

Mansion in Regent’s Park

Onwards towards Paddington

In Lisson Grove

In Maida Vale

Little Venice

Paddington Basin

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Along the Regent’s Canal

Along The Regent’s Canal

January 27, 2025
by the gentle author

Taking advantage of a rare day of January sunshine, I enjoyed a ramble along the towpath with my camera, tracing its arc which bounds the northern extent of the East End. At first there was just me, some moorhens, a lonely swan, and a cormorant, but as the morning wore on cyclists and joggers appeared. Starting at Limehouse Basin, I walked west along the canal until I reached the Kingsland Rd. By then clouds had gathered and my hands had turned blue, so I returned home to Spitalfields hoping for another bright day soon when I can resume my journey onward to Paddington Basin.

At Limehouse Basin

Commercial Rd Bridge

Johnson’s Lock

Lock keeper’s cottage at Johnson’s Lock

Great Eastern Railway bridge

Great Eastern Railway bridge

Salmon Lane Lock

Barge dweller mooring his craft

Solebay St Bridge

Mile End Rd bridge

Cyclist at Mile End Rd bridge

Looking through Mile End Rd bridge

Mile End Lock keeper’s cottage

Looking back towards the towers of Canary Wharf

At the junction with Hertford Union Canal

Old Ford Lock

Victoria Park Bridge

Victoria Park Bridge

Barge dwelling cat

At Kingsland Rd Bridge

Looking west from Kingsland Rd Bridge

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Frank Derrett’s West End

January 26, 2025
by the gentle author

Cranbourne St

Fancy a stroll around the West End with Frank Derrett in the seventies?

This invitation is possible thanks to the foresight of Paul Loften who rescued these photographs from destruction in the last century. Recently, Paul contacted me to ask if I was interested and I suggested he donate them to the archive at the Bishopsgate Institute, which is how I am able to show them today.

‘They were given to me over twenty-five years ago when I called at an apartment block in Camden,’ Paul explained. ‘A woman opened the door and, when said I was from Camden Libraries, she told me a solicitor was dealing with effects of a resident who had died and was about to throw these boxes of slides into a skip, and did I want them? I kept them in my loft, occasionally enjoying a look, but actually I had forgotten about them until we had a clear out upstairs.’

Charing Cross Rd

Bear St

Coventry St

Regent St

Earlham St

Long Acre

Dover St

Carnaby St

Carnaby St

Charing Cross Rd

Cranbourne St

Dover St

Perkins Rents

Great Windmill St

Brook St

Conduit St

Frith St

Drury Lane

Dean St

Garrick St

Great Windmill St

Archer St

Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute

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Lew Tassell’s Day Trip

January 25, 2025
by the gentle author

Lew Tassell sent me these pictures that he took on a trip to London at fifteen years old in 1966

Old London Bridge

‘These pictures were taken in March 1966 with my first proper camera, albeit only a Zeiss Ikon Ikonette with a 35mm fixed lens viewfinder that cost me £7 secondhand. I loved that camera and wish I still had it, it had no metering or any features so it taught me a lot.

Film and developing were very expensive, so I had to be frugal with my picture-taking and then wait for them to be developed to see if I had judged the exposure correctly.

I was fifteen years old, living with my parents in South London and just about to leave school. I used to catch a train from Elmers End to Charing Cross – returning via London Bridge – and explore, usually taking in a visit to the National Gallery.’

‘My school friend, Paul, on one of Landseer’s Lions in Trafalgar Sq, he was instantly told to ‘get orf’ by a policeman’

‘I always found Piccadilly Circus magical and ever-changing. There was not much neon during the sixties and the buildings were generally dirty and grey, but the West End was a place with lively streets, especially this spot with the cinemas and theatres.’


The classic Coca-Cola sign

‘Carnaby St was a tremendously exciting place for a teenager to wander about. I didn’t have the money to buy anything but just to be there was enough’

John Stephen’s celebrated menswear shop in Carnaby St, clothes worn by The Who, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones and The Small Faces


‘Spot the Rolls Royce coming round the corner’

‘Spot the sandwich man for ‘Champagne Temps”

Looking across Carnaby St to Foubert’s Place

Lord Kitchener’s Valet sold military uniform as fashion, customers included Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon and Mick Jagger

Crowded pavements in Carnaby St

Old Cannon St Railway Station from Southwark Bridge


Eastcheap corner of Pudding Lane

Guy’s Hospital under construction by London Bridge Station

Tower of London in the mist

Old men sitting by the Tower

Cannons on the waterfront at the Tower

A foggy, soot-stained Tower Bridge

‘In the Pool Of London – one of my earliest memories is standing in this spot with my father, watching the ships being unloaded in the centre of the City’


‘Police launch on the Thames – four years later I joined the City of London Police’

Photographs copyright © Lew Tassell

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So Long, Terry’s Tropicals

January 24, 2025
by the gentle author

After three generations and more than sixty years of service to the East End’s ichthyophiles and aquarists, Terry’s Tropicals closes forever this Sunday

What better refuge from the hurly-burly of the Bethnal Green Rd, than to step into the sub-aquatic glow of Wholesale Tropicals (universally known as Terry’s Tropicals) and lose yourself in contemplation amongst the banks of illuminated fish tanks, as if you were taking a stroll upon the bed of a vast river in an exotic sunlit land? Here three generations of the Jones family work ceaselessly – Christmas not excepted – to maintain the population of up to ten thousand tropical freshwater fish that are their charge and their passion. Like those ethereal creatures which inhabit the depths, the family share a pallor evident of their lives tending fish in the gloom – where today, Jordan Jones, the youngest member pursues the never-ending feeding round that was begun by his grandfather Terry in 1961.

Once you have enjoyed a turn around the magnificent aquatic display, it is time to meet the two Terrys, the father and son that run the place, holding court at the front of the shop with Archie, who comes in each day (and has his own chair next to the tanks of aquarium plants), on all subjects tropical fish related. “We are known as the cheeky chappies of the fishkeeping world because of the banter that goes on,” bragged Terry the younger, revealing, “I’ve been here twenty-five years with the old bugger, since the day I left school at sixteen,” and proud to inform me that they used to have eighty tanks in the back garden when he was a child and won multiple awards for breeding South American catfish. “We specialised in getting all the different types,” he informed me enigmatically, “We searched high and low.” Adding helpfully, “We still sell the red-tailed catfish – the king of the Amazon – capable of growing to a metre long.”

You can learn a lot just by hanging on the words of these wily specialists gathered at the counter, like always wear a pair of rubber gloves when changing the water for your electric eel, like many of the fish here are extinct in the wild due to pollution, like Africans are the most aggressive of freshwater fish and require caves at the rear of their tanks to escape when fights break out, like how you must always put piranhas together in pairs of either sex to avoid a blood bath, and how the African Tiger fish is the most lethal, on account of its articulated jaw lined with sharp teeth and propensity to grow to five feet long. I was shown a six-inch specimen currently available for seventy-five pounds – it may look as benign as a stickleback, but its precisely serrated fangs are framed by an expression of primeval antagonism.

“Fishkeeping is more keeping the water than keeping the fish,” confided Terry the younger later, turning philosophical in the back office as he revealed a trick of the trade, “If you can keep the water just right, clean and the correct temperature and pH, they more or less keep themselves.” Yet I was not convinced of Terry’s dispassionate posturing, watching him chuckle affectionately as the Koi carp came to suck the food off his fingers. “Can you have a relationship with a fish?” I queried, “Do they respond to you?” Terry blinked at me as if to discreetly conceal his surprise at my under-estimate of the sweet nature of his beloved creatures. “They recognise you if you gesture through the glass to them,” he informed me and, as he spread his fingers, caressing the air beside a tank, a whole shoal of little fish swam up to meet his shadow playfully and passed by, turning away with a flick of their tails in unison.

Once upon a time, Terry Jones senior, a native of Bethnal Green, made a fish tank at school, gluing the pieces of glass together and using a slate for the base, heated with night-lights burning beneath. Years later, when he completed National Service, he started out breeding tropical fish with a pal from the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Angling Club. When he began, there were twenty-five fish shops in the East End and sixty years later there are only two, but Terry persevered to create the phenomenon that is Wholesale Tropicals, drawing fish fanciers from as far as Fife. “Because we committed to something we do it properly, that’s why we work here seven days a week and all hours if necessary,” Terry junior assured me, as a loyal advocate of his father’s vision.

“I used to get home at eight each night, and then I’d be out in the shed with the seventy tanks I had there until midnight,” recalled Terry senior fondly, “- until the roof fell in, and I committed myself to building this extension.” And he raised his eyes in pride at his creation, the serried rows of burbling tanks in aisles surrounding us. Standing there in one of the East End’s secret marvels – a temple devoted to the sublime wonders of the deep – beside the unassuming man who kept fifteen-inch piranhas for pets, the discreet genius behind the tropical fish shop that won every award going including the Practical Fishkeeping award for the Best Shop in the South of England, years running – I knew I was in the presence of a big fish.

Terry Jones who started the company in 1961.

One of Bethnal Green’s most reclusive residents.

Terry Jones, junior, with his beloved Koi.

One of Bethnal Green’s most dangerous residents, the African Tiger fish.

Terry caresses a cherished specimen of a South American catfish.

Live locusts for sale off the shelf for the lizard-fanciers of Bethnal Green.

Archie, a regular customer, has a collection of three hundred goldfish, tropicals and toads at home.

The two Terrys at work.

The wall of fame.