Our friends at Mainstone Press in Mile End who are famous for their illustrated books of the works of Edward Bawden and Eric Ravilious have just published Jonny Hannah’s Fast Cars & Ukuleles. Every page of this eccentric alphabet book is full to bursting, crammed with visual detail and graphic delights celebrating the artist’s personal obsessions. Visit an exhibition of Jonny Hannah’s original artwork at Vout O Reenees in the crypt of the Catholic Martyrs’ Church at 30 Prescott St, E1 until mid-January.

A for America

B for Brel

C for Coney Island

D for Dead Man’s Suit

E for Emporiums

K for Knitted Ties

U for Ukelele

Click here to order a copy of Jonny Hannah’s Fast Cars & Ukeleles from Mainstone Press

Q for Quintessentially English

Images copyright © Jonny Hannah

I took the Metropolitan Line from Liverpool St Station over to Baker St and spent a pleasant afternoon exploring the wonders of Marylebone. Peeling off from the teeming crowds heading for Madame Tussauds and the Planetarium, I crossed Euston Rd to the parish church of St Mary, that once stood upon the banks of the bourne which gives the place its name and flowed south from here towards Oxford St where it became the Tyburn. Thomas Hardwick’s cool classicism of 1813 promised a welcome respite from the clamour of the traffic racing past outside, an effect only marginally undermined by the array of gruesome Lentern sculptures of the Crucifixion including a skeleton carrying a cross.

From here, I took the shortcut through the cobbled churchyard, beside St Marylebone School founded as the Day School of Industry in 1791, and turned right past the obelisk commemorating Charles & Sarah Wesley that commands a tiny yard, offered now as a garden of ease and reflection for exhausted shoppers struggling up from Oxford St. Lest I should get distracted by the fancy shops in the High St myself, I turned right again into Paddington St to peer into James Taylor & Sons, Shoemakers since 1857, when the founder walked from Norwich to start the business.

Crossing the road, I entered the narrow Grotto Passage which offers a portal to another Marylebone than the affluence which prevails elsewhere. Through the passage, you discover the Grotto Ragged & Industrial School beside a huge Laundry House at the centre of Ossington Buildings, a nineteenth-century complex of social housing dating from 1888. These narrow streets lead you through to the seclusion of Paddington St Gardens, a former burial ground, bordered by iron bollards with St Mary Le Bone 1828 in relief. Here in the gardens, school children at play and mothers with their tots attest to the domestic life of Marylebone, while in Chiltern St I discovered Webster’s Ironmongers in business since 1870,  a rare survivor of the traditional businesses that once lined these streets before the chain stores of Oxford St ventured northwards. The current owner has been behind the counter for thirty years, cherishing Websters as a temple to the glories of hardware and household goods.

Turning another corner into Manchester St, with its magnificent early nineteenth century terraces, delivered my return to the London of wealth, ascending in architectural grandeur as I strolled down towards Manchester Sq, commanded by The Wallace yet fascinating to me for the elaborate drinking fountain given by the Citizens of Shoreditch and the wrought iron curlicules of the decorative lamps upon the stucco villas. Turning east across Thayer St and into Marylebone Lane, the Golden Hind Fish Bar has long been a personal landmark with its immaculate fascia of 1914, perfect save the loss of the letter ‘D,’ spelling “Golden Hin…”

A different urban landscape opens up beyond the charismatic meander of Marylebone Lane, it is that of wide boulevards and tall mansions comprising Wimpole St and Harley St, interwoven by cobbled mews in which you can wander, as if behind the scenes at the theatre, observing the scenery from the reverse – where the mish-mash of accreted structures concealed by those impermeable facades are revealed. Leaving these exposed thoroughfares where the traffic hurtles through and the pavement grants no shelter to the lone pedestrian, I set out to walk west as the shadows lengthened, crossing Marylebone High St again and following Paddington St as it became Crawford St where the neighbourhood declines towards Edgeware Rd.

My destination was Robert Smirke’s St Mary’s Bryanston Sq of 1823, defining a favourite corner of Marylebone where, bordered by the Euston Rd, Edgeware Rd and Oxford St, a quiet enclave of old London persists.

Marylebone Parish Church by Thomas Hardwick 1813

Inside Marylebone Parish Church

Staircase by Thomas Hardwick

Memorial to Charles & Sarah Wesley in Marylebone High St

James Taylor & Sons Ltd, shoes made since 1857

The late Lord Butler’s lasts

Industrial dwellings in Grotto Passage

The Grotto Ragged & Industrial School, Established 1846

Looking through Grotto Passage towards Paddington St Gardens

Old mausoleum in Paddington St Gardens

Websters of Chiltern St since 1870

In Manchester St

Drinking fountain from Shoreditch now in the grounds of The Wallace

Decorative lamps in Manchester Sq

The Golden Hind Fish Bar of 1914 in Marylebone Lane

44 Wimpole St

“cobbled mews in which you can wander, as if behind the scenes at the theatre”

90 Harley St, London’s oldest dental practice established 1924

“the mish-mash of accreted structures concealed by those impermeable facades”

Daunt Books, Marylebone High St

Meacher, Higgins & Thomas, chemist since 1814 - Purveyors of photographic chemicals

St Mary’s, Bryanston Sq, by Robert Smirke

At Baker St, the return to Whitechapel

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In Old Clerkenwell

Celebrating Small Business Saturday tomorrow, the East End Trades Guild commissioned Adam Dant to draw this map showing the location of their members – the small shops, family businesses and independent traders. Pick up your free copy from any of the places listed on the map.

Adam Dant will be showing his maps and talking about them at 7pm next Tuesday 4th December as part of Type Tuesday at St Bride Foundation, EC4Y 8EQ. Click here for tickets

Click on the map to enlarge

In the East End, it is the family businesses and independent traders who have created the identity of the place and carry the life of our streets.

Spitalfields owes its origin to the market traders and skilled artisans trading outside the walls of the City of London in the medieval era. As the East End expanded in the nineteenth century, every street was built with a corner shop and a pub at either end which served as meeting spaces, building the strong communities still celebrated today.

Driven by necessity, East Enders have always devoted themselves to invent ingenious and creative ways of making a living, defining East London as the centre of innovation and enterprise in the capital for more than three centuries – from the jacquard weavers of the eighteenth century to the code writers of our own time.

It is this enduring culture of resourcefulness which makes the East End such a vital place and which is championed today by The East End Trades Guild, cherishing our small shops and independent businesses.

CLICK TO ORDER A SIGNED COPY OF MAPS OF LONDON & BEYOND BY ADAM DANT

Adam Dant’s MAPS OF LONDON & BEYOND is a mighty monograph collecting together all your favourite works by Spitalfields Life‘s cartographer extraordinaire in a beautiful big hardback book.

Including a map of London riots, the locations of early coffee houses and a colourful depiction of slang through the centuries, Adam Dant’s vision of city life and our prevailing obsessions with money, power and the pursuit of pleasure may genuinely be described as ‘Hogarthian.’

Unparalleled in his draughtsmanship and inventiveness, Adam Dant explores the byways of English cultural history in his ingenious drawings, annotated with erudite commentary and offering hours of fascination for the curious.

The book includes an extensive interview with Adam Dant by The Gentle Author.

Adam Dant’s  limited edition prints are available to purchase through TAG Fine Arts

Doreen Fletcher & I will be at Waterstones Bookshop, 82 Gower St, from 6pm today Tuesday 4th December as part of their Christmas Jamboree. Doreen will be signing copies of DOREEN FLETCHER, PAINTINGS and I will be signing copies of THE LIFE & TIMES OF MR PUSSY.

Please also join us next year at the Private View of Doreen Fletcher’s RETROSPECTIVE at Nunnery Gallery, Bow Arts, on 24th January from 6pm. The exhibition runs until March 24th 2019.

Today Doreen Fletcher tells the stories behind some of her early East End paintings.

“Turners Road (1988) depicts the corner of a condemned street in Stepney and it is a reminder of a past gone forever, swept away by the tide of development. In 1988, there were reminders everywhere of the East End’s sub-cultures, from graffiti claiming ‘George Davis is innocent’ to the more anarchic ‘G. Fawkes is innocent.’

Behind the orange and blue curtains of the bomb-shattered windows lived a middle-aged recluse. He wore a detective’s mackintosh whatever the weather and worked obsessively each day on the engine of a rusty old van parked on the wasteland next to the sewer chimney. Even in those days, there was no hope of the vehicle ever becoming roadworthy and, each year, his mackintosh became grubbier as more bits of the engine were cast aside on the grass.

I moved to the East End in 1983 when local people were keen to move out of the bomb-damaged, crumbling terraces. They either wanted to leave the area completely or transfer into more modern compact dwellings that were being built at the time.

Many of the empty houses which remained were inhabited by artists on short-term tenancies and the house I lived in Clemence St was one of these. Directly opposite was a five-storey block of flats built in the fifties called Flansham House and I was particularly friendly with the couple who lived on the ground floor, Albert and June Brown. Albert lost a leg in an accident at the docks but on fine days he would sit on the step with his Pekingese dog Flossie and canary. Albert was also frequently to be found in the Prince Alfred at the end of the street and I always remember Albert telling me that the landlord was a foreigner, born in Bethnal Green!”

“Rene’s Café (1986) was situated at the opposite end of Turner’s Rd and formed part of the triangle of Locksley St, Clemence St and Turner’s Rd. When I first saw the café in 1983, it reminded me of the greasy spoon cafes in the Potteries where I grew up. The faded blue and white paintwork recalled seaside cafés lining the promenade at northern seaside resorts. The distinctive pale light of the East End and the austerity of the late nineteenth century building compounded these feelings.

The café opened early for the council workers and bin men before their day’s work. When I passed it in the morning on my way to the life-modelling sessions I undertook to keep myself at that time, the windows were steamed up and it exuded an aroma of bacon and cigarette smoke wafting on the frosty air. Sounds of raucous laughter emanated from within and, to my eternal regret, I never ate a ‘full English breakfast’ there as it seemed a male preserve. By the time I returned home the café was closed, shutting shortly after lunch.

Six months after my arrival, the café closed forever. It remained for some time before bulldozers came along and it fell victim to the encroaching tide of development, as did the nearby lino shop in my next painting.”

“I did not complete The Lino Shop (2003) until twenty years after I made my first studies. Like a lot of my subjects, the memory of the shop haunted me for a long time before I got around to the painting. In hindsight, with the knowledge of its closure in early 1984 and demolition a few years later, it is remarkable that the property lasted so long. Even during its existence, it appeared to be a throwback to a previous era – a lone outpost selling ‘fancy goods’ alongside ‘lino’ in a backwater.

I think the term ‘lino’ is outdated now, but I remember the excitement I felt when my mum and dad purchased lino for my bedroom.  It was light grey with a geometric pattern of darker grey diagonals and red slashes. At the time, I thought it was very sophisticated.

I could not see any ‘fancy goods’ in the shop window but I do remember entering the shop once to buy a doormat. There were tall hourglass shaped vases and a few crudely-painted pottery figures. Finally, there were statues of goldfish with solid fins swooping hither and thither. These – I assume – comprised the fancy goods.”

“The Albion Pub (1992) in Bow, situated just beside the Railway Arch and next to the path through Mile End Park, was opened in 1881 and demolished in 2006. It was one of the first pubs I visited in the East End and I still remember the friendly atmosphere of the snug with leather benches and ancient rectangular tables. The walls were lined with decorative plates and shelves filled with gleaming ‘knick-knacks.’ The landlady was pleasant and welcoming, and I frequented it for several years until she told us that she and her husband were moving to Clacton.

I decided to paint The Albion because to me it was representative of everything that was worth preserving about the East End. The inclusiveness and welcoming of incomers like myself, the openness of the landlady and the pride she took in keeping her pub spotless.”

CLICK HERE TO ORDER A SIGNED COPY OF DOREEN FLETCHER’S BOOK FOR £20

Around twenty years ago, I bought this coin from a street trader at the time of the excavation of the Roman cemetery in Spitalfields. In 1576, John Stow wrote about the Roman coins that were dug up here in Spitalfields and I suspect mine came from the same source. A visit to the British Museum confirmed that the coin had been minted in London and the piercing was done in the Roman era when it was the custom to wear coins as amulets. So somebody wore this coin in London all those centuries ago and today I wear it on a string around my neck to give me a sense of perspective.

As you can see, my collection has grown as I have discovered that coin collectors are eager to dispose of pierced coins at low prices and I have taken on the responsibility of wearing them on behalf of their previous owners. It was only when the string broke in Princelet St one dark night in the rain and I found myself scrabbling in the gutter to retrieve them all that I realised how much they mean to me.

Coin of the Emperor Arcadius minted in London

Figure of Minerva upon the reverse

Silver sixpence minted at the Tower of London, 1569

Head of Queen Elizabeth and Tudor rose

Silver sixpence minted at the Tower of London, 1602

Head of Elizabeth

Silver sixpence, 1676

Head of Charles II

Farthing, 1749

Head of George II

Silver sixpence, 1758

Head of George II

Young Queen Victoria

Half Farthing, 1844

Head of Queen Victoria

Silver sixpence, 1896

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Bishopsgate Tavern Tokens

Old St

In my mind, Old St is interminably long – a thoroughfare that requires me to put my head down and walk doggedly until I reach the other end. Sometimes, the thought of walking the whole length of Old St can motivate me to take the bus and, at other times, I have been inspired to pursue routes through the side streets which run parallel, in order to avoid walking along Old St.

Yet  I realised recently that Old St is short. It only extends from Goswell Rd, on the boundary of Clerkenwell, to the foot of the Kingsland Rd in Shoreditch – just a hop, skip and a jump – which leaves me wondering why it seems such a challenge when I set out to walk along it. Let me confess, I have no love for Old St – that is why I seek alternative routes, because even the thought of walking along Old St wears me down.

So I decided to take a new look at Old St, in the hope that I might overcome my aversion. Over the last week, I have walked up and down Old St half a dozen times and, to my surprise, it only takes ten minutes to get from Goswell Rd to Shoreditch Church.

Old St was first recorded as Ealdestrate around 1200 and as Le Oldestrete in 1373, confirming it as an ancient thoroughfare that is as old as history. It was a primeval cattle track, first laid it out as a road by the Romans for whom it became a major route extending to Bath in the west and Colchester in the east. No wonder Old St feels long, it is a fragment of a road that bisects the country.

Setting out from Goswell Rd along Old St on foot, you realise that the east-west orientation places the southerly side of the street in permanent shadow, only illuminated by narrow shafts of sunlight extending across the road from side-streets on the southern side. This combination of deep shadow and the ferocious east wind, channelled by the remains of the eighteenth and nineteenth century terraces that once lined Old St which are mostly displaced now by taller developments, can be discouraging.

Of course, you can take a detour along Baltic St, but before you know it you are at St Luke’s where William Caslon, who set up the first British Type Foundry here in Helmet Row, is buried. Nicholas Hawksmoor’s obelisk on the top of St Luke’s glows in the morning sunlight shining up Whitecross St Market, which has enjoyed a revival in recent years as a lunchtime destination, offering a wide variety of food to City workers.

Between here and the Old St roundabout, now the focus of new industries and dwarfed by monster towers rising to the north up City Rd, you can pay your respects to my favourite seventeenth century mystic poet Christopher Smart who was committed in his madness to St Luke’s Asylum and wrote his greatest poetry where Argos stands today. Alternatively, you can stroll through Bunhill Fields, the non-conformist cemetery, where Blake, Bunyan and Defoe are buried. Seeing the figure of John Bunyan’s Christian, the Pilgrim of Pilgrim’s Progress, upon the side of his tomb always reminds me of the figure of Bunyan at Holborn, and I imagine that he walked here from there and Old St was that narrow straight path which Christian was so passionate to follow.

Crossing the so-called Silicon Roundabout, I am always amused by the incongruity of the Bezier Building that for all its sophisticated computer-generated geometry resembles nothing else than a pair of buttocks. Taking a path north of Old St, takes you through Charles Sq with its rare eighteenth century survival, returning you to the narrowest part  of our chosen thoroughfare between Pitfield St and Curtain Rd, giving an indication of the width of the whole street before it was widened to the west of here in the nineteenth century.

The figure on the top of Shoreditch Town Hall labelled ‘Progress’ makes a highly satisfactory conclusion to our journey, simultaneously embodying the contemporary notion of technological progress and the ancient concept of a spiritual progress – both of which you may encounter upon Old St.

Hand & Feathers, Goswell Rd

Central Cafe

Helmet Row, where William Caslon established his first type foundry

St Lukes Churchyard

St Luke by Nicholas Hawksmoor

The White Lion, Central St

At Whitecross St

In Whitecross Market

Mural by Ben Eine

In Bunhill Cemetery

John Bunyan’s tomb in Bunhill Fields with the figure of the pilgrim

John Wesley’s House in City Rd

Old St Gothic on the former St Luke Parochial School

Emerging from Old St tube

The Bezier Building has a curious resemblance to a pair of buttocks

Entrance to Old St Tube

Eighteenth century house in Charles Sq

Prince Arthur in Brunswick Lane

Old House in Charles St

Street Art in Old St

Figure of Progress on Shoreditch Town Hall

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In Old Clerkenwell

In Old Rotherhithe

In Fleet St

In Mile End Old Town

In Old Stepney

In Old Bermondsey

In Old Holborn

As a new pub named The Gun prepares to open next week in the Spitalfields Fruit & Wool Exchange development, I look back to the last night of the former establishment.

In 1946, a demobbed soldier walked into The Gun in Brushfield St and ordered a pint. Admitting that he had no money, he asked if he could leave his medals as security and come back the next day to pay for his beer. But he never returned, even though his medals were kept safely at The Gun, mounted in a frame on the wall, awaiting the day when he might walk through the door again.

Now it is too late for the soldier to return because The Gun was demolished three years ago as part of the redevelopment of the London Fruit & Wool Exchange. Yet the military theme of this anecdote is especially pertinent, since it appears likely that The Gun originated as a tavern serving the soldiers of the Artillery Ground in the sixteenth century.

My friend, the much-missed photographer Colin O’Brien, & I joined the regulars for a lively yet poignant celebration on the last night, drinking the bar dry in commemorating the passing of a beloved Spitalfields institution. No-one could deny The Gun went off with a bang.

“We are the last Jewish publicans in the East End,” Karen Pollack, who ran The Gun with her son Marc, informed me proudly, “yet I had never been in a pub until I married David, Marc’s father, in 1978.” Karen explained that David Pollack’s grandparents took over The Bell in 1938, when it was one of eight pubs on Petticoat Lane, and in 1978, David’s father George Pollack also acquired the lease of The Gun, which was run by David & Karen from 1981 onwards.

“David grew up above The Bell and he always wanted to keep his own pub,” Karen recalled fondly, “It was fantastic, everyone knew everyone. We opened at six in the morning and got all the porters from the market in here, and the directors of the Truman Brewery used to dine upstairs in the Bombardier Restaurant – there was no other place to eat in Spitalfields at that time.”

“People still come back and ask me for brandy and milk sometimes,” she confided, “that’s what people from the market drank.”

On that night, the beautiful 1928 interior of The Gun with its original glass ceiling, oak panelling, Delft tiles, prints of the Cries of London and views of Spitalfields by Geoffrey Fletcher, was crowded with old friends enjoying the intimate community atmosphere for one last time, many sharing affectionate memories of publican, David Pollack, who died just a few years ago. “We’ve had some good times here,” Karen confessed to me in quiet understatement, casting her eyes around at the happy crowd.

“I was always known as David Pollack’s son, I came into the pub in 2008 and it was second nature to me, “Marc revealed later, which led me me to ask him what this fourth generation East End publican planned to do with the rest of his life. “I’m going to open another pub and call it The Gun,” he assured me without hesitation. And I have no doubt Marc took the medals with him to keep them safe just in case that errant soldier comes back for them one day.

Fourth generation East End publican Marc Pollack, pictured here with his staff, stands on the left

David Pollack, publican, Michael Aitken of Truman’s Brewery & George Pollack, publican in 1984

Karen Pollack shows customers the old photographs

Karen Pollack and bar staff

Emma, Marc and Karen Pollack

Medals awaiting the return of their owner

The Gun in 1950

Photographs copyright © Estate of Colin O’Brien

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At The London Fruit & Wool Exchange

Artist Doreen Fletcher tells the stories behind more of her East End paintings today.

Doreen Fletcher & I will be in conversation, showing her paintings, at the Wanstead Tap on Tuesday 18th December. Click here for tickets

Also, please make an entry in your 2019 diary to join us at the Private View of Doreen Fletcher’s RETROSPECTIVE at Nunnery Gallery, Bow Arts, on 24th January from 6pm. The exhibition runs until March 24th 2019.

Mile End Church with Canal, 1986

“The spring of 1985 was very cold in London, but it was even colder in Amsterdam where I was visiting. Fortunately, the museums were warm and welcoming, havens from the outside weather, and the works in the Rijksmuseum entranced me.

Yet the experience that remains most vivid in my memory is my trip to the Mauritshuis Museum in The Hague, a short journey from Amsterdam. There, I was transfixed by works from the Dutch Golden Age of Painting, particularly the View of Delft by Vermeer. Dating from around 1600, it is one of the first known cityscapes. I find it difficult to imagine how Vermeer managed to paint such intense focussed works, given that his wife gave birth to fifteen children of which ten survived. He painted very slowly and meticulously and, although respected in his hometown, he was quickly forgotten after his death.

Once back in London I started a new series of works focussing on similar subject material in my vicinity and Mile End Park with Canal forms one of this series. The painting was sold in an exhibition the following year and I did not set eyes on it again for thirty-three years until it was photographed for my book this year.”

Twilight in St Anne’s Churchyard, Limehouse, 1998

“St Anne’s churchyard featured in my life throughout the eighties and nineties. I often took the path that led from the bus stop in the Commercial Road through the main gates and across the yard to the Five Bells. It was here that I met with other artists and friends, following a day’s painting or modelling for life-classes at art colleges.

The Five Bells was run by a colourful Scottish family headed by the patriarchal Jim and among the artists who drank there where Jock McFadyen and Peri Parkes, who were both regulars. The biker fraternity, all rather formidable in their black leathers, were also frequent visitors. This all made for a lively mix along with assorted local residents.

We engaged in lively debate after ‘lock out’ when Jim would only serve whisky and I must confess that on more than a few occasions I had to be dragged away from heated discussions with other artists, as we voiced the concerns we had been wrapped up in during the day’s painting. In those days I could become very passionate as my working practice progressed.

It was usually dark when I negotiated my way back home and I might be somewhat inebriated. So I recall very well the uneven path past the statue of Jesus on the First World War memorial. I would cross Commercial Rd and take a short cut home through the backs of the flats parallel to Salmon Lane.”

Grand Union Canal in Wintertime, Stepney, 1986

Grand Union Canal in Summertime, Stepney,  1986

“When I lived in Bow, I loved wandering up and down the tow path past the red chimney, watching the fishermen and observing the change of the trees through the seasons.

The light of the East End offers a clarity and definition of colour that is very evident along the canal, where the water reflects back the light from the sky. So I was constantly drawn to this subject.

In these two paintings I wanted to explore the contrast between the heady atmosphere of summer and the stark clarity of the same stretch of water in winter.”

The Condemned House, Poplar, 1985

“In 1983, I lived just around the corner from this house. At the time, the whole area was scheduled for demolition to make way for parkland, encouraged by the County of London Plan adopted by the Greater London Council. The ambition was to ‘refresh’ London’s housing stock of poorly-maintained terraces and improve sanitary conditions. This is now questionable, given that so much of the character of the place had to be destroyed. The house where I lived survived but The Condemned House became one of the last victims of the bulldozers in 1988. For five years, the street lamp outside was lit continuously day and night but, since the residents had been evicted, no-one complained to the council.”

After the Hurricane, Shadwell, 1987

“Like many others, I watched the weather man on October 15th 1987, reassuring us that reports of an impending hurricane were a false alarm. After a few glasses of wine with friends, I slept soundly until awakened by a phone call cancelling that morning’s art school modelling session. When I asked why, I was advised to take a look out of the window.

Fifty million trees were destroyed that night in England and France. A week or so later, I wandering down the canal, through the park, along Narrow St and onto the Highway. By now it was growing dark and a pinkish glow spread across the sky as the sun dropped below the horizon. As I walked through King Edward Seventh Park, this fallen tree came into view.

When I returned during the day to make studies, half the tree had already gone and the rest was neatly sawn into huge logs waiting to be taken away. So I had to rely on my initial quick sketches scribbled in the dark.”

CLICK HERE TO ORDER A SIGNED COPY OF DOREEN FLETCHER’S BOOK FOR £20

Today, we publish yet more of Doreen Fletcher’s paintings with her commentaries, revealing the stories behind the pictures.

One day in August, we gathered more than eighty of Doreen Fletcher’s paintings together to photograph them for her book. We photographed those in Doreen’s possession and Doreen’s husband Steve drove round London to borrow those in private collections.

The wonder of seeing all these paintings assembled was to discover the breadth of Doreen’s achievement for the first time and recognise that they added up to a complete vision. All these pictures will be brought back together for Doreen’s retrospective in January and you will be able to see them with your own eyes.

Doreen Fletcher & I will be in conversation, showing her slides of her paintings, at the Wanstead Tap on Tuesday 18th December. Click here for tickets

Also, please make an entry in your 2019 diary to join us at the Private View of Doreen Fletcher’s RETROSPECTIVE at Nunnery Gallery, Bow Arts, on 24th January from 6pm. The exhibition runs until March 24th 2019.

Whit Sunday, Commercial Rd, 1989

“This is a painting that I thought I had lost forever. I had only a few blurred images of it and felt a pang of regret from time to time that I had not kept better records. I could not even remember when and where it was sold or what size it was. All I had was a date 1989 and a title ‘Whit Sunday, Commercial Road’.

Then, out of the blue, I was contacted by a man in Bristol who was in possession of a painting dated 1989 but unsigned. He inherited it from his parents who had bought it in the late eighties and he often wondered who painted it. Remarkably, he traced me by examining similar images on the internet.

Francis Walters, the famous East End funeral director with the horse-drawn carriages, has long since departed to Leytonstone where it now forms part of the Co-op. In 1989, East End Videos, was a state of the art enterprise renting out video cassettes of films that had been released a year or two earlier.

In retrospect, this painting appears an optimistic view of what was in reality, a dusty, dirty and polluted road in the days before the underpass linking the Highway to the docklands was built.”

Stepney Snooker Club by Day, 1986

Stepney Snooker Club by Night, 1986

“I was first drawn to the Stepney Snooker Club in 1985, when I noticed a mosaic floor at the entrance with the mysterious name ‘Ben Hur.’ This intrigued me since observed a certain contrast between the old mosaic and the newly plastered facade. Yet I never actually saw anyone go in or out of the snooker club when I passed it eack week on my way to an evening’s life-modelling at Smithy Street Adult Education Institute.

I discovered the snooker club was been the former location of the Palacedium Cinema, which was taken over in 1917 by a man named Ben Hur, a projectionist. This cinema is not to be confused with the Palaseum Cinema nearby. In 1962, the Ben Hur became a bingo hall and in 1985 the ‘Stepney Snooker & Social Club.’

I do not know what draws a painter to react to certain moments, a scene or event. In my mind, I can still recall one chilly night on my way home when I spotted a lone figure on the doorstep of the Club, smoking a cigarette, and I sensed an opportunity. I set my mind on creating two paintings that would contrast the ambience of the place during the day and at night.

The daytime painting is now in the collection of Tower Hamlets Local History Archive. Unfortunately, I do not know where the nighttime painting is but would love to find out. It is unlikely to be dated or signed since I thought it arrogant to sign paintings in those days.”

The Palaseum Cinema, 1985

“The Palaseum Cinema attracted my attention at first because of its façade, which in common with the Moorish appearance of the Star of the East was so much at variance with the others that lined Commercial Rd from Limehouse to Aldgate. In the main, the architecture is solid, Victorian and worthy, lacking in extraneous detail: Limehouse Library and Poplar Town Hall being typical.

The Palaseum and the Star of the East were places of entertainment and pleasure, and when the Palaseum was completed in 1912, it had a more distinctly exotic look. There was once a small dome on either side of the facade, as well as the large central globe you can see in the painting.

It originally opened its doors as Fienman’s Yiddish Theatre, but started screening films almost immediately. The buiding was renamed the Palaseum Cinema in 1913 and reincarnated as a Bollywood Picture House in 1965.

When I knew it, the Palaseum looked drab and forlorn with a shabby appearance during daylight hours. Yet it continued to attract my attention even though I did not see any people at all, entering or leaving. In retrospect, I should have gone inside, observed the decor and watched a film.”

Limehouse Library, 1988

“Limehouse Library was opened in 1901, endowed by John Passmore Edwards, the philanthropist. I painted it in 1988, the year after the completion of a mural of Limehouse Reach at the library and when Harold Wilson unveiled the statue of Clement Attlee outside. Yet despite the interest, the place already had an atmosphere  of a bygone age. Today it stands boarded up, awaiting rebirth.”

CLICK HERE TO ORDER A SIGNED COPY OF DOREEN FLETCHER’S BOOK FOR £20

Today, we publish yet more of Doreen Fletcher’s pictures with her commentaries, telling the stories, and revealing the vision behind her painting.

Doreen Fletcher & I will be in conversation, showing slides of her paintings, at the Wanstead Tap on Tuesday 18th December. Click here for tickets

Also, please make an entry in your 2019 diary to join us at the Private View of Doreen Fletcher’s RETROSPECTIVE at Nunnery Gallery, Bow Arts, on 24th January from 6pm. The exhibition runs until March 24th 2019.

Bartlett Park, Poplar, 1990

“The isolation of the building and the smoke that frequently drifted up from the chimney inspired me to paint this. It was a place I passed whenever I took a shortcut to Chrisp Street Market. Months of experiment were required to find the right shade of white for the plume of smoke. I exhibited the painting under the misnomer ‘Suzannah Street’. But twenty years later, when I met Steve who became my husband, he said, ‘Oh that’s Bartlett Park, named after the head of St Saviour’s where my dad went to school.’”

Pubali Cafe, Limehouse, 1996 (coloured pencil)

“When I first moved to the East End, I was intrigued by this cafe. It was always open but no-one seemed to go inside. A small thin man stood motionless behind the counter or sat eating a plate of curry at a table. I succumbed to temptation and entered with my partner. We ordered coffee and it was the worst I ever tasted. This was a foggy Saturday in January 1985 with the sun trying to break through. There was a lull in the traffic and I heard a rumbling boom like thunder. A bomb planted by the IRA had exploded at Tower Bridge and the sound carried down Commercial Road. I never returned to the cafe.”

Doreen has produced a limited edition print of the Pubali Cafe available here

Popcorn Stand at the Wakes, Mile End Park, 1994

“At the age of six, my parents too me on holiday to Rhyl which had a pleasure beach that became especially atmospheric and magical at dusk. Thus began my life long attraction to funfairs and I have been drawn to them ever since.

When I moved to Mile End in 1983, I was delighted to discover the funfair came regularly to the park, just where the new football pitch and stadium are these days. I did quite a few coloured pencil drawings of it over the years even though I cannot stand the taste of popcorn.”

Hot Dogs, Mile End Park, 1993 (coloured pencil)

“I was attracted to draw the hot dog stall because to me it embodied the excitement of eating ‘on the hoof’ while wandering around dropping money into the bottomless pit of amusement at Mile End Fun Fair. For a moment my life was elevated by the expectation of something big about to happen, even if afterwards I would return home with feelings of deflation.

This fun fair always came to Mile End Park at Easter, Whitsun and August Bank Holiday. I never went on any rides but was tempted to play fruit machines. I also loved a game of pinball and became very good at it for a while.”

Leslie’s, Turners Rd, Stepney, 1983 (pencil)

I went to Leslie’s Grocers in 1983 when I arrived in the East End. It became my local shop while I was living in damp back room with peeling wallpaper on the third floor of 29 Turners Rd. A bachelor named Ray ran it following the death of his mother.

I remembered was dismayed to discover Ray sold such a limited range of goods – only powdered coffee or bottled camp coffee, white sliced bread and margarine but not butter. Ray moaned a lot to me about the lack of customers yet there was little to entice anyone into the shop.

Eventually Ray gave up. His heart was not in retail. Instead he moved into a one bedroom, ground floor flat near Chrisp Street on account of his gammy leg and his shop transformed into the headquarters of the local squatters’ association. Meanwhile, I was relieved to move into an ACME housing association house round the corner and travelled further afield to buy proper coffee.

I depicted Leslie’s Grocers in a painting as well as in this drawing. The painting was sold long ago and I have no photograph of it, nor can I recollect who the purchaser was. But perhaps my drawing better summarises the atmosphere of the shop.”

Canary Wharf at Twilight, 1992

“This is an exceptional subject for me. I do not usually paint new buildings because their absence of character holds no interest for me. Yet as I observed Canary Wharf rising, I felt compelled to record the transformation in my familiar environment. On Friday 9th February 1996, this painting was on display in the window of a gallery nearby when the IRA detonated a truck bomb at South Quays. Two people were killed, many injured and my painting was lucky to survive. The blast shattered the window and shards of glass scarred the surface, causing the paint to flake off in places yet not piercing the canvas.”

CLICK HERE TO ORDER A SIGNED COPY OF DOREEN FLETCHER’S BOOK FOR £20

This Saturday 15th December at noon, Suresh Singh & I will be signing copies of our books A MODEST LIVING and THE LIFE & TIMES OF MR PUSSY at The Broadway Bookshop, Broadway Market, E8 4QJ. Please come along and say hello.

Today, Suresh Singh, author of A MODEST LIVING, Memoirs of Cockney Sikh, recalls his days at Christ Church Spitalfields, when Rector Eddy Stride was chairman of Nationwide Festival of Light and Lord Longford, Mary Whitehouse, Malcolm Muggeridge, and Cliff Richard came regularly to Fournier St.

Suresh Singh & Jagir Kaur at 38 Princelet St this summer (photo by Patricia Niven)

The old sign preserved in the outside toilet in Princelet St (photo by Patricia Niven)

There were no Sikh temples in Spitalfields, so Dad sent us to the Christ Church Sunday School instead. He said to us, ‘You need moral purpose.’ I went every week for eleven years and I loved it. Sunday School was held in the Hanbury Hall because the church was derelict at that time. Mavis Bullwinkle, Fay Watson, Mrs Price and Mrs Hilda Foskett ran it. They were great teachers and, thanks to them, I know my Bible pretty well.

Dad used to bow down and touch the floor to pay his respects outside holy places, but he never went into any church or synagogue. He sent me inside because he believed that all religions were equal, although he did not realise that the congregation of Christ Church were strongly evangelical. He always gave me the penny for Sunday School and respected the teachings of Jesus. We used to come home and talk to him about what we had learnt. I remember Mavis and Hilda used to tell us captivating tales like ‘Noah’s Ark’ and ‘Jonah & the Whale.’ They were beautiful stories and I loved them. We enjoyed going there and singing hymns. They would have liked me to have become a born-again Christian but I never did because I already had a belief in what Dad told me. Yet I did find a sense of moral purpose there. It taught me to be kind.

Dad became friends with Eddy Stride, the rector of Christ Church. Dad told me Eddy was a ‘Sikh’ rector, and they enjoyed a long friendship drawn together by their shared belief in selflessness and service to others. Later, I got to know Eddy myself and visited the rectory at 2 Fournier St. He gave me the run of the house. I fed the rabbits and ducks in the back garden, and I jumped over the garden wall into the adventure playground.

As I was growing up, I found I spent more and more time on the other side of Brick Lane. There was a different atmosphere among the eighteenth-century houses with their canopied doors, old sash windows and little yards at the rear backing onto my school. I suppose there were always more people around on our side of Brick Lane and the far side was a strange place to me, both scary and friendly at the same time. I used to find the crypt of Christ Church especially alien. The dirty smelly steps led down to a shelter for alcoholics. It was like an underground prison, and the cabbagey smell of the stodgy food made me sick. When you went inside and spoke to the men, they were lovely, and had beautiful sad stories of their family breakups and how they came from Scotland or wherever.

There was Ken Noble, who used to carry a book of Robert Burns and sang the poems at the top of his voice when he got drunk. He was banned from the shelter because he would not give up drink and he used to stand at the back of the services at Hanbury Hall, drowning out the congregation singing hymns. Eddy had a bee in his bonnet about alcohol. Every Christmas, he used to receive a bottle of expensive whisky from Truman’s brewery and pour it down the drain, saying ‘These people can’t handle it.’ He refused to meet face-to-face with the brewery people, because he saw the misery it caused to people’s lives. He made it his mission to rid the disease of alcohol from Spitalfields.

Eddy Stride was chairman of the Nationwide Festival of Light who campaigned to raise morals by cleaning up television and stopping pornography. They held their meetings at the rectory. When Mrs Stride made the sandwiches in the kitchen, I used to help her. I was shocked to see Lord Longford, Mary Whitehouse, Malcolm Muggeridge, and Cliff Richard coming regularly to Fournier Street. Lord Longford stored stacks of his book, ‘The Pornography Report,’ in the church. Mary Whitehouse’s son Richard was a silversmith, he used to repair my flute.

One day, I met Eddy and the curate coming back from Liverpool St station in long raincoats and flat caps, which was unusual, as if they were in disguise. Eddy always wore his dog collar but on this occasion he did not have it. Later I found out they had been visiting newsagents to see how they were displaying their pornographic magazines and check they were not breaking laws of indecency. I heard they also went in disguise to cinemas in Soho.

Eddy kept giving me carpentry and joinery work at the church, the crypt, the school, the Hanbury Hall and the rectory. ‘You’ve got a good eye for architecture, Suresh,’ he said one day. It was very kind of Eddy. He was always looking out for me, like a guardian angel.

All these jobs were opening my eyes. ‘You’ve got to study architecture,’ Eddy kept saying. He helped me apply and was my referee for the Polytechnic of Central London School of Architecture which was the place to be at the time because it was in the spirit of an École Polytechnique – which meant it was more engineering-based than a university – and because it was close to the Royal Institute of British Architects.

At my interview, when they asked me what I did, I told them, ‘I am a self-employed carpenter and joiner. I do bits and bobs in Hawksmoor’s church in Spitalfields.’ They all stood up. ‘I’ve got to go back now because I’ve got to put casters on the communion table,’ I continued, ‘I’ve got work to do.’ They said, ‘You’re in now.’

Eddy was frustrated with how the church was being restored. The architect thought this was the opportunity to restore it as closely as possible to Hawksmoor’s original design. Eddy wanted handrails for the elderly, a lift for disabled access and wheelchair ramps but this did not coincide with how the architect believed Hawksmoor wanted the church. I made wooden ramps and put the communion table, lectern and pulpit on casters. Eddy stood his ground with the neo-Georgians who bought eighteenth-century houses. It helped that he lived in the best one in Spitalfields, designed by Hawksmoor.

Eddy Stride, Rector of Christ Church and Chairman of the Nationwide Festival of Light

Suresh Singh’s photograph of Christ Church

Suresh Singh’s photograph of a down-and-out on the steps of the rectory

“a timely reminder of all that modern Britishness encompasses” – The Observer

In this first London Sikh biography, Suresh Singh tells the candid and sometimes surprising story of his father Joginder Singh who came to Spitalfields in 1949.

Joginder sacrificed a life in the Punjab to work in Britain and send money home, yet he found himself in his element living among the mishmash of people who inhabited the streets around Brick Lane.

Born and bred in London, his son Suresh became the first Punjabi punk, playing drums for Spizzenergi and touring with Siouxsie & the Banshees.

Chapters of biography are alternated with Punjabi recipes by Jagir Kaur.

Click here to order a copy of A MODEST LIVING for £20

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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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Prior to a major exhibition next summer, curator Sophie Dutton tells the story of East London-born artist, Madge Gill, and appeals for anyone with a connection to this enigmatic woman to get in touch.

Madge Gill (photograph courtesy of Getty)

Four years ago, my father told me about the vast and incredible collection of nearly two thousand drawings he had seen stashed away in Newham Council’s archive, all created by a former East Londoner, the artist Madge Gill (1882-1961). The idea of anyone being inspired to make such a vast amount of work fascinated me and, a little while later, I contacted the council. They arranged for me to view a number of her postcards and drawings in Stratford Library. These minute cards were filled from edge to edge with what I now recognise as Madge Gill’s free-flowing drawing technique.

Mostly in black and white, these drawings often feature a girls face or figure surrounded by repetitive patterns of broken or swirling lines and checkerboards. They are mesmerising and quite blew me away. Madge Gill’s work is widely recognised among those interested in ‘Outsider Art’ but little known in the places she lived or was connected to. I was inspired to undertake a journey of my own to find out as much as I could about this mysterious artist.

Subsequently, I have visited many archive or collections, and spoken with many people and organisations, recording any information they could offer me about Madge Gill. With each conversation I learnt a little more. Madge Gill’s story is certainly not a fairy tale and, although hers was a difficult biography to uncover, it reveals that her artwork was a testament to inner strength. She possessed a natural creativity, constantly teaching herself new skills in drawing and embroidery, which led her to produce a seemingly endless wealth of artworks.

Madge Gill was an outstanding exponent of mediumistic art and remains one of the foremost British ‘Outsider’ artists. Christened Maud Ethel Eades in Walthamstow, Gill was born illegitimate and placed into the care of Dr Barnardo’s at the age of ten. From there she was enrolled in the British Home Children scheme for orphans and sent to Canada, where she spent a significant part of her teenage years. Enduring hard labour and poor living conditions, she saved everything she earned to return to Britain.

On her return to London in 1900, she called herself ‘Madge’ and began to work as a Nurse at Whipps Cross hospital in Leyton, marrying her cousin Tom Gill, with whom she had three sons. The second, Laurie, died in the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 and the following year Madge gave birth to a longed-for daughter who was stillborn. Complications proved almost fatal and a lengthy illness resulted in the loss of her left eye. Her grief manifested itself in deep depression and in 1922 she underwent treatment in Hove for an undiagnosed psychiatric condition.

It was at this time, on 3rd March 1920, that Gill was first ‘possessed’ by Myrninerest, her spirit-guide. From the age of thirty-eight, she maintained contact with this phantom for the rest of her life. In these trances, she produced an extraordinary number of artworks: in ink on paper and calico, and in multiples of fifty or a hundred postcards populated with the faces of young girls. She also produced rugs, hangings and dresses, knitted, crocheted and woven with a dexterity inherited from her mother, a skilled needlewoman, and encouraged by Barnardo’s who trained girls in such commercially viable work.

Today Madge Gill is one of the world’s most highly regarded ‘Outsider’ artists, represented in all the major international collections, including Jean Dubuffet’s Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne and the l’Aracine Collection at the Musee d’Art Moderne in Lille. Yet the largest collection of her work resides in the place where she is perhaps least known – in East London where she once lived and where nearly two thousand of her works are owned by Newham Council.

Is there anyone who knew or remembers Madge Gill? Did anyone visit her son Laurie Gill’s umbrella shop in Plashet Grove, Newham? Does anyone recall seeing her huge calico artworks hung in the East End Academy at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1938? Does anyone have letters from Madge or her son? Be aware that Madge rarely signed her art, and her drawings were often only marked with a cross or signed by ‘Myrninerest.’

I am seeking anyone with a connection to Madge Gill, anyone who knows anything about her work or anyone who owns any of her artwork. Many of her creations, especially her embroideries have gone astray and it would be wonderful to get a true sense of the quantity and variety of work that exists. Any information will help to expand her story and may be included in a book and the exhibition of her work that I am curating next year.

Please email me: info@worksby-madgegill.co

Madge Gill at work on one of her embroideries (photograph courtesy of Getty)

Six drawings (courtesy of Christies)

An example of Madge Gill’s ‘spirit writing’

Madge Gill at work on a large tapestry (photograph courtesy of Getty)

Six abstract patterns (courtesy of Rosebery’s Auctions)

Madge Gill (1882-1961) (photograph courtesy of Getty)

Click here to learn more about Sophie Dutton’s Madge Gill project

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Mrs Johnson walks past 19 Mile End Place

Whenever I walk down the Mile End Rd, I always take a moment to step in through the archway and visit Mile End Place. This tiny enclave of early nineteenth century cottages sandwiched between the Velho and the Alderney Cemeteries harbours a quiet atmosphere that recalls an earlier, more rural East End and I have become intrigued to discover its history. So I was fascinated when Philip Cunningham sent me his pictures of Mile End Place from the seventies together with this poignant account of an unspoken grief from the First World War, still lingering more than fifty years later, which he encountered unexpectedly when he moved into his great-grandparents’ house.

“In 1971, my girlfriend – Sally – & I moved from East Dulwich to Mile End Place. It was number 19, the house where my maternal grandfather – Jack – had been born into a family of nine, and we purchased it from my grandfather’s nephew Denny Witt. The house was very cheap because it was on the slum clearance list but it was a lot better than the rooms we had been living in, even with an outside toilet and no bath.

There were just two small bedrooms upstairs and two small rooms downstairs. In my grandfather’s time, the front room was kept immaculate in case there might be a visitor and the sleeping was segregated, until Uncle Harry came back from the Boer War when he was not allowed to sleep with the other boys. For reasons left unexplained, he was banished to the front room and told he had better get married sharpish – which he did.

I first met my neighbour Mrs Johnson when gardening in the front of the house. I said ‘Morning,’ but there came no reply.‘What a nasty woman’ I thought, yet worse was to come. Mrs Johnson lived at the end of the street and two doors away lived a vague relative of hers who was married to an alcoholic. ‘She picked ‘im up in Jersey,’ I was told. He drank half bottles of whisky and rum, and threw the empties into the graveyard at the back of our houses – sometimes when they were half full.

I would often go to our outside toilet in socks and, on one occasion, nearly stepped upon pieces of broken glass that had been thrown into our backyard. At first, I assumed it was Paul – the graveyard keeper – and went straight round to his house in Alderney St. I nearly knocked his door down and was ready to flatten him, until he became very apologetic and explained that Mrs Johnson had told him we were students and always having parties. True in the first count, lies in the second. Mrs Johnson knew quite well who the culprit was, as did the everyone else in street. I was still angry, so I threw the glass back where it came from  - which must have been a real chore to clear up on the other side

Sometime after all these events, Jane Plumtree – a barrister – moved into the street. She said ‘We must have street parties!’ and so we did. At the first of these, the longest established families in the street all had to sit together and – unfortunately – I was sat next to Mrs Johnson. She hissed and fumed, and turned her back on me as much as she could, until suddenly she turned to face me and said, ‘I knew your grandfather J-a–c—k, he came b-a–c—k!’ She spat the words out. I did not know what she was talking about so I just said, ‘Yes, he was a drayman.’

Later, I reported it over the phone to my Auntie Ethel. ‘Oh yes,’ she explained, ‘Mrs Johnson had three brothers and, when the First World War broke out, they thought it was going to be a splendid jolly. They signed up at once, even though two were under-age, and they were all dead in three months.’ Unlike my grandfather Jack, who came back.

Jack was married and living in Ewing St with his five children, but he was called up immediately war was declared because had been in the Territorial Army. He was present at almost every major piece of action throughout the First World War and, at some point, while driving an ammunition lorry, he got into the back and rolled a cigarette when there was no one around. He got caught and was sentenced to be shot, but – fortunately – someone piped up and declared they did not have enough drivers, so his punishment was reduced to six weeks loss of pay, which made my grandmother – to whom the money was due – furious!

When Jack and the other troops with him came under fire in a French village, he and an Irish soldier broke into a music shop for cover. On the wall was a silver trumpet which Jack grabbed at once, but his Irish companion grabbed the mouthpiece and would not let Jack have it unless he went into the street, amid the falling shells, to play. Reluctantly, Jack did this – playing extremely fast – and he brought the trumpet home with him to the East End.”

19 Mile End Place

Philip’s grandfather Jack was born at 19 Mile End Place

View from 19 Mile End Place

Philip purchased 19 Mile End Place from his cousin Danny Witt, photographed during World War II

Outside toilet at 19 Mile End Place

Backyard at 19 Mile End Place

View towards the Alderney Cemetery with the keeper’s house in the distance

Paul Campkin, the Cemetery Keeper

The Alderney Cemetery

Looking out towards Mile End Rd

Entrance to Mile End Place from Mile End Rd

Photographs copyright © Philip Cunningham

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I am grateful to John Foreman, Folk Singer and Printer of the Catnap Press in Camden Town, also known as The Broadsheet King, who kindly sent me his reprint of The New Christmas Dinner Song as originally published by Taylor of Brick Lane in the nineteenth century

John Foreman, The Broadsheet King

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Longer ago than I care to admit, fortune led me to an old theatre in the Highlands of Scotland. Only now am I able to reveal some of my experiences there and you will appreciate that discretion prevents me publishing any names lest those who are still alive may read my account.

It was a magnificent nineteenth century theatre, adorned with gilt and decorative plasterwork. Since this luxurious auditorium with boxes, red drapes and velvet seating was quite at odds with the austere stone buildings of the town, it held a cherished place in the affections of local theatregoers who crowded the foyers nightly, seeking drama and delight.

Although it is inexplicable to me now, at that time in my life I was stage struck and entirely in thrall to the romance of theatre. Perhaps it was because of my grandfather the conjurer who died before I was born? Or my love of puppets and toy theatres as a child? When I left college at the beginning of my twenties, I refused to return home again and I did not know how to make my way in London. So I was overjoyed when I landed a job at a theatre in the north of Scotland. I packed my possessions in cardboard boxes, took the overnight train and arrived in the frosty dawn to commence my adult life.

As soon as it was discovered I had a literary education, I was assigned the task of organising the script and writing the ‘poetry’ for the annual pantomime, which that year was Dick Whittington. In the theatre safe I found a stash of tattered typescripts dating back over a century, rewritten each time they were performed. These documents were fascinating yet barely intelligible, and filled with gaps where comedians would supply their own patter. I discovered that the immortals, in this case Fairy Bow Bells and Old King Rat, spoke in rhyming couplets. Yet to my heightened critical faculties, weaned on Shakespeare and Chaucer, these examples were lame. So I resolved to write better ones and set to work at once.

Fairy Bow Bells:

In the deepest, bleakest Wintertime,

I welcome you to Pantomime.

Here is Colour! Here is Magic!

Here is Love and naught that’s Tragic.

‘You are here to learn the art of compromise, and how to pour a decent gin and tonic, darling,’ the director informed me at commencement with a significant nod of amusement when I submitted my work. I tried to raise an amenable smile as I served the drinks, but it was a line delivered primarily for the benefit of the principals gathered in the tiny office for a production meeting. These were veterans of musical comedy and summer variety who played pantomime every year, forceful personalities who each brought demands and expectations in proportion to their place in the professional hierarchy, with the ageing comedian playing Dame Fitzwarren as the star. Next came the cabaret singer and dancer playing Dick Whittington and then the television personality playing Tommy the Cat.

It was my responsibility to manage auditions for the chorus of boy and girl dancers, sifting through thousands of curriculum vitae and head-shots to select the most promising candidates. Those granted the opportunity were given ten minutes to impress the musical director and the choreographer with a show tune and a short dance sequence. Shepherding them in and out of the room and handling their raw emotions proved a challenge when they lost their voices, broke into tears or forgot their routines – or all of these.

The cast convened for a read-through in the low-ceilinged rehearsal room in a portacabin in the theatre car park. Once everyone had shaken hands and a cloud of tobacco filled the room, the director wished everyone good luck and, turning to me before leaving the room, declared loudly ‘Don’t worry, darling, they know what to do!’, employing the same significant nod I had seen in the production meeting and catching the eye of each of the principals again.

We all sat down, I handed round the scripts and the cast turned to the first page. The principals gasped in horror, exchanging glances of disbelief and reaching for their cigarettes in alarm. Dame Fitzwarren blushed, tore out a handful of pages and spread them out on the table, muttering, ‘No, no, no,’ to himself in condemnation. I sat in humiliated silence as, in the ensuing half hour, my sequence of pages was entirely rearranged with some volatile horse trading and angry words. Was this the art of compromise the director had referred to? I had organised the scenes in order of the story – no-one had explained to me that in pantomime the sequence of opening scenes are a device to introduce the principals in order of status from the newcomers to the seasoned stars. Yet even if I had understood this, it would have made little difference since the cast were all unknown to me.

On the second day, the floor of the portacabin was marked with coloured tapes which indicated the placing of the scenery and it was my job to take the cast through their moves. Dame Fitzwarren was keen to teach his comedy kitchen sequence to the two young actors playing the broker’s men. Once he had walked them through, I suggested we should give it a go. ‘No,’ he said, ‘That was it, we did it.’ I understood that, in pantomime, comedians only rehearse their sequences once as a matter of honour.

The little theatre owed its existence to the wealth of the whisky distilleries which comprised the main industry in the town and many of the directors of these distilleries were members of the theatre board. In particular, I remember a diminutive fellow who made up for his lack of height with an abrasive nature. He confronted me on the opening night, asking ‘Is this going to be good, laddie?’ My timid reply was, ‘It’s not for me say, is it?’ ‘It had better be good because your career depends upon it,’ was his harsh response, poking me in the gut with his finger.

In fact, Dick Whittington – in common with all the pantomimes at that theatre – was a tremendous success, playing to packed houses from mid-December until the end of January. The frantic energy of the cast was winning and the production suited the mechanics of the building beautifully, with brightly coloured flying scenery, drop-cloths and gauzes. The audience gasped in wonder when Fairy Bow Bells waved her wand to conjure the transformation scene and booed in delight when Old King Rat popped up through a trap door in a puff of smoke. They loved the familiar faces of the comedians and laughed at their routines, even if they were not actually funny.

Given the punishing routine of three shows a day, the collective boredom of the run and the fact that they were away from home, the pantomime cast occupied themselves with a rollercoaster of affairs and liaisons which only drew to an end at the final curtain. Once Dick Whittington unexpectedly stuck her tongue down my throat in the backstage corridor on New Year’s Eve and Dame Fitzwarren locked the door of the star dressing room from the inside, subjecting me to his wandering hands when I came to discuss potential cuts in the light of the stage manager’s timings. I found myself entering and leaving the building through the warren of staircases and exit doors in order to avoid unwanted attention of this nature. The gender reversals and skimpy costumes contributed to an uncomfortably sexualised environment which found its expression on stage in the relentless innuendo and lewd references, all within an entertainment supposedly directed at children. ‘Thirty miles to London and no sign of Dick yet!’

I shall never forget the musical director rehearsing the little girls in tutus from a local stage school who supplied us with choruses of sylphs on a rota to accompany Fairy Bow Bells. ‘Come along, girls,’ he instructed the children, thrusting his chest forward and baring his dentures in a frozen smile of enthusiasm,’ Tits and teeth, tits and teeth,’ using the same exhortation he gave to the adult dancers.

Our version of Dick Whittington contained an underwater sequence, when Dick’s ship was wrecked, permitting the characters to ‘swim’ through a deep sea world which was given greater reality by the use of ultra-violet light and projecting an aquarium film onto a gauze. This was also the moment in the show when we undertook a chase through the audience, weaving along the rows. Drawing on the familiar tradition of pantomime cows and horses – and perhaps inspired by the predatory nature of the environment – I devised the notion of a pantomime shark in a foam rubber costume that could chase the characters through the front stalls and around the circle to the accompaniment of the theme from Jaws. I had no idea of the pandemonium that this would unleash but, each night, I made a point of popping in to stand at the back to enjoy the mass-hysteria engendered by my shark.

The actor playing Old King Rat had previously been cast as Adolphus Cousins in Major Barbara, so I decided to exploit his classical technique by writing a death speech for him. It was something that had never been done before and this is the speech I wrote.

Old King Rat:

This is the death of Old King Rat,

Foiled at last by Tommy the Cat.

No more nibbles, no more creeping,

No more fun now all is sleeping.

This is the instant at which I die,

Off to that rathole in the sky…

Naturally this was accompanied by extended death-throes, with King Rat expiring and getting up again several times. Later, I learnt my speech had been pirated by other productions of Dick Whittington, which is the greatest accolade in pantomime. Maybe it is even now being performed somewhere this season?

In subsequent years, I was involved in productions of Cinderella and Aladdin, but strangely I recall little of these. I did not realise I was participating in the final years of a continuous theatrical tradition which had survived over a century in that theatrical backwater. I did not keep copies of the scripts and the fragments above are all I can remember now. I do not know if I learnt the art of compromise but I certainly learnt how to pour a stiff gin and tonic. And I learnt that in any theatre there is always more drama offstage than onstage.

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The Gentle Author’s Childhood Christmas

On Boxing Day, we remember our dearly beloved Viscountess Boudica of Bethnal Green

Let it be said that if anyone in the East End knew how to keep the spirit of Christmas, it was the Viscountess Boudica of Bethnal Green. At this time of year, her tiny flat near Columbia Rd was transformed into a secret Winter Wonderland where the visitor might forget the chill of the gloomy streets outside and enter a realm of magic, fantasy and romance in which the Viscountess held court like a benevolent sprite or fairy godmother, celebrating the season of goodwill in her own inimitable style.

Boudica had already been at work for weeks when I arrived with my camera to capture the Christmas spectacle for your delight, yet she was still putting the finishing touches to her display even as I walked through the door. “You see these bells?” she said, reaching up to add them to the colourful forest of paper decorations suspended from the ceiling, “I bought them in Woolworths  in Tottenham for 45p in 1984. When I think of all the people they have looked down upon – if only these bells could talk, they’ve seen it all!”

Evidence of the season was apparent wherever I turned my eyes, from the illuminated coloured trees that filled each corner – giving the impression that the room was actually a woodland glade – to the table where Boudica was wrapping her gifts and writing cards, to the corner where a stack of festive records awaited her selection, to the innumerable Christmas knick-knacks and figures that crowded every surface, and the light-up reindeer outside in the garden, glimpsed discreetly through the net curtains. “This is thirty years worth of collecting,” she explained, gesturing to the magnificent display enfolding us, “that set of lights is older than I am.”

In common with many, this is an equivocal time for Viscountess Boudica who does not have happy childhood memories of Christmas. ”It was hell,” she admitted to me frankly, “We didn’t have any money to buy presents and, in our family, Christmas was always when fights and arguments would break out. The reason I have so many decorations now is to make up for all the years when I didn’t have any.” Yet Boudica remembers small acts of kindness too. ”The local shops used to save me their balloons and give me scraps of fabric that I used to make clothes for the kittens in the barn – and that was the beginning of me making my own outfits,” she recalled fondly.

“People should remember what it’s all about,” Boudica assured me, linking her own childhood with the Christian narrative, “It’s about a little boy who didn’t have a home. They should think of others and remember there’s poor people here in Bethnal Green.” Naturally, I asked the Viscountess if she had a Christmas message for the world and, without a second thought, she came to back to me with her declaration –  ”Be kind to each other and get rid of discrimination!”

Boudica contemplates her Christmas listening – will it be Andy Williams or Jim Reeves this year?

“Whenever I hang up these bells, I think of all the people they have looked down upon over the years”

Wrapping up her gifts.

Filling her stocking

Nollaig Shona Dhaoibh!

Drawings copyright © Viscountess Boudica

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Viscountess Boudica’s Domestic Appliances

Viscountess Boudica’s Drawings

Viscountess Boudica’s Blog

Viscountess Boudica’s Album

Viscountess Boudica’s Halloween

Viscountess Boudica’s Valentine’s Day

The Departure of Viscountess Boudica

Read my original profile of Mark Petty, Trendsetter

and take a look at Mark Petty’s Multicoloured Coats

Mark Petty’s New Outfits

Mark Petty returns to Brick Lane

I discovered my delight in the work of illustrator Fritz Wegner (1924-2015) in primary school through his drawings for Fattypuffs & Thinifers by Andrew Maurois. Throughout my childhood, I cherished his book illustrations whenever I came across them and the love of his charismatically idiosyncratic sketchy line has stayed with me ever since.

Only recently have I learnt that Fritz Wegner was born into a Jewish family in Vienna and severely beaten by a Nazi-supporting teacher for a caricature he drew of Adolf Hitler at the age of thirteen. To escape, his family sent him alone to London in August 1938 where he was offered a scholarship at St Martin’s School of Art at fourteen years old, even though he could barely speak English.

A few years ago, I came across this set of small souvenir Christmas plates Fritz Wegner designed for Fleetwood of Wyoming between 1980 and 1983 in limited editions, which I acquired for almost nothing. They are crudely produced, not unlike those ceramics sold in copyshops with photographic transfers, yet this cheap mass-produced quality endears them to me and I set them out on the dresser every Christmas with fondness.

Journey to Bethlehem, 1983

The Shepherds, 1982

The Holy Child, 1981

The Magi, 1980

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Charles Keeping, Illustrator

Click on this image to enlarge

Inspired by this plate of engravings of East End churches in Chamberlain’s History of London, 1770, that I found in the Bishopsgate Institute, I was inspired to set out on a seasonal walk yesterday to enjoy the winter sunshine and visit these enduring sentinels of the East End. Yet I found myself disappointed upon my journey by the recent loss of characterful landmarks, even as I took consolation from those that survive.

St Anne’s Limehouse

Revelopment of Passmore Edwards Library, Commercial Rd

I wonder how long Callegari’s Restaurant will last?

Imminent facadism on White Horse Lane

The White Horse is gone from White Horse Lane

St Dunstan’s, Stepney

Old Mulberry Tree in St Dunstan’s Churchyard

Tower DIY in Commercial Rd is being redeveloped

St Paul’s the Seaman’s Church, Shadwell

The Old Rose is the last pub standing in the Ratcliff Highway

St George in the East, Wapping

St John’s, Wapping

Board School 1780, Wapping

St Mathew’s, Bethnal Green

Archive images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute

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Nicholas Hawksmoor’s Churches

Dave opening up at 7am for the last time at Liverpool St

Just a couple of years ago, there were five places to get your shoes repaired at Liverpool St Station. I barely noticed when the first three disappeared because I always took my shoes to Dave Williams at his booth in Liverpool St. When Dave told he was quitting on the Friday before Christmas prior to the redevelopment of the terrace, I learned that he would leave only his brother-in-law Gary Parsons at Shoe Care – round the corner in the Liverpool St Arcade – as the last man standing. Yet he has also been given notice because his booth is being redeveloped in a year’s time. These are truly the last days of Shoe Repair at Liverpool St Station.

‘I asked about coming back but they don’t want me back, they told me it’s going to be high end only,’ Dave admitted with a frown of disappointment as he swept the pavement outside his shop. For the past twenty years, he has been repairing shoes from seven until six for five days a week at Liverpool St, supplying a vital service with astonishing resilience.

In the week before Christmas, I accompanied Dave through his last days, arriving when he was opening up and sitting in the corner of the booth to observe the rhythm of the day as dawn broke and dusk fell again, as the rush hour ebbed and flowed, as customers brought worn shoes and collected them repaired.

With feverish expertise, Dave worked constantly, repairing several pairs at once – as many as fifty in a day – hammering, sanding, gluing, cutting, spraying and polishing. While waiting for the glue to dry on one pair, he would be tearing the old sole off another and then trimming the new sole once it adhered. Keeping his head down and his eyes on the task, Dave was absorbed in his activity yet maintained a constant stream of banter, thinking out loud. Three generations of skill and craft, and over a century of hard work, culminated in this degree of accomplishment which met its end last week.

In Dave’s stream of thought, those who had gone remained present. ‘My brother-in-law John Holding worked with me here for many years and never had a day off sick but then he went home one day, had a heart attack and died at forty-one,’ Dave confessed in sadness. I sat in the yellow glow of the booth as the afternoon light faded to blue outside where the taxis lined up. ‘They should switch their engines off but they all keep them running ,’ Dave commented over his shoulder, ‘It’s amazing I am still breathing, with the air quality in this booth.’

Dave was constantly interrupted, ceasing work in an instant and emerging from behind the counter to greet each customer and hear their request. There was an intimacy to these conversations, admissions of human failing and fallibility expressed in terms of shoes. Reliably and with magnanimity, Dave delivered his panacea to the worn-out soles of City workers, returning their shoes shining like new. I learned there are many who share the sense of consolation I draw from getting my shoes repaired. In the anonymous City where thousands pass by, the repair booth is an unlikely haven of kindness.

Consequently there were gasps of alarm and disbelief when Dave told his longterm customers of his imminent departure. An accumulating stream of gifts passed over the counter as the week passed away. ‘So many bottles, I could open a bar,’ quipped Dave as he stacked them at the back of the shop.

Dave’s emotions were equivocal. He was angry at the loss of his business, being pushed out by landlords with the insult of replacing his necessary trade by ‘high end’ retail. A community of long-standing small traders in this terrace at Liverpool St, including a jeweller, a barber and a lawyer is no more. Yet after decades of early mornings and long days, Dave is relieved to take a break too. I witnessed these conflicting feelings tempered with visible delight at the appreciation shown by his many long-standing customers. It was a poignant spectacle.

As people came and went, Dave revealed his family history in the business and his plans for the immediate future.

‘My grandfather Henry Alexander Williams was a saddler from Limerick who served in the British army in the First World War. His son Norman, my dad, was born in Ireland and trained as a saddler too but he settled here in the forties. Saddlers and shoe repairers work with the same tools, so he set up as a shoe repairer in Watney St Market and I am the only one of the grandsons who continued with it. Watney St Market was a different place thirty-five years ago, it was a lovely place to grow up.

I had a shop of my own in White Horse Lane and some other places around Stepney Green, but they demolished all the buildings and I could not make it pay. So I have been here since 1998 in Liverpool St, I have worked continuously and I have always made a living.

I do not know what I am going to do after this. My children are grown up, my mortgage is paid off and I have no debts. I have booked a couple of holidays, Jamaica in January, Marrakesh in February and then a wedding in Las Vegas. I will have a few months off. I will be glad of a rest. I would not have done more than another five or ten years if I had been given a choice.

Now it is coming to an end, I think ‘How tedious!’ How could I have been doing the same thing all this time? Yet I have really quite enjoyed it.’

‘You’ve just got to keep picking them up and putting them down’

‘I wouldn’t like to guess how many shoes I’ve done over the years’

‘How can I repay you? You saved my week!’

Until the end of 2019, you can still get your shoes repaired at Shoe Key Services in Liverpool St Arcade

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The Cobblers of Spitalfields