eastlondonhistory.com

It is fitting that a society dedicated to the preservation of historical buildings should be housed in one of the relics of the East End’s past. But it’s ironic that, though 37 Spital Square has survived, its foundations stand on the site of an even more ancient Spitalfields’ building, one which was demolished in an age when preservation of the past wasn’t even an issue.
The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) was founded by famed Victorian craftsman-designer William Morris (see box below), in 1877.
By the time SPAB took up residence in 37 Spital Square in 1981, the house was in a state of dereliction and in urgent need of repair. But the building had a fascinating past.
Spital Square was laid out in the 1720s and 30s on the site of the earlier Spital Yard. That in turn stood on the site of the Augustinian Priory and Hospital (hence the abbreviated name ‘Spital’). The hospital had been the first major building on the existing farmland, and was founded in 1197.
Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries signed its death warrant in 1539, and the area subsequently housed a mansion called Spittle House, on the site of the present St Botolph’s Hall. Tenements were built and demolished before a much grander development was undertaken in the early 18th century.
Spital Square was built to house a wealthy Huguenot silk weaver. The first owner was the man who built it – Peter Ogier III, the scion of a rich French Huguenot family. As a boy Peter was smuggled from France as a religious refugee. His family settled in Spitalfields and prospered as a silk merchant. In 1740, Peter was in his late twenties, and had probably just inherited the family fortune following his father’s death. This could explain why he made the decision to build such a substantial home.

Beneath that home lay the remnants of the old Augustinian hospital. The south transept of the Priory Church lies beneath what is now number 37. The basement of the house also includes a stone corbel, probably from the Priory, and the foundations are made from re-used medieval stonework.
A century later, an 1842 account mentions that “a large proportion of houses in the square are inhabited by silk manufacturers”.
During the first two decades of the 20th century the house was occupied by the Greensteins – Jewish immigrants from Russia, who made leather bags and purses on the site. After World War II it was occupied by umbrella company James Ince & Sons.
By the latter half of the last century, so much demolition and redevelopment had taken place that number 37 was the only Georgian house left of the old Spital Square.
SPAB took over the property just in time, saving the building and carrying out extensive repairs during the 1980s. Fitting then, that from this site the society now oversees the saving and repair of similarly impressive architectural fabric throughout the country.

1. Vintage Film Screening as part of East London Film Festival Says:
   April 16th, 2008 at 4:10 pm edit”’It Always Rains on Sunday”’
   92 Mins
   Director: Robert Hamer
   Writer: Henry CorneliusA glimps into the Eastend of London post WWII

   A break away from Ealing’s predominantly comedic output, IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY moves into the terrain of serious drama. Directed by Robert Hamer (Kind Hearts and Coronets), it stars Googie Withers as Rose sandigate. a Bethnal Green housewife whose sunday is turned upside down by the re appearence of an old flame who is now an escaped convict.

   At the RIO Cinema on Sunday 20th April at 3.45pm

   http://www.eastendfilmfestival.com

Eating out in the East End these days is likely to mean pizza, a kebab, a Chinese or – most likely of all – a curry.
It’s long been a fact of London cuisine that the more far-flung its origins, the more likely we are to swallow it. But a few hundred years ago, cockneys were more likely to be eating stewed pears, curds and whey, and even swans or turtles.
A fascinating exhibition at the Museum of London, called London Eats Out, focuses on 500 years of eating out in the capital. And the East End – the gateway through which the new foods first hit the country – plays a major role.
Back in 1544, sugar was still a novel and prized deli-cacy. It was imported from Morocco but, largely, prepared in the sugar refineries just to the east of the City in Spitalfields. Banqueting tables would be decorated with sugar sculptures.
Troops of turkeys
The 1600s saw the rise in popularity of that Christmas staple, the turkey. They were walked in their thousands
from Norfolk to the East End, where they were slaughtered.
Forward to the 1680s, and Spitalfields began to be
populated by the Huguenots, bringing French cuisine and Dutch biscuits among other delicacies.
A stranger import was turtle. East End taverns would keep them alive in tanks in the
cellar, before the unfortunate creatures became that great delicacy – turtle soup. And, on ‘Fish Days’ in the 16th century, East Enders would feast on porpoise, dolphin and seal.
In 1815, the first restaurant guide to London appeared, with 464 entries. Interestingly, although Southwark had as long a history as a City overspill as the East End, there was barely a south London entry
in Epicure’s Almanac. The East End, though, boasted dozens, sprinkled along the Thames from Wapping, through Limehouse and all the way to Blackwall.
And if you thought the Indian restaurant only made an appearance in the 1960s, think again. The first Indian-run eating place in London opened in 1809, at 34 George Street. The Hindostanee Coffee-House was set up by ex-Indian Army man, Dean Mahomet. Today, there are more than 600 Indian restaurants in the capital.
Convenience food made a surprisingly early debut. The first mechanical vending machine, ‘the curious mathematical fountain’, was set up in the Black Horse Tavern, Smithfield at the end of the 17th century. It dispensed tea, coffee, whisky, raspberry and cherry brandy, and punch.
Another lunchtime snack, the sandwich, was just as popular in the 1800s as it is today. Back then, though, rather than a Tupperware box, workers would pick up their sarnie wrapped in a cabbage leaf to keep it fresh.

And it was in 1842 that
East Enders got their first
taste of a new delicacy,
pineapple, sold in slices on the streets of Spitalfields for a penny a time.
Poor man’s oyster
For hundreds of years, East Enders would buy much of their food on the streets, not being able to afford a stove of their own. Hot puddings and pies were popular in the 1700s, and jellied eels, raw and boiled oysters began to make an appearance – oysters then being poor man’s food. By the 20th century, eels had moved indoors, and by World War II there were 100 eel-and-pie shops in London.
Fish and chip shops have been around for hundreds of years, but reached their peak in the early 19th century, and in 1840 Bishopsgate had more than any other area of London.
Food mixed with politics
in the early 1900s, with the East London Federation of Suffragettes’ Cost Price Restaurant at 440 Old Ford Road, allowing poor mothers with young children a cooked meal at lunchtime and hot soup in the evening. And in 1917, Lady Rhondda opened the first Communal Kitchen in Poplar, serving 600 diners a day.
The early 1900s were, of course, the heyday of the Jewish East End. As well as Blooms, there was the prestigious Stern’s Hotel in Aldgate, run by the famed Sam Stern. A menu from the 1940s makes fascinating reading, with pickled herring for 6d (2.5p), beer for the same and a mixed grill for 2/3 (13p).
And the exhibition features a poignant image of a lost aspect of Limehouse – the old Chinatown swept away in the 1920s amid hysteria about the ‘Yellow Peril’. Waiters stand, in a fading photograph, at the door of Old Friends Rest-aurant, in the aptly named Mandarin Street, E14. The Chinese restaurants did a roaring trade to the sailors coming off Limehouse ships, the locals were enticed in with the promise of ‘knives and forks instead of chopsticks’.
London Eats Out is at the Museum of London, London Wall, EC2, until 27 February.

When Shoreditch’s Geffrye Museum opens the doors on its new extension this November, it will be just the latest chapter in a story spanning four centuries.
The tale starts with a poor Cornwall lad who came to London to seek his fortune.
Robert Geffrye was born in 1613 in the parish of Landrake, Cornwall, the son of a smallholder. The family had no money, and sons were expected to leave to make their own way in the world. So at the age of 15, the young Robert left and headed, Dick Whittington style, to the big city.
The commercial explosion that was to make London the biggest and most important business centre in the world was just beginning.
For a would-be trader to make his mark, membership of a company was essential, and Geffrye soon entered a seven-year apprenticeship to Richard Peate, and became a freeman of the Ironmongers Company in 1637.
Geffrye certainly never worked as an ironmonger, but his company was a descendant of medieval trade guilds, who operated a closed-shop. With his freeman’s status, he was set to make his fortune.
The astute businessman invested heavily in the new trade routes opening up to and from Africa and India, but as well as making shrewd business moves, he also demonstrated a sharp political sense.
In 1664 he was elected Warden, and in 1667 Master of the company, his political campaigns helped by his Royalist sympathies.
Charles II had just returned to the throne and the Stuarts exerted a strong hand when it came to controlling the City of London. His election as the capital’s Deputy Alderman opened the doors to an even more influential world.
Loyal to the Royals
He filled the posts of Sheriff of London, and eventually Lord Mayor, in 1685. He had proved just as loyal to the new king, James II, but now felt powerful enough to shrug aside royal patronage.
Geffrye turned increasingly to good works, acting as president of the Bethlehem and Bridewell Hospitals.
These were houses of correction as much as dispensers of medicine, and the severity of the floggings Sir Robert dealt out to the miscreants and prostitutes brought before him was legendary.

He fell out of political favour with the accession of William and Mary to the throne in 1688, but it did his finances no harm. When he died in 1704, at the astonishing age of 91, he left a sizeable fortune of £13,000.
£400 of it went to the acquisition of land and property to set up the Geffrye Almshouses – home to the modern-day museum.
These trusts were very popular with the nobility and gentry of the 17th and 18th century – endowments and good works were seen as a shortcut to heaven – and a suitable site in the country district of Shore-ditch was eventually found.
As the 19th century drew on though, the almshouse found itself marooned in one of the most squalid and overcrowded quarters of the capital.
The trustees found themselves increasingly tempted by the real estate value of what was now prime building land – and the gardens were the only remaining open space in Shoreditch High Street.
A battle ensued between the trustees, who wished to move out to the suburbs, and charity commissioners and the old London County Council who wanted the site preserved.
At the time, the Victoria and Albert Museum was working on the idea of having mini-museums dotted around the capital, marking each area’s excellence in individual crafts –a diamond museum for Hatton Garden, a cigar museum for Whitechapel, one in Clerkenwell for watch-making.
Council collection
Ultimately only one came about. Shoreditch Borough Council scraped together the £16,000 to buy the site and set up a craft museum in 1914 – dedicated to marking the history of the area and its status in the furniture trade.
In the 80 years since, the museum has grown and developed. In 1992 the herb garden was completed and a new entrance building was finished in 1993.
And plans are in place for a series of 20th century gardens, along with four new period rooms, a temporary exhibition centre and a design gallery.
By the time the work is finished, the museum will have doubled in size and the work will have cost £5.3m.
It’s a far cry from Geffrye’s original endowment – but that £400 has proved an investment that is still paying dividends 300 years on.

The Geffrye Museum is in Kingsland Road, E2. Tel: 0171 739 9893 or www.geffrye-museum.org.uk or www.made-in-hackney.co.uk

London’s population of seven-million is greater than the whole of Denmark, and a fifth us belong to a non-white ethnic group. A total of 84 per cent of London’s output is in the service industries, 13.5 per cent of our homes are unfit for human habitation and the average speed of our traffic is 10mph — yes, London isn’t like other British cities. If those statistics were new to you don’t worry, they will have probably changed by the time you read this.

The job of mapping the history — and the future — of our capital has fallen for the last 20 years to the Museum of London, at the Barbican. With the Millennium fast approaching, the museum has taken a fresh look at the city today – and why London and Londoners are special and different – in the new London Now gallery. And there’s special items of interest for anyone fascinated by the part the East End has played in the history of the capital. Exhibits look at the match girls’ strike in Bryant and May’s Fairfield Road Works in 1888, when Annie Besant’s campaigning helped give birth to the New Trade Unionism.

The transformation of Docklands in the 1980s is charted, and there is even a huge illuminated model of two Hackney streets, recreated from London Fields in minute detail. The whole history of London, from its days as a Roman river crossing, is here. But just as interesting is the charting of the city’s massive changes since the Second World War — the Sixties redevelopment of Piccadilly and the Swinging Sixties generally, the Notting Hill Carnival and the tower blocks that transformed the skyline.

You will walk past an original, and fabulously ornate, lift from Selfridges in Oxford Street. A 1960s Mark 1 Cortina hangs above your head and you can watch the original 1950s Bill and Ben puppets in action. A huge canvas by John Bartlett, History Painting, depicts one of the most powerful events in London’s recent history — the Trafalgar Square poll tax riot of 31 March 1990. In addition to the permanent exhibits, the museum runs a series of special exhibitions. Running now and until November is In Royal Fashion, an exhibition of the dresses and accessories of the two royal cousins, Princess Charlotte of Wales and Queen Victoria.

overing the years 1796 to 1901, the show is a fascinating look at the Princess Di and Fergie of their day, revealing huge amounts about the lives and tastes of these two major fashion icons. Wedding dresses and coronation robes, bonnets, parasols, jewellery and shoes have been loaned by the Royal Collection — some of them never before seen in public, some so fragile they will probably never be exhibited again. So whether you are interested in ancient history or the way our town is changing by the day, by the lavish tastes of our rulers or by our tradition of political dissent, there is something in the updated museum for you.

And if you’re hooked up to the Internet, you will be able to take a look before you visit — the museum’s new Web site was unveiled on 20 June, the centenary of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. If the old queen was around to see that, she’d be surprised how much her city had changed too! The Museum of London, London Wall, EC1, Tel: 0171-600 3699, Web site: http://www.museum-london.org.uk