Limehouse Lil part 1
Thursday, February 12th, 2009
Wander east along Narrow Street, past the Limehouse Basin to your left and the Thames to your right, over the swing bridge and the vista suddenly changes. Narrow Street defies its name to become broad, and the jumble of faux warehouse homes give way to a slice of the real Limehouse.
Numbers 78 to 88 Narrow Street form an imposing terrace backing onto the river. They are older than the ‘Docklands’ developments of course, but also much older than the real warehouses of this old sefaring quarter. To the ill-educated eye (mine) they might appear Georgian but in fact date back to the reign of Elizabeth I. They are also some of the last remaining houses on this north bank of the Thames. But having survived from the 16th to the 20th century, they very nearly fell foul of the developers in the 1960s.
The story of Number 88, and the other houses in the terrace form the core of an extraordinary memoir of Limehouse by Rozelle Raynes. ‘Limehouse Lil’ covers 60 years - from when Rozelle first visited the East End at the close of the Second World War. She had just been demobbed, as a 20-year-old Wren, from a naval base in the Portsmouth Command. The East End of the time was beyond the pale for a young woman from an upper class family, but there was a magic and romance about it that drew her in. As Rozelle admits, there was no mystery about when the seed had been sown.
“The whole adventure had been inspired by a book which my mother gave me when I was lying in bed with measles at the age of 12. ‘The Romance of London’s River’ was beautifully illustrated by Frank Mason (RI) and from it I learned there were warehouses full of elephant’s tusks in Wapping, gigantic Russian timber ships in Lavender Pond and oriental cafes filled with almond-eyed Chinamen in Pennyfields.” And the romance was only heightened by the names of the thoroughfares in the book. Were there really places called Shoulder of Mutton Alley, Picked Herring Street and Wapping Old Stairs?
Indeed there were, and Rozelle and fellow Wren Sue found them all. A lifelong love of the sea had been engendered by their tough jobs as Wren Stokers and Limehouse and Wapping, with their centuries of seafaring tradition (by that time sadly coming to an end) only fired their imaginations. The river at Limehouse and Wapping was still busy then, and the pair would sit for hours in Shadwell Park “entranced by the everlasting pageant of shipping”. There were tugs attached to long strings of barges, fish carriers hurrying upriver to Billingsgate, long ugly flat irons taking coal to Fulham gas works, a rusty Spanish freighter with a crago of oranges from Bilbao. “But the finest sight of all was a Thames sailing barge with its giagantic tanned mainsail, tacking up to Tower Bridge against the last of the ebb.”
The pair fell in love with the place, and while their posh friends were sipping cocktails up west, they could often be found drinking beer in the Prospect of Whitby. And there one of the other great things about the East End became apparent to Rozelle. Although undoubtedly outsiders, she and Sue were soon accepted as friends by a colourful crew that centred around Lucy Durrell, a Wapping matriarch then in her sixties. Lucy had survived a tough childhood to become the hub of an ever growing family (by the time Rozelle and husband Dick attended Lucy’s 80th birthday party in 1965, she had 28 great grandchildren). She was a link back to the myth and mist shrouded Wapping of the 1890s, with its dozens of pubs and brothels, its opium dens and poverty, and she had the stories to back it up.
As well as sinking pints and singing songs in the Prospect of Whitby, Rozelle would join the Durrell clan on their annual trip down to pick the hops in Kent. It was a friendship that endured. Even after Rozelle and Dick married and settled in an old farmhouse at Pluckley (Dick working as a GP in nearby Ashford), the pair kept in touch with the Wapping contingent. And it was at that 80th birthday party for Lucy, that the seeds were sown for the couple’s move to Limehouse. Dick mentioned to the guests that the pair would love to move to the East End if they should ever leave the country. It was a passing comment but a persistent dream. Then two years later the phone rang. There were some old houses being converted into flats in Wapping … would Dick and Rozelle like to take a look?
Next week … Changing Limehouse, from the 1960s to the present day.
Limehouse Lil: And That Small Corner of London’s Docklands Where She Ruled Supreme…Until Canary Wharf Arose (Paperback) by Rozelle Raynes, Catweasel Publishing, ISBN 0954746716, £7.50
