Anthropologist and Writer Delwar Hussain spoke to Lynda Ouazar who has been a running a food bank for some of the most needy people in London. Click here to support Lynda’s work

Portrait by Sarah Ainslie

Since the lockdown was announced five weeks ago, Lynda Ouazar and the network of volunteers she has assembled have been feeding hundreds of people, many of whom were starving and homeless. Working from a small community centre in Shoreditch, her team have packed up bags of fresh vegetables, pasta, lentils, cans of tuna, bread, flour, onions, potatoes, cooking oil, tea and coffee. Volunteer motorbike drivers delivered these food parcels to homes across London.

This was until earlier this week when a police raid at the community centre meant they had to leave. Thanks to Jonathan Moberley, one of the other volunteers, they now find themselves at what they hope is a more secure base in Toynbee Hall where they can continue their work undeterred. When I spoke to Lynda on her mobile phone, they had just moved in.

‘When we first started, some people were close to starving,’ Lynda explained to me. ‘They were really struggling. Before we got the delivery drivers organised, some people didn’t even have the money to travel to get the food from us. Now a number of those people that we helped have become volunteers themselves.”

The people that Lynda and the other volunteers are feeding are those who have lost their jobs due to the pandemic. Many have no legal status in this country and are not entitled to any benefits. Having worked mainly cash-in-hand, neither are they eligible for the furlough scheme. Their precarious position also means that despite government calls to landlords not to evict tenants during the lockdown, that is precisely what many have faced.

Though apprehensive and anxious about further attempts by the Home Office and the police to disrupt what they are doing, Lynda and her volunteers’ priority is to feed people in need, rather than judging their legal status.

These are people we all know. They are the people who clean our offices and homes, they drive taxis, they cook and serve food to us in restaurants and cafes, they deliver our parcels, and wash our cars. With them, we have a functioning city but, without them, the city comes to a standstill. We are all co-dependent upon each other, and in these times of the pandemic, such people are not only falling through the gaps, but they are falling fast and hard.

Lynda delivers food to one flat, which itself has become a sanctuary to fourteen others who are out of work, unable to pay their rents and now homeless. She told me of another example of a man who was discharged from two weeks in hospital only to return to his room and find that he had been evicted. There are those who live in places with no kitchens, so they have to be given food they can eat without the need for cooking. ‘Are they able to cook?’ – this is one of the first questions volunteers ask when people get in touch.

Lynda has many more examples like this, not only revealing the conditions under which people are surviving but also that they have always lived precariously. The virus has lifted the lid on the recesses and corners of our city and the neo-liberal society we inhabited.

Lynda’s operation is simple, using the money people donate to buy food in bulk and distribute it. Also local businesses are donating supplies. Those who need food either self-refer or – crucially – others do it on their behalf. Asking for food is humiliating for working people who are used to relying on themselves, who most often work in more than one job, often throughout the day and night and in uncertain, unsafe and exploitative situations.

When Lynda talked about her children, I enquired whether she is worried about catching the virus. “People told me to stay at home, why give myself the hassle of doing this?’ she replied. ‘But someone has to do it. I find it hard not to get involved. I am now working seven days a week on this. You won’t believe it but, when the virus first started, I was one of those parents that took my children out of school before they were officially closed. I was that scared for them. But then I forgot all about that fear because, for me, people in this city starving is so much more frightening. It’s a different level of fear to the one I had about the virus. Getting sick from Corona is a risk, but the situation these people find themselves in is worse. The question they are asking themselves is ‘Do you want to die of Corona or do you want to starve to death?’ And that’s not right.”

Jonathan Moberley and Lynda Ouazar

Kamil

Unloading cartons of flour at Toynbee Hall

Lynda, Jonathan & Kamil

Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie

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Last autumn, it was my great delight to accompany Matthew Slocombe, Director of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, to visit an unspoilt fifteenth century cottage on the Pilgrim’s Way in Kent that the Society has rescued from decades of neglect. Their founder William Morris would be proud because it is exactly the kind of rural dwelling that he dreamed of in his wistful lyric visions of old England.

Over the next five years, the Society will be repairing the cottage, using traditional building techniques and skilled craftsmen, to make it habitable again and I hope to publish reports on their progress. In the meantime, you can read my full account of the extraordinary history of this enchanted building, with photographs by Antony Crolla, in the June issue of World of Interiors which is out now.

Click here to get a year’s subscription to World of Interiors for just £12 starting with the June issue.

St Andrew’s Chapel in 1911  (Courtesy of Maidstone Museum)

TUESDAY 6th OCTOBER is the new date for the commencement of the PUBLIC INQUIRY into the future of the WHITECHAPEL BELL FOUNDRY called by Secretary of State.

We are delighted that this Public Inquiry is going ahead because the Whitechapel Bell Foundry is a priceless cultural treasure of global significance that must be saved. For several years now, we have been campaigning for it to continue as a proper working foundry rather than the developer’s proposal for bell-themed boutique hotel.

The UK Historic Building Preservation Trust (now known as Re-Form Heritage) is offering to buy the foundry from the developers at market value and re-open it to as a fully operational foundry to cast bells in the East End in perpetuity, just as it has done for over five hundred years.

By definition, a Public Inquiry is open to all. Please put the date in your diary now because it very important that as many people as possible turn up to demonstrate the strength of public opinion to the Government Inspector. This is our one chance to save the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, so we hope all community and cultural groups in the East End will send representatives and take advantage of the opportunity offered by the Public Inquiry to read a statement on behalf of their members.

Commencing at 10am on 6th October, the Public Inquiry will run for eight days and take place under socially-distanced conditions.

Email Development.Control@TowerHamlets.gov.uk to get details and attend. Also please say if you want to speak, either as an individual or as a representative of a group.

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Whenever I used to visit collector Mike Henbrey, he always showed me something extraordinary from his collection and he certainly did not disappoint when he pulled two volumes of Kirby’s Eccentric Museum from the shelf for me to take a look

John Biggs was born in 1629 and lived in Denton in the county of Bucks in a cave

This wonderful boy, who in early age outstripped all former calculators, was born in Morton Hampstead on 14th June 1806

In Mme Lefort the sexes are so equally blended that it is impossible to say which has predominance

This gentleman was a bookseller in Upper Marylebone St, remembered today as Shelley’s bookseller

The parachute here represented was used by Monsieur Garnerin at his ascension in London

Thomas Cooke was born in 1726 at Clewer near Windsor as the son of an itinerant fiddler

Robert Coates Esq, commonly called ‘The Amateur of Fashion’

The giant Basilio Huaylas came in May 1792 from the town of Joa to Lima and publicly exhibited himself

Mr James Toller and Mr Simon Paap are presumed to be the tallest shortest men in the kingdom

Miss McAvoy, who distinguished colours by the touch, was born in Liverpool on 28th June 1800

Mr Hermans Bras, designated the gigantic Prussian Youth, was born at Tecklenbourg in 1801

Thomas Laugher, aged 111 years, and known by the name of Old Tommy

Petratsch Zortan in the 185th year of his age, he died on 5th January 1724

John Rovin in the 172nd & Sarah his wife in the 164th year of their respective ages

The turnip represented in the plate grew in 1628

The parsnip here represented grew in 1742

The radish here represented was  found in 1557 in Haarlem

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Contributing Cartographer Adam Dant has kept himself occupied during the lockdown by drawing this map of contagion in the capital

Click to enlarge

ADAM DANT INTRODUCES HIS VIRAL LONDON MAP

“In my studio next to Liverpool St Station, I was colouring a busy cityscape of Leicester Sq. The drawing was finished in early March but, looking at it now, it struck me that I had created a scene I may not encounter again for a long time – a panorama from a pre-Coronavirus age.

My Viral London is a cartographic representation of how the capital has been assaulted by epidemics throughout history. From the plague of 664AD which struck monastic communities, destabilised the church, to the AIDS crisis and ‘The London Patient’ who was the second case to be cured.

The effect of fifteen hundred years of epidemics, transforming Londoners’ behaviour and their landscape, is characterised not by major social projects but by incidents that are commonly anecdotal and poignant. Walking home through a deserted City of London by night, the narrator of Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of The Plague Year, witnesses a woman open her window to cry, ‘Death, Death, Death!’. Erasmus, visiting London during an outbreak of the Sweyting Sickness, was too scared to enter his lodgings to collect his boots for fear of catching the illness. In 1918, Londoners celebrating the Armistice were unaware that the deadly Spanish Flu was being spread amongst the revellers.

I started wondering how pandemics might have coloured the sensibilities of artists in the past. We always imagine life was much nastier back then.

Many of my artistic predecessors witnessed episodes of viral assault. Brueghel’s The Triumph of Death is underpinned by the ever present risk of plague, Hollar engraved views of London before and after the Great Fire which had followed the pestilence like a purgative, and no Renaissance artist working in Venice was ever safe from the French Pox, also known as Neapolitan bone-ache or syphilis, to give its modern name. Among those paintings by Canaletto teeming with people, La Serenissima contains a masked and wigged figure wearing a beaked mask filled with herbs to ward off the pestilence.

I am wondering if my depictions of packed public spaces will serve as perpetual descriptions of ‘how we used to be’ and whether I should now be drawing more classical crowd scenes in which figures waft past each other at arms’ length, with a courtly grace conferring mandatory social distancing.

Perhaps Leicester Sq, Sloane Sq, Berkley Sq, the Royal Exchange or any of the other teeming centres of life that I have portrayed may never appear the same again after the war on Covid-19, any more than they did after the Blitz?”

Adam Dant’s Viral London Map was commissioned by The Critic

CLICK TO ORDER A 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 Contributing Cartographer 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 London’s 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 including the VIRAL LONDON MAP are available to purchase through TAG Fine Arts

Once, every household in London possessed an ale jug, in the days before it was safe to drink water or tea became widely affordable. These cheaply-produced salt-glazed stoneware items, that could be bought for a shilling or less, were prized for their sprigged decoration and often painstakingly repaired to extend their lives, and even prized for their visual appeal when broken and no longer of use.

All these jugs from the collection of Philip Mernick were produced in Mortlake, when potteries were being set up around London to supply the growing market for these household wares throughout the eighteenth century. The first of the Mortlake potteries was begun by John Sanders and taken over by his son William Sanders in 1745, while the second was opened by Benjamin Kishere who had worked for Sanders, and this was taken over by his son William Kishere in 1834.

These jugs appeal to me with their rich brown colouration that evokes the tones of crusty bread and their lively intricate decoration, mixing images of English country life with Classical motifs reminiscent of Wedgwood. Eighteenth-century Mortlake jugs are distinguished by the attenuated baluster shape that follows the form of ceramics in the medieval world yet is replaced in the early-nineteenth century by the more bulbous form of a jug which is still common today.

There is an attractive organic quality to these highly-wrought yet utilitarian artefacts, encrusted with decorative sprigs like barnacles upon a ship’s hull. They were once universally-familiar objects in homes and ale houses, and in daily use by Londoners of all classes.

1790s ale jug repaired with brass handle and engraved steel rim

A panel of “The Midnight Conversation” after a print by Hogarth

Classical motifs mixed with rural images

A panel of “Cupid’s Procession”

A woman on horseback portrayed on this jug

Agricultural implements and women riders

Toby Fillpot

Panel of Racehorses

Cupid’s procession with George III & Queen Charlotte and Prince of Wales & Caroline of Brunswick

Panel of “Cockerell on the Dungheap”

Panel of “The Two Boors”

Square- based jug of 1800/1810

Toby Fillpot

William Kishere, Pottery Mortlake, Surrey

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William Morris spoke at Speakers’ Corner in Victoria Park on 26th July & 11th October 1885, 8th August 1886, 27th March & 21st May 1888

If you spotted someone hauling an old wooden Spitalfields Market orange crate around the East End, that was me undertaking a pilgrimage to some of the places William Morris spoke in the hope he might return for one last oration.

The presence of William Morris in the East End is almost forgotten today. Yet he took the District Line from his home in Hammersmith regularly to speak here through the last years of his life, despite persistent ill-health. Ultimately disappointed that the production of his own designs had catered only to the rich, Morris dedicated himself increasingly to politics and in 1884 he became editor of The Commonweal, newspaper of the Socialist League, using the coach house at Kelsmcott House in Hammersmith as its headquarters.

As an activist, Morris spoke at the funeral of Alfred Linnell, who was killed by police during a free speech rally in Trafalgar Sq in 1887, on behalf of the Match Girls’ Strike in 1888 and in the Dock Strike of 1889. His final appearance in the East End was on Mile End Waste on 1st November 1890, on which occasion he spoke at a protest against the brutal treatment of Jewish people in Russia.

When William Morris died of tuberculosis in 1896, his doctor said, ‘he died a victim to his enthusiasm for spreading the principles of Socialism.’ Morris deserves to be remembered for his commitment to the people of the East End in those years of political turmoil as for the first time unions struggled to assert the right to seek justice for their workers.

8th April 1884, St Jude’s Church, Commercial St – Morris gave a speech at the opening of the annual art exhibition on behalf of Vicar Samuel Barnett who subsequently founded Toynbee Hall and the Whitechapel Gallery.

During 1885, volunteers distributed William Morris’ What Socialists Want outside the Salmon & Ball in Bethnal Green

1st September 1885, 103 Mile End Rd

20th September 1885, Dod St, Limehouse – When police launched a violent attack on speakers of the Socialist League who defended the right to free speech at this traditional spot for open air meetings, William Morris spoke on their behalf in court on 22nd September in Stepney.

10th November 1886 & 3rd July 1887, Broadway, London Fields

November 20th 1887, Bow Cemetery – Morris spoke at the burial of Alfred Linnell, a clerk who was killed by police during a free speech rally in Trafalgar Sq. ‘Our friend who lies here has had a hard life and met with a hard death, and if our society had been constituted differently his life might have been a delightful one. We are engaged in a most holy war, trying to prevent our rulers making this great town of London into nothing more than a prison.’

9th April 1889, Toynbee Hall, Commercial St – Morris gave a magic lantern show on the subject of ‘Gothic Architecture’

1st November 1890, Mile End Waste – Morris spoke in protest against the persecution of Jews in Russia

William Morris in the East End

3rd January & 27th April 1884, Tee-To-Tum Coffee House, 166 Bethnal Green Rd

8th April 1884, St Jude’s Church, Commercial St

29th October 1884, Dod St, Limehouse

9th November 1884, 13 Redman’s Row

11th January & 12th April 1885, Hoxton Academy Schools

29th March 24th May 1885, Stepney Socialist League,  110 White Horse St

26th July & 11th October 1885, Victoria Park

8th August 1885, Socialist League Stratford

16th August 1885, Exchange Coffee House, Pitfield St, Hoxton

1st September 1885, Swaby’s Coffee House, 103 Mile End Rd

22nd September 1885, Thames Police court, Stepney (Before Magistrate Sanders)

24th January 1886, Hackney Branch Rooms, 21 Audrey St, Hackney Rd

2nd February 1886, International Working Men’s Educational Club, 40 Berners St

5th June 1886, Socialist League Stratford

11th July 1886, Hoxton Branch of the Socialist League, 2 Crondel St

24th August 1886, Socialist League Mile End Branch, 108 Bridge St

13th October 1886, Congregational Schools, Swanscombe St, Barking Rd

10th November 1886, Broadway, London Fields

6th March 1887, Hoxton Branch of the Socialist League, 2 Crondel St

13th March & 12th June 1887, Hackney Branch Rooms, 21 Audrey St, Hackney Rd

27th March 1887, Borough of Hackney Club, Haggerston

27th March, 21st May, 23rd July, 21st August & 11th September, 1887 Victoria Park

24th April 1887, Morley Coffee Tavern Lecture Hall, Mare St

3rd July 1887, Broadway, London Fields

21st August 1887, Globe Coffee House, High St, Hoxton

25th September 1887, Hoxton Church

27th September 1887, Mile End Waste

18th December 1887, Bow Cemetery, Southern Grove

17th April 1888, Mile End Socialist Hall, 95 Boston St

17th April 1888, Working Men’s Radical Club, 108 Bridge St, Burdett Rd

16th June 1888, International Club, 23 Princes Sq, Cable St

17th June 1888, Victoria Park

30th June 1888, Epping Forest Picnic

22nd September 1888,  International Working Men’s Education Club, 40 Berners St

9th April 1889, Toynbee Hall, Commercial St

27th June 1889, New Labour Club, 5 Victoria Park Sq, Bethnal Green

8th June 1889, International Working Men’s Education Club, 40 Berners St

1st November 1890, Mile End Waste

This feature draws upon the research of Rosemary Taylor as published in her article in The Journal of William Morris Studies. Click here to join the William Morris Society

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During the lockdown, Dan Cruickshank has been using his daily exercise to make a detailed Survey of Spitalfields in collaboration with Alec Forshaw. Today Dan introduces his survey, aiming to draw attention to all the buildings and architectural features that define the nature of the place, yet which are often overlooked when it comes to listing, making them vulnerable to destruction by developers.

The Princess Alice, Commercial St

A battle is being waged to protect Spitalfields’ characterful, but mostly statutorily unprotected, late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century architecture. It is a strange experience walking the streets during the emptiness of the lockdown and in a light that is almost uncanny in its purity. Even the simplest buildings acquire a luminosity and a strangely monumental quality. The clarity of light has revealed these structures as heroic and often poetic architecture that contributes to the distinctive nature of the place.

Spitalfields Neighbourhood Planning Forum, which was made possible by the Localism Act of 2011, supports a community and conservation-led vision for the area. It has a vision that builds on, rather than obliterates, the qualities that make Spitafields unique, including its mixture of small-scale uses, its diversity and its residential character, as well as its historic architecture. So I am drawing up a list of what – in planners’ language – are called non-designated heritage assets. This means all unlisted but significant buildings, along with street furniture such as the array of nineteenth century bollards, signs, sewer vents, cobbles and granite kerbs – indeed everything that contributes to the character and appearance of Spitalfields.

My photograph of the superb Princess Alice public house – now renamed The Culpeper – which was built in 1883 in fine Gothic Revival style, illustrates the importance of this survey. Despite its panache, the pub is only locally listed – which means it has no statutory protection – whereas the adjoining eighteen-fifties commercial block is – quite rightly – nationally listed by Historic England, revealing that there is no consistency in the protection of Spitafields’ built heritage.

The Princess Alice public house was built by architect, Bruce J. Capell, an experienced pub designer who worked extensively for Truman’s Brewery. His design is erudite, delightful and on a key corner site does much to enliven this portion of Commercial St, confirming its status as one of London’s architecturally most significant Victorian thoroughfares.

While The Princess Alice is not protected, the adjoining eighteen-fifties commercial block is listed by Historic England.

There is a Spitalfields that is almost invisible, the late-Victorian commercial and industrial architecture is taken for granted and unappreciated by most. Few of these buildings are protected and all are at risk. Yet they form the fundamental historic fabric of the place and many are magnificent, heroic expressions of the utilitarian and functional tradition that distinguishes much of Britain’s nineteenth century industrial architecture. Others comprise fascinating essays in nineteenth century fashions for historic styles – Italianate, Flemish Renaissance Revival or Gothic. Commercial Street, cut through Spitalfields by the Metropolitan Board of Works from 1843 to 1857, is a treasure trove of such architecture. Little of it is listed and some of it is threatened with obliteration, as is the case of this splendid late eighteen-forties Italianate terrace, 2-4 Commercial St, at the south end.

This is a characterful group of late-nineteenth century buildings on Wentworth St, between Middlesex St and Bell Lane, opposite Goulston St. Their diverse architecture and eclectic mix of uses make this a fine example of the the type of unlisted buildings that are threatened by the advancing towers of the City of London.

These pale buildings in Wentworth St, with their almost ethereal upper storeys perched over a shuttered underworld of abandonment and imminent decay, appear as emblems of transience and death. They are a reminder of the sudden contrast and strange juxtaposition that distinguishes Spitalfields and defines its character. Perhaps nowhere is this sense of contrast more stark than in Wentworth St. By tradition, a lively market and commercial street, it was once the heartland of the late-nineteenth century Jewish community.

In 1892, Israel Zangwill, observed in Children of the Ghetto, that ‘..Wentworth St and Goulston St were  … in festival times … a pandemonium of caged poultry, clucking and quacking and screaming.’ In 1896, Henry Walker wrote his first impression of Wentworth St thus, ‘an almost impossible scene is before us. We seem to be in a world of dissolving views. We suddenly find ourselves in a foreign land … we might be in Warsaw or Cracow … Wentworth St is the market of the poorer immigrant Jews. It is the East London counterpart of the Continental Ghetto.’

These buildings are part of the architectural theatre of the area’s long-dispersed community of Jewish refugees escaping Tsarist persecution. Now they stand, unprotected and evidently vulnerable. Intensely melancholic, they are a memorial to a lost world.

The Ten Bells, at 84 Commercial St on the corner with Fournier St, is one of the area’s most-popular and best-known pubs. It dates from 1755 but was revamped and stuccoed in the mid-nineteenth century, and the bar was decorated with stylish tiles in the eighteen-nineties. While the pub is listed, the splendid mid-nineteenth century group to the left are not. Number 88, in the centre, is particularly fine with tall pilaster strips that evolve into giant arcading. This stripped-down classicism is typical of the often sublime mid-to-late-nineteenth century commercial and industrial buildings of Spitalfields and Shoreditch.

The centre of Commercial St was laid out between 1849 and 1857 on the site of ancient Red Lion St. This simple and civilised row of shops with living accommodation above was probably constructed in the late-eighteen fifties. They are generally well preserved, although some have lost their cornices, and are good examples of their date and type, but none are listed. In the foreground on the left is the remarkable Stapleton’s stable at 106 Commercial St which includes an interior court with a wide and shallow ramp serving several storeys of stabling. The ornate terracotta plaque states the that the stables were established in 1842, but the façade dates from the eighteen-nineties.

A recent proposal to convert the building into a series of bars and restaurants has been rejected by Tower Hamlets Council following strong local opposition. To many, there seem to be quite enough bars in Spitalfields already and this building stands at the edge of a residential area. Yet the scheme, which includes significant alterations to the interior, has been re–submitted. Meanwhile the Spitalfields Trust and others are pushing for Stapleton’s to be recommended for listing by Historic England. Will HE do the right thing? 

Number 148-150 Commercial St, probably dating from the eighteen-sixties, is an even more visually striking example of stripped-back commercial classicism. Its stucco cladding – which makes the composition even more  abstract – is perhaps later.  The strange austerity of the design is emphasised by its neighbours which are contemporary but more typically ornate and florid examples. To the right is a mid-eighteen sixties group that includes the splendid Commercial Tavern which is already listed. To the left is the former rectory of St. Stephen’s church, built in 1861 in fine Gothic style to the design of Ewan Christian. The church itself, which formerly stood next door is just one of Spitalfields many lost Victorian churches. It was replaced in the mid-thirties by a cinema, now converted into a hulking block of flats.

The contrast between the buildings in this group could not be more dramatic or telling. They offer a compressed history of the architecture and life of ninetieth and early-twentieth century Spitalfields – work, prayer, and entertainment all combined. These buildings are tremendously important, yet since only the Commercial Tavern is listed the rest have uncertain futures.

Many of the buildings in Commercial Street possess a sublime, almost abstract, power. Number 66-68, dating from the eighteen-fifties, is bold and functional in conception. The building is designed like a machine, with large windows illuminating work areas and a loading bay and crane. The only aesthetic concessions are a rugged cornice and serrations on the undersides of the window arches. This was just enough perhaps to raise the building to the poetic realm of architecture. This block demonstrates that austere and gaunt structures can possess an almost romantic beauty. It is a wonderful example of a visually-haunting architecture that so brilliantly captures the spirit of its age, even if the story of this architecture in Spitalfields has yet to be written and certainly yet to be fully appreciated or protected.

Detail from The Bell, a late-Victorian public house in Middlesex Street. The image of the bell doubles as a friendly, smiling, mustachioed and crowned head. Can this be a portrait or a punning rebus? Was the landlord of the pub named Bellamy or King? Such small details delight me and, although this pub is not statutorily protected, it will surely be on my list of non-designated heritage assets.

Photographs copyright © Dan Cruickshank

Click here to follow and contribute to Dan Cruickshank’s Survey of Spitalfields

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Readers are familiar with Doreen Fletcher‘s paintings of the East End that were published in a monograph by Spitalfields Life Books and exhibited with such success at the Nunnery Gallery last year. Today it is my pleasure to introduce you to a selection of her early paintings which originate from the Potteries where Doreen grew up. These pictures comprise a significant body of work, painted by Doreen in her teens and early twenties, which have never been see together before publicly.

Salvation Army Building, 1970 (Courtesy of Brampton Museum)

Brook St, 1975

“This was the very first urban oil painting I ever did. I was inspired by the fact that each time I returned to visit my parents, a little more of their environment had disappeared and I felt an urgent need to record what remained. I little realised at the time I had found both a subject and a content that would last a lifetime.”

Bungalow in Summertime, 1976

“When I painted this, I had already lived in London for two years with my boyfriend, an art student at Wimbledon. During the summers we decamped to our hometown of Newcastle-under-Lyme on his motorbike which I loved riding pillion. On summer evenings, we drove around the countryside, stopping for a drink at a country inn and savouring the contrast between our new, busy lifestyles in London and the peaceful country lanes we travelled.

One evening, I was taken aback to see a suburban bungalow in the middle of a field. It looked completely out of place and reminded me of the house where my great uncle lived in which the heavy oak furniture seemed out of scale in the small rooms. Due to this I had developed a prejudice against what I saw as ‘bungalow culture.’”

House in Whitfield Ave, 1977

“The house where I grew up was declared not fit for human habitation in 1974. My parents were happy to move into a council property they were offered across the road from this one. There was a huge garden with two greenhouses where my dad grew vegetables in regimented rows, with tomatoes and chrysanthemums. He was delighted, but my mother was lonely and missed the intimacy of the cramped streets with a shop on every corner near the town centre.”

The Albert, Liverpool Rd, 1977

Takeaway Chip Shop, 1979

“This is typical of chip shops dotted all over Newcastle and the Potteries where long queues would form at tea-time and again after the pubs had closed.”

Black & Yellow Door, 1980

“Notice the foot scraper that all terraced houses had in those days, for knocking off the clay from clogs and later Wellingtons. The bright colours of the paintwork were trendy in the early-mid seventies, as opposed to the dull browns, navy blues and maroons favoured in the fifties and sixties.”

Beats Grocers, 1980 (Courtesy Potteries Museum & Art Gallery)

Finesse Hair Salon, 1980

“Hairdressers such as this abounded in the sixties and many remain today. My mum went every Friday to have her hair ‘set’ and, twice a year, she subjected herself to the torture of strong-smelling perm lotion, with her hair screwed in rollers, then baked under a hairdryer for a couple of hours. As a result, she did not have much left of her once luxurious hair by the time she was fifty. I grew up fearful of these hairdressers and, to this day, I delay a haircut as long as possible.”

House with Pylon, 1980

Gardeners’ Hut, Westlands, 1980

11 Whitfield Avenue

Red House in Talke, 1980

“When I went on the bus with my mum to visit my gran at Talke  during the school holidays, we passed this house somewhere around Talke Pitts and, even amongst the red brick of the Midlands, it struck me as very red indeed. I must have been eight or nine but the memory of it remained and, when I went in search of it fifteen years later, I was delighted to find it was still standing.”

Sheldon’s Hair Salon, Knutton, 1982

“It is my mother who is looking in the window of Sheldon’s hairdressers and dress shop. She went once a week to have her hair ‘set.’ At that time, she was ten years younger than I am now but considered herself old at fifty-five and dressed accordingly. When I was a child, we used to take a walk each Sunday afternoon to places such as Knutton, a former mining village on the outskirts of Newcastle-under-Lyme. Even in such a small place, a shop like Sheldon’s could support its proprietors.”

Chatwins Bakers, 1982

“I painted this ten years after I left Newcastle and five years after I first envisaged it. 

Chatwins Bakery was a family business, alive and thriving today, having expanded from fresh bread baked daily by John Chatwin and sold by horse and cart to twenty shops throughout Staffordshire, Cheshire and North Wales.”

Wrights Grocers, 1982

“I painted this in the early eighties while I was living in Paddington but it recalls a corner shop in my hometown. In the background, a row of condemned houses awaits demolition and it is apparent the grocery store is not long for this world either. The goods it contains are typical of what was on offer in any small shop across the country.”

Church in Brampton, 1982

“Although I was sent to a strict Church of England Primary School, I have been a non-believer since the age of five and a committed atheist since I was twelve. In spite of this, the Methodist, puritanical blood runs deep in my veins and I have never been attracted to Baroque architecture preferring the severe Victorian architectural styles of Newcastle and Stoke.”

View from Clayton Fields, Newcastle-under-Lyme, 1985 (Courtesy of Brampton Museum)

“This was a commission from Newcastle Borough Council. I was asked to removed the green and white stripes on the side of one of the buildings in the distance because the Chief Executive considered them an eyesore.”

Tiffany Dance Hall, 1979

Tiffany’s at Night, 1988

“Tiffany’s in the early seventies was the centre of the universe. I went there on Saturday afternoons with my friend Janet and later we graduated to Wednesday evenings from 7pm-10pm. It was the only time in my life that I visited a Dance Hall, they have never interested me since”

Winter in the Park, 1989

“This is the sister painting to the ‘Gardeners’ Hut’ but done many years later.”

Northern Stores, 1998

“Even in the sixties, the Northern Stores was an anachronism. It was a hardware shop I enjoyed visiting with my dad on Saturday mornings when he would buy something for his allotment, perhaps chicken feed or paraffin or a bag of nails for mending a fence. My pleasure at being out with him was heightened by the awareness that our next stop would be the art materials shop or the bookshop where he always spent more on me than he did on his own needs.”

Paintings copyright © Doreen Fletcher

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Doreen Fletcher’s East End

Doreen Fletcher in her own words

CLICK TO BUY ONE OF THE LAST COPIES OF DOREEN FLETCHER’S BOOK FOR £20

Doreen Fletcher is an astonishingly brilliant draughtswoman. Even though her drawings are often undertaken as preparation for paintings, they stand as art works in their own right.

Readers are already familiar with Doreen Fletcher‘s paintings of the East End that were published in a monograph by Spitalfields Life Books and exhibited with such success at the Nunnery Gallery last year. Today it is my pleasure to introduce you to a selection of her early pencil drawings which originate from the Potteries where Doreen grew up. These pictures were done by Doreen in her teens and early twenties, and have never been see together before publicly.

Grandad at Prospect Terrace, 1975

“My grandad was a hard man when young, it was said he could break a brick with his bare fist. A survivor of Ypres, he gravitated to Knutton Forge in Warrington after the war where he met my grandmother, the daughter of a local shop-keeper who was forever making and losing money. As my granddad was twelve years older, it was assumed that he would die first but he was left a widower at the age of eighty-four and lived on for another eight years, despite a life of heavy smoking and beer consumption. To the end, he remained unable even to make a sandwich for himself, although he was a dab hand at making wreaths, a cottage industry in which the whole family took part every Christmas.”

View from our living room window, 17 Bailey St, 1975

“This was the view I saw from our living room window every morning, from when I was a tiny child until I left home at the age of twenty. It was identical to thousands of other views from other houses. At the end of the yard there was a row of three shacks – a coal house, an outside loo and a tool storage area. There was very little colour in those streets, save for the odd dandelion and escaped budgerigar, although sparrows abounded and there were pigeon fanciers with coops.

The house where I grew up was in a dip amongst row upon row of terraced houses, built in the eighteen-sixties to house mill workers. They were huddled together, forming a tight knit community of families, with corner shops surviving by selling produce on tick and a couple of pubs. Most of the inhabitants had been born within a few miles of Newcastle-under-Lyme, the only exceptions being an Italian couple from Milan who came to work in the mill, and a few Polish and Yugoslav refugees who spoke almost no English and who had a special delicatessen on the other side of town. All were accepted.”

Mum & Dad on the Front Step, 1976

“Alice, my mother, worked in a munitions factory during the war and became a servant afterwards. It gave her ideas about not having the newspaper on the table and no tomato ketchup, and healthy eating. Colin, my dad, was a farm worker who wanted to be a vet but did not like school and suffering a year long illness when he was seven  deprived him of the education he needed.

After I was born, they moved into the town from Stableford because he could earn more money there. When they started installing pylons in the late fifties, he worked on that. Later he worked putting in pipes for North Sea Gas too but, when he was fifty-seven, he had a brain haemorrhage at work, probably caused by a pneumatic drill, and never worked again.”

Houses Under Snow, 1980

Mother in the kitchen, Bailey St, 1975

“The scullery was a tiny multi-purpose extension. The cooker was by the entrance on the left, in front of my mother, and, on the other side, was a washing machine with a mangle. My mum is pouring water from a kettle kept on a shelf of the kitchen cabinet. I can still remember the midnight blue and gold hues of the teapot. I bought it as a present, thinking it was very posh and sophisticated unlike the common brown tea-pots in daily use.”

Directly behind her you can see a bath, which was considered upwardly-mobile when it was installed in 1957. There were no taps, the hot water came from the geyser on her right, so by the time there was enough to bathe, the hot water was lukewarm.”

St Giles, 1989

Corner Shop, Bailey St, 1975

“Almost every street had one or sometimes two corner shops, where provisions were bought on ‘tic’ with the bill paid, hopefully, on Friday. This was the morning after most workers got their wages. Mr & Mrs Jones ran the shop favoured by my mother and their daughter was an art student, so they were happy to pose for me.”

House in Whitfield Ave, 1977

House in Fenton, 1987

“Visits to Newcastle took on a new poignancy once my former home was demolished and I began to document the facades of the terraces that remained, wandering the streets often with my dad in tow, carrying a scrappy sketchbook and a camera I bought second hand.”

The Cottage Inn, Tunstall, 1998

“My grandparents ran ‘The Cottage Inn’ during the war and my dad my worked at nearby Shelton Bar Ironworks while courting my mum. After the war, the family moved to Prospect Terrace, Newcastle. Their dog, Paddy, moved with them but he used to take the bus every day at 11 am back to the pub in Tunstall. Everyone knew him, including all the bus conductors.”

House in New Ashfields, 1998

“I sold the painting I did from this drawing. I was attracted by the neat geometry of the brickwork. This house was in the New Ashfields, built a few decades later than the Old Ashfields where I grew up. The houses were generally more spacious and upmarket than my streets.”

Chapel in Silverdale, 1983

Fairground, 1977

“Every Summer, a fair came to Newcastle during the ‘Wakes’, two weeks in July when the potteries closed down and those who could afford it went away to stay in a boarding house or caravan in Rhyl, Blackpool or – for the more adventurous – Great Yarmouth. For those of us, who stayed behind there was the fun of the fair, with hotdogs and candyfloss.The summer I made this drawing, I visited Abergele in North Wales, where my boyfriend’s grandparents had retired. They lived in a bungalow in a suburban avenue close to the sea and, while I was there, we visited an amusement park in Rhyl. It was here I was persuaded, against my better judgement, onto a ride and I recall praying for the horizon to re-establish itself. It was the first and last time I ever took a fairground ride.”

Margaret Ann Hair Salon, 1995

Paintings copyright © Doreen Fletcher

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Doreen Fletcher’s Early Paintings

Doreen Fletcher’s East End

Doreen Fletcher in her own words

In recent years, Spitalfields has faced a wave of soulless corporate development spreading from the west, inflicting ugly steel and glass blocks that are entirely at odds with the narrow streets of old brick buildings here. First it was the Spitalfields Market, then the Fruit & Wool Exchange and Norton Folgate, and now the wave has reached the historic Truman Brewery, where a massive shopping mall with offices on top is proposed.

So far, these developments have all served as extensions of the business culture of the City of London and offer little to the residents of the East End where the priorities are for housing and affordable workspace. The Truman Brewery is the largest undeveloped site in Spitalfields and it needs a planning brief created in consultation with the community which reflects the needs of local people, rather than more bland corporate offices, chain retail and bars.

I am publishing a statement below by the Spitalfields Trust and I hope readers will support this important campaign for the future of Spitalfields.

A big block on Brick Lane

Shopping mall

Corporate plaza

STATEMENT BY THE SPITALFIELDS TRUST

The vast Truman Brewery site needs a proper development brief from the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.

• For this large site in such an important location, it is usual for the local council to create a development brief, providing guidance on the type of uses which the area actually needs. This is an important opportunity for LBTH to focus on housing and affordable work space.  They have the power to set parameters for the size, bulk and design of the buildings on this site. 

This proposal slices off the south east corner of the Truman Brewery site for an ill-conceived development.

• Large glass-walled corporate offices with double-height foyers onto Brick Lane, adopting the architectural language of the City which has no place in the Conservation Area.

• A lamentable failure to address the pressing need for housing and affordable workspace in the  area. 

• A shopping mall spilling out into the small surrounding streets, bringing more than a thousand extra people into the narrow streets at peak weekend hours.

• Buildings that are too tall and bulky which will have a harmful impact on the character of Brick Lane and the characterful nineteenth-century terrace on the south side of Woodseer St, while obscuring views of the historic Truman Brewery chimney. 

• Destroying the distinction between the vibrant, busy character of Brick Lane and Woodseer Street which is a quiet, residential backwater.

• Breaching the local planning guidance that new retail and restaurants should be resisted in the residential side streets off Brick Lane.

• This development focusses on commercial space at the expense of local residents interests, by overshadowing of local houses, creating up to 60% loss of light, and delivering a huge increase in the visitor numbers with all the associated noise and disturbance. 

• Restaurants with open air spaces and three terraces for corporate entertainment.

• Very few residents have been consulted.

The Truman Brewery development is a short-sighted, poorly and insensitively designed scheme based on an antiquated business model.  Rather than providing much needed housing and affordable workspace, it seeks to introduce buildings inappropriate to the Conservation Area, which will destroy its appearance and character to the detriment of residents and the local community.

Click here to see the planning application

HOW TO  OBJECT EFFECTIVELY

1. Quote Planning Application PA/20/00415/A1  (140 and 146 Brick Lane, and 25 Woodseer St, London E1).
2. Please write in your own words your reasons for OBJECTION before Friday 26th June.
3. Remember to include your postal address. Members of one household can each write separately. Anyone can object wherever they are in the world.

Send your objection to Patrick.Harmsworth@towerhamlets.gov.uk 

Follow the Spitalfields Trust to keep up to date with this story

Twitter @SpitalfieldsT

Facebook /thespitalfieldstrust

Instagram @spitalfields_trust

Gravesend offers an ideal day out from Spitalfields in my opinion, but since I cannot venture there at present it was like a breath of fresh sea air when Peta Bridle sent me these pages from her lockdown sketchbook.

“I have been unable to do etchings while the printers are shut and painting is out of the question with my son Billy bouncing off the walls, so I started going out with my sketchbook.

I was given a couple of Geoffrey Fletcher’s books and he inspired me. Unlike him I cannot stand and draw, therefore my choice of subjects have been governed by finding somewhere secluded to sit. Each picture brings back memories to me now of what I could hear or smell while I was drawing. I had always intended to make drawings of Gravesend, which has numerous picturesque corners, and the lockdown gave me the opportunity.”

Peta Bridle

Shornemead Old Lighthouse

“It was a lovely warm evening when I sketched this lighthouse, built in 1913 to mark the river bank east of Gravesend and south of Tilbury. Today, the faded red metal tower is stored onshore in the Port of London Authority depot at Denton Wharf.”

St Peter & St Paul Milton Church

“The sundial above the porch reads ‘Trifle now, your time’s but short,’ with two worn shields and a plaque beneath dated 1797. To the right is a stoop where people can dip their hands to make the sign of the cross before entering the church, which was built in the early fourteenth century. I sat hidden in the churchyard, and could only hear the odd car and people passing beyond the church wall.”

Gravestones at St George’s Churchyard

“Along the churchyard wall is a long line of headstones. Many are for ships’ captains and river pilots, and I noticed epitaphs to sailors lost at sea or on the Thames.”

My Friend’s Garden

“I sat within my friend’s front garden next to a salvia bush alive with bees, while behind me I could hear workmen eating their lunch in a van and birdsong from the park across the road. Spot the rainbow in her window.”

The Lock-Up

“This is in a secluded courtyard and I could not draw all of it because a van was parked in my way.”

Statue of Squadron Leader Mahinder Singh Pujji DFC

“An heroic Royal Air Force fighter pilot and one of the first Sikh pilots to volunteer during the Second World War. He came to retire in Gravesend and today his beautiful statue can been seen in St Andrew’s Garden on the waterfront.”

Warehouse at the Canal Basin

“When I was drawing this unusual warehouse, a cyclist stopped and told me it was once an aeroplane hangar at Gravesend Airport, which operated between 1932 and 1956. The faded green hangar sits on top of concrete breeze blocks today and forms a narrow street between the Thames and the canal basin, often used by filmmakers and photographers as an atmospheric location.”

Thames From Shornemead Fort

“I cycled down to Shornemead Fort one evening and sat looking out over the Thames. Rivulets were hissing in the mud and the occasional ship slid past, heading out to sea. Shornemead Fort is home to marsh ponies and a playground for dirt bikers today, but it was built in the eighteen-sixties to guard the Thames against seaborne attack.”

The Canal Basin

“I sat behind a low wall next to a road, where I got showered with grit every time a lorry went past, while I was drawing this view of the boats moored at the basin with the old corrugated iron warehouses behind.”

The Marina

“Another view of boats moored at the canal basin. This was made in a hurry due to the approaching clouds and I had to give up when the heavens opened, even though the wind rippled the water surface, creating lots of beautiful reflections. For this subject, I used a brown ink I found instead of my usual blue-black Quink.”

Eukor at the Tilbury Docks seen from Gravesend

Cruise & Maritime Voyage Ship Berthed At Tilbury

“This is the only double page spread in my sketchbook. It shows  the view across to Tilbury Docks but I made two separate trips to draw each of the ships on different days, so the reflections in the water do not match up.”

Princess Cat

“This is our new cat who appeared at my back door as a very persistent stray last summer. She has managed to get her paws well under the table since then and is now part of the family. She was my model but she kept moving, which was why I ventured out to find new subjects to draw once the lockdown allowed.”

Drawings copyright © Peta Bridle

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Peta Bridle River Etchings

Stefan Dickers and Suresh Singh will be in conversation on Zoom tomorrow, Friday 19th June at 6pm, showing Suresh’s family photographs and discussing his book A MODEST LIVING, MEMOIRS OF A COCKNEY SIKH. All are welcome at this free event which is part of Newham Heritage Month.

Click here for more information and tickets

Suresh Singh has been wearing this tank top since 1973

Perhaps everyone has a favourite piece of clothing they have worn for years? I always admired Suresh Singh’s jazzy tank top and I was astonished when he told me he has been wearing it for nearly half a century.

Suresh’s father Joginder Singh came to London from the Punjab in 1949 and the Singh family lived at 38 Princelet St longer than any other family in Spitalfields.

In our age of disposable fashion, the story of Suresh’s treasured tank top is an inspiring example of how a well made garment can be cherished for a lifetime.

“My mum made this tank top for me in 1973 when I was eleven. She had friends who all knitted and they had bits of wool left over – what you would call ‘cabbage’ –  so mum collected all these balls of different coloured wool. Otherwise, they would have been chucked away. She kept them in her carrier bag with her needles that she bought at Woolworths in Aldgate East. They were number ten needles.

Mum said to me, ‘Suresh, I’m going to knit you a tank top.’ I never asked her because dad had taught me that I should always be patient, but I think mum saw the twinkle in my eyes and she knew I wanted one. I had asthma, so it was to keep my chest warm. She knitted it over the winter, from November to January. Mum never had the spare time to spend all day long knitting, she had to do it in bits as she went along and keep putting it away.

Mum did not follow a pattern, she just looked at me and sometimes took measurements. It started getting really huge, so I said, ‘Mum, it’s going to be too big.’ She had a sense of scale, she did not draw round me and cut a pattern. Mum never did that. She replied, ‘You’ll grow into it.’ The idea was you would slowly grow into new clothes.

When my tank top was finished, it hung down to my knees and the armholes were at my waist, but Mum was adamant I would grow into it. I loved it because it was all the rainbow colours. There was red, then yellow, then black, then pink and that really beautiful green. It was so outrageous. No other Punjabi kid had one like it. They all wore Marks & Spencer or John Collier grey nylon jumpers, but I had this piece of art. To me, it was a masterpiece. It was so beautifully made, it was mum’s pride and joy. When I wore it, people would exclaim, ‘That tank top, mate, it’s classic!’ I would say, ‘Yeah, my mum made it.’ Sometimes, because it was too big, I could pull it up and tie it in a knot at the front.

Mum made it with such love that I have always kept it. Eventually, my children wore it, but I am claiming it these days. It is a one-off. What made the tank top special for mum was that she was making it for her son. People often say it is a work of art but mum never went to art school. She picked up the tradition of making something for your child. She put so much love into it and I wear it today and it is still really nice. It gives me comfort and it keeps my chest warm.

It has got swag, you know what I mean?

It fits me now.”

Suresh and his mum at 38 Princelet St

Suresh Singh aged four

Suresh Singh & Jagir Kaur at 38 Princelet St (Photograph by Patricia Niven)

You may also like to read about

A Modest Living

At 38 Princelet St

A Hard-Working Life

Joginder Singh’s Boy

How to Make A Chapati

A Cockney Sikh

The first Punjabi Punk

A Sikh at Christ Church

Three Punjabi Recipes

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

JULY 1838 – Flying Showers in Battersea Fields

Should you ever require it, here is evidence of the constant volatility of English summer weather, courtesy of George Cruikshank’s Comic Almanack published by Henry Tilt of Fleet St annually between 1835 & 1853, illustrating the festivals and seasons of the year for Londoners. (Click on any of these images to enlarge)

JUNE 1835 – At the Royal Academy

JUNE 1836 – Holidays at the Public Offices


JUNE 1837 – Haymaking

JULY 1835 – At Vauxhall Gardens

JULY 1836 – Dog Days in Houndsditch

JULY 1837 – Fancy Fair

AUGUST 1836 – Bathing at Brighton

AUGUST 1837 – Regatta

SEPTEMBER 1835 – Bartholomew Fair

SEPTEMBER 1837 – Cockney Sportsmen

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George Cruikshank’s Comic Alphabet

Tomorrow is the formal closing date for submitting your comments on the Truman Brewery redevelopment plans for a shopping mall and corporate offices. Click here for more information

There is a curious drama in the presence of the two brewers in overalls in this picture of the Truman Brewery in Brick Lane, looking like ants by comparison with the tall coppers towering above, each with the capacity for boiling four hundred barrels of liquid. Can you even find the second brewer, high on a gantry up above his colleague busy stirring with a long pole?

This is an illustration of the crucial stage in the brewing process when the hops are added to the boiling “wort,” as the malt infused liquor is called before it becomes beer. Yet in spite of the awe-inspiring modernity of this vision, you can still see the smallest of the coppers in the top left corner within the shell of the seventeenth century brewhouse, itself enclosed by the vast brewery that grew up around it.

The contrast between the heroic scale of the brewing operation and the figures of cloth-capped workmen looks absurd today. The industrialisation of the process which this sequence of pictures celebrate is unremarkable to us, it is the presence of the wooden barrels and use of horsepower that we find exotic. This is a quaint English modernity which has more in common with W. Heath Robinson than Fritz Lang. The agricultural illustrations of the cultivation of barley show a haywain reminiscent of John Constable’s work and stooks of corn upon the hillside as you would see in a landscape by Samuel Palmer.

These intriguing pictures were created as a supplement to The Black Eagle Magazine, published by Truman Hanbury & Buxton in 1931, and grant a rare glimpse into the working life of the brewery that flourished here for over three hundred years.

Yet, although these pictures were designed to elucidate the brewing process, in fact they merely serve to romance the alchemical mystery even further. The text of the accompanying brochure contains some elegant obfuscation too.

“Living things have ever an individuality of their own which defies mere rule of thumb government. Brewing is not merely an elaborate process of manufacture, but it includes in it the application of man’s brain power as scientist and technician, to guide the processes of nature, and to help understand something of life’s basic but baffling problems: food, health and clean surroundings.”

These artists’ impressions seem to imply that the brewery contained another reality, stranger the outer world and containing magical possibilities. A notion enforced by references to the use of a Jacob’s Ladder, Archimidean Screw and Dust Destroying Plant, while the language of “sparging” the “wort” evokes a universe as bizarre as anything Tolkien imagined.

Yet it was all real, a discrete society with its own arcane language and culture that evolved during three centuries in Brick Lane until it modernised itself out of existence. What touches me in these curious pictures are the small human figures – often hidden or partially concealed in the background – and the few artefacts on their scale, the sinks, buckets, barrels and jugs, which appear miniature beside the industrial scale brewing equipment.

A mixture of machinery and horsepower was used in the production of barley in 1931

East Enders travelled down to Kent each year to work as hop pickers

Barley arrived at the maltings, where it was hauled up to the top storey, spread out onto the floor and covered with water, turned daily for ten to twelve days, and thinned out when it began to germinate. Then the barley was transferred to the malt kiln and heated until it reached two hundred degrees farenheit. The malt, as it now was, came from the kiln and was cooled before being stored.

On the right you can see the malt is being delivered at the brewery in Brick Lane, then elevated to the Malt Loft by means of a Jacob’s Ladder, which you can see top left, and distributed by means of a screw to malt bins with a capacity of 12,000 quarters. At the bottom, you can see the malt being transferred from the bins for the day’s brewing by means of an Archimedean Screw. The movement of the malt caused dust to rise and thus a connection with a large dust destroying plant was required.

The malt was received from the malt bins in the malt tower and weighing room at the top of this picture, before being passed through the malt screens on the floor below to remove any foreign matter. Then the malt was weighed again before going into the hoppers beneath, from whence it was again lifted by suction to the tower in the new brewery.

This is the malt tower, from where the malt was distributed down through various blending hoppers and then ground in the malt mills below.

In the top picture, the malt passes to the grist cases ready for the mash tun. In the next picture you see the mash tun stage. On entering the mash tun, the malt was mixed with liquor, allowed to stand and then “sparged” at a rate of one hundred and twenty barrels per hour to create a substance resembling porridge. The resulting liquid, referred to as “wort” was run off into the receivers you can see bottom left, labelled ale and stout, while on the right you can see the used malt being removed by farmers. The wort was then boiled in the coppers, that you see in the picture at the very top, where the hops was added.

In these pictures you see how the wort was pumped from the coppers through the refrigerator room at the top and then into the fermenting squares on the floors below where the yeast was added and fermentation took place. Finally, the yeast was collected in the vessel in the top right and the beer was run to the racking square and put into casks.

Above, in descending order, you see the bottle washing floor, the bottle filling floor, the loading-out stage and then the barrels in the cellars ready for loading.

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Photographer Paul Trevor captured the drama of Brick Lane during the summer of 1978 when protests erupted after the racist murder of Altab Ali, a twenty-five-year-old leather garment worker, on May 4th.

Now a project is underway to trace the people in these photographs and record personal accounts of this transformative moment in racial politics in the East End when people organised to fight back against racism. The aim is to gather an archive of oral histories leading to an exhibition at Four Corners Gallery in Bethnal Green next year.

If you are in these photographs or you can identify anyone, or you would like to contribute your personal experiences of these events, please email bricklane1978@gmail.com

Marching down Brick Lane

This woman carries a Campaign Against Racism & Fascism paper with the story of Altab Ali’s murder

Community Gathering

Writers’ Group

Members of the Bangladesh Youth Front

Anti-racist protest in Bethnal Green

Photographs copyright © Paul Trevor

Click on the rebus to enlarge

Contributing Artist ADAM DANT created this ingenious puzzle to amuse you while staying at home this weekend. We will send a free Map of Spitalfields Life to the first twenty readers who submit the correct answers to spitalfieldslife@gmail.com before midnight tonight. Be sure to include your postal address.

You may also like to take a look at

The Spitalfields Rebus

CLICK TO ORDER A 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 Contributing Cartographer 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 London’s 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 including THE LONDON REBUS are available to purchase through TAG Fine Arts

Alice Pattullo created this portfolio of screen prints of animals for each letter of the alphabet

A is for Armadillo who is short stout and round

B is for Beetle who stays close to the ground

C is for Crab who crawls on the sea bed

D is for Dove who likes to fly overhead

E is for Elephant who is anything but light

F is for fox who roams the city streets at night

G is for grizzly bear, a fierce looking fellow

H is for Hippo who is altogether more mellow

I is for Iguana a large scaly reptile

J is for jack rabbit who jumps mile after mile

K is for Kangaroo who takes hop, skip and bound

L is for leopard who moves fast across the ground

M is for Moth, a winged friend of the butterfly

N is for Nautilus who in his shell is quite shy

O is for okapi, our strange stripy friend

P is for polar bear who lives at world’s end

Q is for quail whose bright head feathers are fun

R is for Rhino who weights almost a tonne

S is for sloth who hangs and sleeps in a tree

T is for turtle who swims through the sea

U is for uakari whose face is small, wrinkly and red

V is for viper whose bite might leave you dead

W is for Whale, the biggest animal of them all

X is for Xantus who is remarkably small

Y is for Yak, like a cow with long hair

Z is for Zebra, so stripy you might stare

Copyright © Alice Pattullo

Alice Pattullo’s Alphabet is published as a book by Pavilion

Alice’s screen prints are available from her online shop

You may also like to read about

Alice Pattullo, Illustrator

In celebration of the granting of planning permission for the Museum of London to covert Smithfield General Market as its new home, here is my account of a visit to explore this cavernous site.

A train runs beneath Smithfield Market

As one of those who fought to save Smithfield General Market from demolition six years ago, I was delighted have the opportunity of exploring the infinite dark recesses of this vast structure which extends deep underground. This was the first time I have been inside Horace Jones’ market building of 1868 and it was a heart-stopping experience to enter his soaring iron cathedral and walk beneath the vast dome at last.

If events had turned out differently in 2014, this magnificence would all have been destroyed with only the facade remaining upon the front of a steel office block. So it was gratifying to visit as a guest of the Museum of London who are taking it over as their new home, adopting a policy of ‘light touch’ in their treatment of the old building.

In announcing the outcome of the Public Enquiry into the Smithfield Market proposals, the Secretary of State criticised the City of London for deliberately allowing Horace Jones’ beautiful market to fall into decay and disrepair. Readers will be pleased to learn the City of London is now paying for extensive and expensive repairs which are underway.

When I arrived, the traders’ pavilions that had accumulated to fill the market floor were being dismantled to reveal the open space for the first time since the nineteenth century – this majestic hall will be where all visitors enter the new museum. The only major architectural decision taken here regards the location of the staircase leading down to the subterranean galleries below. After some discussion of a central spiral staircase under the dome, permanently restricting the possibility of displays, a decision has been taken to cut a straight staircase along the north side of the building leaving the ground floor clear for exhibitions.

The great drama lies beneath. Here is an enormous black underground cavern, wider than the market above, with a vaulted roof of brick, grimy from steam trains. This was constructed as a railway station where trains from the London docks once brought meat which arrived from across the world. Deliveries were unloaded onto carts that drove up the ramp to the market above.

As you pause to contemplate the wonder of it, a diabolic rumble fills the darkness. It is a train coming! You stand in the darkness as a Thameslink train full of commuters rattles past, coming from Blackfriars on its way to Farringdon. The passengers sit preoccupied in their lit carriages, unaware of the watcher observing them from the darkness. One day, these commuters will peer out from their windows and discover they can see directly into the galleries of the Museum of London and, one day, visitors to the museum will be able to observe trains passing from a window in the gallery.

Beyond this empty hangar, lies another deep space with brick arches soaring overhead and dripping vaults receding into the velvet blackness of history. The moisture that permeates the structure evidences the presence of the River Fleet flowing below. You stand beneath London, between the underground trains and the subterranean river. You are at the heart of the city. It is dark. It is a space of infinite mutability. It is a place with soul, where the past lingers. It is a natural home for a museum of London.

This concrete dome was constructed post-war to replace the original destroyed in the Blitz

The rare ‘phoenix columns’ that support the roof are hollow, used in preference to cast iron, to minimise the weight of the structure which sits over a tube line

First floor pavilions added to the building as traders offices are currently being removed

A spiral staircase leads to an office that no longer exists

Hanging fireplaces attest to former first floor offices

Cast iron racks once supported rails for displaying meat

The agglomeration of traders pavilions on the ground floor was known as ‘the village’

Abandoned grinding wheel for sharpening knives

Ancient dripping brickwork indicates the vicinity of the River Fleet flowing beneath

Thameslink rails stored under the market

You may also like to read about

At The Smithfield Market Public Enquiry

Smithfield Market is Saved

You all are familiar with this game – ducking and diving along a narrow pavement, struggling to maintain two metres social distance from oncoming pedestrians while also avoiding stepping into the gutter and getting run over by passing traffic.

Genius inventor Tim Hunkin has invented a Social Distancing Machine to celebrate the reopening of his amusement arcade Novelty Automation in Holborn under socially distanced conditions next Saturday 11th July.

Tim explained his thoughts to me, “My first idea was much more ambitious, it was going to be a Covid clock. But then I realised it would take months to make and the situation would have changed completely by then. So this is just one element of that grand clock design and even this was fiddly to overcome the teething problems.

Although it looks quite simple, it took me over a month to get it all working and I am still a bit nervous whether it will stay working. It was a bit of a struggle installing it, I need it to run for twelve hours constantly so I had to sleep in the arcade with this machine rattling around all night.

Fortunately the test worked and I drove up to my daughter in Walthamstow next morning. But nobody was doing any social distancing whatsoever in the streets of Camden and Holloway, so to bring it more up to date I changed the name of my machine to ‘A Memorial to Social Distancing.'”

Novelty Automation, 1 Princeton St, Holborn, WC1R 4AX

You may like to read my other stories about Tim Hunkin

Tim Hunkin, Cartoonist & Engineer

At Tim Hunkin’s Workshop

Tim Hunkin’s Housing Ladder

Tim Hunkin’s Air B’n’Bedbug Machine

Tim Hunkin’s Fulfilment Centre