German Hospital, Chapel, Ritson Rd, Dalston, Hackney, 1989 89-7k-32
Founded in 1845 with German staff to provide medical services to German-speaking immigrants who had settled in parts of North London. English staff took over when the German staff were interned in 1940. It became a part of the NHS in 1948, and only closed in 1987. The Grade II listed buildings survive and were converted into affordable flats.
Man on van, Ridley Rd, Dalston, Hackney, 1989 89-7k-33
I wandered up into Ridley Road where business was beginning to slack off in the market for the day. This man having a cigarette sitting on the bonnet of a van saw my camera and asked me why I was taking photographs. We had a short talk and he insisted I take his photograph, so here he is.
Public Washing Baths, Shacklewell Lane, Shacklewell, Hackney, 1989 89-7k-34
I continued north to Shacklewell Lane and took this picture of the Public Washing Baths, built by the Metropolitan Borough of Hackney in 1931 when many houses in the area were without bathrooms. Many poorer families and single people lived in one or two rooms sometimes without any running water or gas supply in their rooms and shared lavatories and kitchens with other tenants of the buildings.
This bath house provided 24 baths for men, 16 for women and they will have been well used in the early years before slum clearance provided better housing for many in the area. They were damaged by bombing in 1940 and reopened in 1942 and only closed some time in the 1960s. It is now occupied by the Bath House Children’s Community Centre who bought it from Hackney Council in 2002. This is now part of the St Mark’s Conservation Area, designated in 2008.
Built in 1932 as the Albert Works for the printers Henry Hildesley by architects Hobden & Porri, it later became the Rona Fashions House of George Gowns Ltd, but by 1989 their name had been removed from the facade leaving the marks you can see on the horizontals of the building. I think it was then still in use for the rag trade but my picture has the end of the names ‘RONA ROON… and Bab… hidden by the trees of Shacklewell Green.
Robert William Hobden who died in 1921 and Arthur George Porri (1877-1962) whose practice was based in Finsbury Square were responsible for many commercial and public buildings across London in first third of the twentieth century but seem suprisingly little known – perhaps a good subject for some academic research.
Henry Hildesley the printers are best known for the many posters they produced, including some for London Transport and HMSO, with many produced to help the war effort in the 1940s. The building, now called Cotton Lofts is in the Shacklewell Green conservation area designated in 2018 and is now flats.
I can no longer remember the route I took to make the three final images in this post, but they were all made on 27th July 1989.
This terrace was built in 1882 and the conservation area statement calls it and other similar buildings in nearby streets “attractive and architecturally interesting”.
Founded in 1910, this Strictly Orthodox Ashkenazi synagogue owned by the Federation of Synagogues was closed and the membership merged with the West Hackney Synagogue in 1981. Used for some years by Roots Pool Community Association and Dalston Community Centre it was eventually converted into flats as Montague Court.
Possibly I may have taken a bus to pay a visit to Abney Park Cemetery, close to where this final image was made though if so I took no pictures on this occasion, or perhaps just to make this picture.
Shops were added in the front gardens of these houses built in 1878, and that now housing the artist’s house Madame Lillie was initially a carpentry workshop owned by the Wright family. In 1917, when Mrs Wright was a widow, her daughter Lillie opened a corsetry shop, which continued in business until she retired in 1970. In 1973 she sold the shop and house to her young artist nephew Paul David Wright. He converted the premises into studios for artists and a gallery space.
Dalston Doorcases to Marie Lloyd – On Thursday 27th July 1989 I took the North London Line to Dalston Kingsland and crossed the road into Ridley Market and walked along Colvestone Crescent and on to Montague Rd. I can’t now remember what had brought me to North London for this brief interruption to my series of walks south of the river.
Here there are four houses on both sides of the street with similar doorways to the pair in my photograph with these odd decorative figures supporting the lintel. Those further down the street have simpler largely geometrical designs.
I was unsure what to call these muscular male figures, hand on hips staring down at the ground with what appear to be victory wreaths of laurel leaves around their heads and a pair of rather fishy looking tails. A long and detailed study published by the Hackney Society, The Victorian Villas of Hackney by Michael Hunter tells me they are mermen, and provides other examples of ‘bizarre doorcases’ in the Victorian villas of the 1850s and 1860s in Dalston. These date from 1861-6.
There are several houses close to Dalston Lane at the south end of Cecilia Road that have converted shopfronts with consoles matching that at the top right of this shop and this was one of these.
Although the advertising for the News of the World and Silk Cut suggests this was once a newsagent and tobacconist, it looks as if it was by 1989 a junk shop.
This building on the corner of Stanford Mews is still there and has kept its decorative iron balcony railing though not the Eagle Shipping Services advertising and graphics. Its upper floor is now simply painted white while the ground floor has been converted into a ‘rustic health food cafe & shop‘, Healthy Stuff.
James Elves was a marble mason and called his premises at 164 Dalston Lane Carrara House, after the area in Italy famous for its marble. Born in Shoreditch he lived and worked here with his family from around 1900 at least until 1930.
The house is still there and also its porch, but the tiles – presumably marble – of the front path have been replaced with duller slabs.
A few yards south of Dalston Lane, these houses in Greenwood Road were looking a little the worse for wear in 1989 but are considerably smarter now. With three stories and a basement these houses are now largely converted into four flats.
Doorways, 96-98, Graham Rd, Dalston, Hackney, 1989 89-7k-42
I continued south to Graham Road where I found more of Hackney’s remarkable doorcases. The left hand door is 98B as I think there will he a separate door in the area below to the basement flat.
Michael Hunter has a picture of a similar pair a few doors down where he states that the Roman standards are based on pattern books of classical architecture, “but the extraordinary swags of solidified shells over the doors of… Graham Road defy analysis.“
The unfortunate door at right has since been replaced, but with another design that while preferable is still not in keeping with the building.
Doorways, 96-98, Graham Rd, Dalston, Hackney, 1989 89-7k-45
A closer view of one of the swags showing more clearly the shells and at the centre a lion’s head.
Marie Lloyd, plaque, 55, Graham Rd, Dalston, Hackney, 1989 89-7k-46
Finally for today, a rather simpler doorway in Graham Road with the GLC plaque recording that Marie Lloyd, Music Hall Artiste lived here. The dates are those of her life, 1870-1922.
Born in Hoxton in 1870 as Matilda Wood, she made her first appearances on stage when she was 14, taking the stage name Marie Lloyd the following year. So many of the old music hall songs we now know were made famous by here, not least for her remarkable use of nuance and double-entendre as well as displaying her undergarments in a way that respectable Victorians found deplorable but music hall audiences loved.
She moved into this house after her marriage in 1887 – but the marriage was not happy for long. After a disastrous bust-up she moved out from Graham Road in 1894.
As she sang ‘A little of what you fancy, does you good‘ but in her life she certainly became ‘one of the Ruins That Cromwell Knocked About a Bit‘ and at her funeral, thousands took the advice of ‘My Old Man‘ and followed the van to her burial from Woodstock Road in Golders Green to Hampstead Cemetery. Train journeys recently have often left me wondering ‘Oh Mr. Porter, what shall I do?
Hackney Million Mothers March against Violence: London is a relatively safe city compared with most large cities around the world. It’s murder rate of 1.38 per 100,000 population compares favourably with most others, and it is nowhere close to those in the top 50 -which all have rates over 28 times as high.
It is also considerably lower than any large city in the United States – which occupy eight places in the worst 50 cities for murders – with New Orleans at 70.56 near the top – only lower than some Mexican cities.
I’ve walked the streets of London carrying expensive cameras since the 1970s and fortunately have yet to be mugged or attacked. I have had my pocket picked a couple of times, seen drug dealers at work and refused offers from them and women offering me a good time, been threatened and assaulted by right-wing thugs and policemen (part of the job if you photograph protests) but generally London is a safe city.
It annoys me when some Americans keep asking about ‘no go’ areas in London (or other UK cities.) There are none. London is a city you can generally safely go anywhere in the public realm, though of course if you ask for trouble you can find it.
London isn’t crime-free. And there are some people who are more at risk than others. Women walking alone at night in lonely places do sometimes get attacked by male sex offenders. Many are sexually assaulted and a few are horribly killed. Some of these murders make the national headlines, such as that of Sarah Everard, killed by a police officer. But rather more women are killed in their homes, most often by men they know – a problem of male violence rather than London streets.
In one recent year there were over 18,000 reports of sexual assaults in London. But sexual assaults often go unreported, and it is difficult to know how many of these were on our streets. And although it is a disgracefully high figure it actually shows London as below the rate for the country as a whole.
Most at risk of being murdered on London’s streets are teenage males. Most are stabbed in crimes relating to gangs and drugs. There were 12,786 knife offences in London in the year ending March 2023, a little down on the figures for 2017-2020. The figures include those carrying a knife, owning a banned knife, trying to buy a knife if you are under 18, and/or threatening, injuring or fatally wounding someone with a knife. 63 of these offences killed someone in London.
Of course one murder is one too many, and all result in the waste of a life and a great deal of grief for the families and friends of those killed. There have been various local initiatives and groups set up to try to cut down the deaths, and some have at least some small effect but generally the numbers keep rising – though Covid saw a fall. Various newspaper articles and TV investigations have covered aspects of the subject, such as this in a series from Channel 4 News.
I’ve photographed a number of the protests and marches, often organised by bereaved families and its not possible to be unmoved, though sometimes I’ve felt that the solutions some of those speaking suggest would have little or no effect.
Knives are important in all of our lives, and in the average kitchen you can find quite a set of knives which could easily be used to kill. We need to change society more generally and importantly the way we raise, teach and occupy young children, giving them a better purpose in life and a sense of their own worth and abilities.
All the pictures here come from the Hackney Million Mothers March on Sunday 23rd August 2009, taking place as a part of an international peace parade to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Mothers Against Violence, mothers from bereaved families who are having a real impact in reducing gun, gang and knife crime, and to pledge action in Hackney over the issue.
The march was organised by Songololo Feet, Friend’s Charity, Hackney Council for Voluntary Service (HCVS), International Action against Small Arms (IANSA), St. John’s Church and The Crib, a local community group which “delivers creative and inspiring projects for young people in Hackney”.
Justice for Rashan Charles: On Saturday 29th July 2017 I photographed a protest outside Stoke Newington Police Station over the death of Rashan Charles, who had died after being handcuffed by two police and held on the floor of a shop on Kingsland Road in Dalston in the early morning of Saturday 22nd July.
Rashan Charles’ father (left) stands beside Edson da Costa’s father as he speaks
The pictures on this post come from that protest, which was attended by members of his his family as well of those of Edson da Costa who died after being arrested in Beckton the previous month.
Weyman Bennett of Stand Up to Racism
An inquest into the death of Charles returned a verdict of that a package he had swallowed when being chased into the shop by an officer had blocked his airway causing the death. But it also found that the officers had failed to call for an ambulance when they should, but more controversially argued that this would not have saved his life.
The inquest into Da Costa’s death revealed a number of errors by police but the jury was told by the coroner that “there is no legal or factual basis for reaching a factual conclusion which is critical of the police” and reached a verdict of death by misadventure primarily due to his swallowing a plastic bag of illegal drugs.
In March 2023, Baroness Louise Casey who had been charged with investigating the Metropolitan Police following the murder of Sarah Everard in 2021, issued her official report with the conclusions that they were guilty of institutional racism, misogyny and homophobia.
Stafford Scott
It came as no surprise to those of us who had read the many under-reported stories over the years of people – black and white, men and women – who had been picked on and brutally treated and some killed by police over the years on social media and in minority publications. Nor those of us who had attended protests against their behaviour or watched them in action at times against protesters.
Dianne Abbott MP
Our mass media have always ignored many of these cases and underplayed others, almost always taking the side of the police and acting more as a PR agency for them, always keen to spread the rumours, lies and misleading press statements the police rush out to excuse their mistakes and misbehaviour.
Friends of Rashan Charles
We saw this at its most blatant over Hillsborough, again with the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes and the killing of Ian Tomlinson while trying to walk back to his hostel through a protest at the Bank of England.
We’ve also seen the deliberate actions by the police to pervert the course of justice in high profile cases including the racist killing of Stephen Lawrence, where they investigated his family and friends while treating one of his killers as a witness. Daniel Morgan’s family have just received an apology and compensation over their failure to properly investigate his axing to death in a Sydenham pub car park in 1987 – a panel concluded that the Met’s “first objective was to protect itself” against the allegations of corruption against some of its officers.
Many other campaigners have exposed deliberate obstruction by police to inquiries into deaths, particularly those in police custody, such as Sean Rigg, which I’ve written about here before.
In the last few days, 25 years after his racist murder in Kingston, Lakhvinder Ricky Reel was awarded an honorary degree by Brunel University, part of a long campaign to get justice by his mother Sukhdev Reel.
Sukhdev Reel at Downing Street in 2000
Ricky and his friends had been victims of a racial attack in the town centre and six days later his body was recovered from the Thames. His family had been urging the police to search the river since he disappeared – and his body was found after only 7 minutes of searching. The Met refused to treat his death as a racist attack and made many failures in their investigation, devoting more resources to spying on his family by the undercover Special Demonstration Squad for their campaigning.
Saturday 25th February saw me travelling around London to photograph unrelated protests in Dalston, Leicester Square, Brixton and Westminster.
Shut race-hate LD50 gallery – Dalston
People protested outside the small LD50 gallery in Dalston just off the Kingsland Road which they say has promoted fascists, neo-Nazis, misogynists, racists and Islamophobes in one of London’s more diverse areas.
The gallery gets its name from the does of any substance which kills 50% of those taking it, and the protesters said it “has been responsible for one of the most extensive neo-Nazi cultural programmes to appear in London in the last decade.”
One man, “dc miller“, came to argue that it was a matter of free speech and the right to freely discuss ideas, even repulsive ones, should be defended. He got considerable verbal abuse from the protesters and eventually police came and advised him firmly to leave, and later wrote a number of articles about the gallery and the protest.
The protest didn’t immediately close down LD50 despite the claims of the protesters and a couple of months later it put on a show of defiance called ‘Corporeality’, though it is now permanently closed.
Perhaps an article in the Baffler by Megan Nolan, Useful Idiots of the Art World best expresses the position in this quote:
LD50 is a real place, in a real neighborhood, filled with people who are directly threatened by the vile speech of the very real racists who were invited into it. Repeatedly, the defense mounted by the gallery has been that it was attempting to have an open discussion about reactionary ideologies. The implication is that LD50 were engaging in some sort of completely neutral anthropological consideration of current events, rather than extending a fawning welcome to alt-right lynchpins.
Picturehouse recognition & living wage – Leicester Square
I rushed down to Leicester Square where workers from four Picturehouse cinemas at Brixton, Hackney, Wood Green and Picturehouse Central were holding a rally outside the Empire Cinema in Leicester Square to campaign for recognition of their union BECTU and to be paid the London Living Wage.
The Empire was recenetly acquired by Cineworld the owners of Picturehouse who have refused to recognise trade unions, but instead set up a company run staff forum.
They are not paying staff in London a living wage and offer poor conditions of service despite making large profits from cinema-goers paying £13 or more to see a film in central London. I’d arrived late and had to leave before the speeches to get the tube to Brixton.
The Guinness Trust was set up in 1890 by Sir Edward Cecil Guinness, then head of the family brewing business, to provide better housing for working class Londoners. One of the estates they built was the Loughborough Park Estate in Brixton.
Betiel Mahari had lived on that estate and moved into a new Guinness Trust flat, but the rent on this was more than doubled, increasing from £109 to £256 a week, although some of her neighbours are paying around a weekly rent of £100 less.
Beti has problems paying the new rent and because she works on a zero hours contract here housing benefit claim is constantly being reassessed leading to delays and errors in payment, leaving her in arrears. Guinness are not taking her to court to evict her and her two young sons. Supporters of the ‘Save Beti Campaign’ including Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! and Architects for Social Housing were campaigning outside Brixton Station collecting signatures for a petition to oppose the eviction of Beti and other tenants threatened by estate demolition.
I had time in Brixton to take a little walk around, particularly going to look at the railway arches where many long-standing local businesses are being evicted, though some are still trading.
25th anniversary of Khojaly Massacre – Westminster,
Back in Westminster the Justice for Khojaly Campaign were marching, calling for justice 25 years after the Khojaly Massacre in Azerbaijan where on the night of 25-26 February 1992, Armenian forces brutally killed 613 civilians, including 106 women and 83 children.
The call for an official apology from the Armenian govenment with full reparations and those responsible for this war crime to be brought to justice. The massacre was the larges in the war that folloed the secession of the majority Armenian population of the Nagorno-Karabakh region to form the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic which ended in 1994 with an uneasy truce.
My final event of the day was at Downing Street, where Help4Refugee Children was calling on the Government to honour its promise to let unaccompanied Syrian children into the UK after it reneged on its pledge earlier this month.
Theresa May’s high heels tread on a child
When Parliament had passed the Dubs amendment it had been very clear that this should happen and the government’s shameful and heartless decision overturned this, leaving many vulnerable young children forced to continue living in intolerable conditions. Many local councils say that they had made offers to take the children but these have been ignored by government.
Kingsland High St, Dalston, London. Sat 9 Feb 2019
Extinction Rebellion, XR, was founded in May 2018 by a small group who met in Stroud, including Gail Bradbook, Simon Bramwell and Roger Hallam along with others from the direct action network Rising Up. I’d photographed some of these people before at protests against Heathrow expansion and over air pollution on the streets of London.
Roger Hallam in particular had played a leading role in the ‘Stop Killing Londoners’ protests which perhaps had some influence on getting Sadiq Khan to take some action on this with the setting up of low emission zones, whose planned extension to the whole of Greater London is now exciting considerable controversy. I’d also photographed him at his campaign to get King’s College to divest from fossil fuel companies and supporting the campaign for better pay and conditions for low paid workers at the LSE
Police arrest Roger Hallam for decorating the LSE, April 2017
Since helping to form XR, Hallam has gone on to take part in other high profile protests and spent time in prison over breaching bail conditions by holding a toy drone without batteries close to the airport. The whole plan to fly drones in the Heathrow exclusion area had been a publicity stunt, never a serious attempt to disrupt or endanger flights, but gained a huge amount of media publicity, which perhaps helped to increase public awareness of the contribution to climate change and pollution of air transport.
XR continues to attract wide support for its non-violent protests highlighting both the devastating effects of global heating and the continuing failure of governments including our own to take action on the scale needed to combat it. It’s large public protests began with a mass reading of its ‘Declaration of Rebellion‘ in Parliament Square in October 2018 with Greta Thunberg as one of the speakers and continued with mass protests in London and elsewhere, becoming a global movement.
Its announcement at the start of 2023 that it was taking a rest caused some consternation among its supporters, but XR soon made clear that this was for a ‘100 days’ campaign to prepare for ‘The Big One’ on 21 April 2023, https://extinctionrebellion.uk/the-big-one/ when they intend that 100,000 people will gather outside the Houses of Parliament “To demand a fair society and a citizen-led end to the fossil fuel era.”
The street party in Hackney on Saturday 9th February 2019 was rather smaller, with perhaps a thousand taking part. Unlike in some later protests the police decided to facilitate the event rather than try to block or disperse it, closing the road and setting up diversions for traffic as people blocked the usually busy A10 for two hours with speeches, music and spoken word performances, t-shirt printing, face painting and free food, with dancing to a samba band.
At the end of the two hour party after a brief march up and down a short section of the road, the protesters moved off the street to continue their protest party in Gillett Square, and shortly after this I went home.
Police after all do facilitate other large events which block our streets, in particular sporting events such as the London Marathon, some cycling events, the Chinese New Year, Notting Hill Carnival and more. But later XR protests have been more widespread and longer lasting and clearly the police’s political masters have put considerable pressure on the police to take a more draconian approach – and at times to go beyond the law to do so.
The response of the government has been to produce new laws. The Public Order Bill currently going through parliament gives much more extreme powers to police and courts, including Serious Disruption Prevention Orders which will restrict the movement of people, who they can meet and even their use of the internet, an expansion of stop and search powers, enabling them to search without any suspicion, various new protest-related offences, some vaguely defined allowing almost anything to be an offence and even police powers to shut down protests before they begin.
Free food at the party
The Public Order Bill re-introduces most of the amendments that were rejected by the House of Lords in January 2022 and so did not form part of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022.
The march ended in Gillett Square, freeing the road for traffic
Hats, Bags, Passports, Mansions, Biocrin & Hollywood: This post continues my 1988 walk South Stokey & Hornsey Detached posted a few days ago.
Marmel & Grossmith, Hat Co Ltd, 1 & 2 Boleyn Road, Dalston, Hackney, 1988 88-10a-24
Back Road Kingsland dated from 1839 and was renamed Boleyn Rd in 1877, one of a number of local streets given names associated with Henry VIII who was alleged to have used a hunting lodge on nearby Newington Green. Until 1877 the road like many others in London was divided into a number of blocks or terraces each given its own name by the developers and many streets were renamed around then to end this confusion.
I’m not sure when Marmel & Grossmith set up their hat factory here, but in 1940 they had a hat factory at 159 Commercial St, Whitechapel. I don’t know when hat production ended in Boleyn Road, though the fly-posting suggests the works was no longer in use. The 33 flat Dalston Hat apartments into which the factory was transformed bear little resemblance to it but have an entrance marked by a giant top hat.
Alpha House was on Tyssen St which runs north from Dalston Lane, just to the south of where it bends 90 degrees to the east until 2014, although around 2010 the signs for Cambay Bags Luggage & Travel Goods were replaced by those for Cyclone Design Lab. The new flats have solicitors offices on the ground floor.
I was attracted by the confusion of notices and also by the pictures of a large bag, and on the van, a man perhaps cleaning a car.
Dalston Lane, Dalston, Hackney, 1988 88-10a-12
Back on Dalston Lane there was a photographer’s shop window, something I always stop and have a look in. . The most interesting part to me was a framed selection of 16 passport pictures (with a label stating PASSPORTS in case we were not sure), which I thought gave a good representation of the local community.
Walking towards Hackney I went past Navarino Mansions built in 1885 by the Four Percent Industrial Dwellings Society as 300 flats for Jewish workers from the East End. The architect, Nathan S.Joseph, set new standards for social housing in creating a building that was in finest style of the era as well as providing for the time high standards of provision.
Still owned in 1986-92 by the same organisation, then called simply the Industrial Dwellings Society [IDS] they were treated to a major refurbishment in 1986 to bring them up to modern standards, including the provision of lifts and new gardens in the courtyards and providing more spacious family accommodation.
House, St Mark’s, Church, Colvestone Crescent, Dalston, Hackney, 1988 88-10b-61
I think I continued my walk back towards Dalston, probably going along Ridley Road – I liked going to the market there, though seldom took photographs – and turning up St Mark’s Rise with the intention of photographing St Mark’s Church which is a prominent local landmark – sometimes called the ‘Cathedral of the East End’, it is one of the largest parish churches in London and used once to have over 2,000 attending its Sunday services.
The church is Grade II* listed, with a nave by Chester Cheston Junior built in 1864-6 and its distinctive tower by Edward Lushington Blackburne added in 1877-80. The area around was developed in the 1860s as housing for the wealthier middle class who worked in the City.
You can still buy a range of Vine’s Biocrin hand sanitiser, oils and creams although I think the original company, incorporated in 1937 for the “Manufacture of soap and detergents – Manufacture and wholesale of toilet preparations ” was dissolved around 2000.
The products, apparently still largely made for hairdressers, are now made elsewhere as this small factory has been replaced by flats, although the building part shown at the left is still there, now Capital Die-Stamping and The Hill Church at “Holy Anointing Christian Centre Where All Yoke Are Broken By The Anointing.” I don’t know if Vine’s make an anointing oil.
I think this is De Vere Court at 63 Kenninghall Road, but if so the details on the impressive porch have been lost presumably in the conversion to 14 flats. Their are other impressive porches on the street but the brickwork around the first floor windows is unusual.
Hollywood Studios, Upper Clapton Rd, Clapton, Hackney, 1988 88-10b-56
The Lea Bridge Tramway Depot at 38-40 Upper Clapton Road was built in the Victorian era for horse-drawn trams, opening in 1873, and remains, its future under much doubt, as one of the few remaining examples of a Victorian horse-drawn tram depot in London.
The existence of the trams, taking people to work in the City and the West End until 1907 drove the development of a thriving suburb in Clapton. Until recently many of the buildings were in use by a range of businesses who were forced to quit after planning permission was given for this locally listed building to be demolished and the site redeveloped in 2011. Statutory listing was refused in 2005, probably because of English Heritage’s snobbish lack of interest in our industrial past. Hollywood Studios was a rehearsal room and recording studio used by groups including Iron Maiden occupied a part of the buildings for a few years from 1983.
My walk around Clapton in 1988 will continue in a later post.
Walking Around Kingsland Road. This is the final part of my walk on 3rd Augest 1988. The previous post on this is More From the Balls Pond Road.
Tottenham Rd area , Kingsland, Hackney, 1988 88-8e-64
My walk continued south of the Balls Pond Road. I think this workshop was in Bentley Road, a short street which connects both the Balls Pond Road and Kingsland Road to Tottenham Road in an area which was then dominated by light industry, most of which has now disappeared. This building had the large notice above its doorway with the message ‘WANTED – EXPERIENCED SKIRTS’ which rather amused me.
Public Washing Baths, Englefield Rd, Hackney, 1988 88-8e-53
The Public Washing Baths on Englefield Road were opened in 1932, long after the first public baths in London which opened in 1847. It remained in its original use until the 1960s, a vital facility as many individuals and families lived in rooms and houses without access to more than a washbasin or kitchen sink and without running hot water, and would come to take a bath (slipper bath) here, particularly on a Saturday or Sunday when they were off work. The baths were cheap and popular, with over 60,000 baths being taken there a year.
When I photographed them the sing outside read ‘ENGLEFIELD LAUNDRETTE’ and gave its opening hours but I think it was no longer in use. Shortly after this it became a centre for the Vietnamese Boat People in the borough, run by the An Viet Foundation until 2017 and in 2019 received a grant from the London Mayor to fund a new kitchen for its continuing use as a Chinese and Filipino community centre. I’m unsure of its current status.
Kingsland Rd, Kingsland, Hackney, 1988 88-8e-55
Kingsland Road was obviously a very piecemeal development with each plot here having a different buidling height, though they were all built to the same front line.
The Metropolitan Hospital was built here in 1886, but had been founded by Joseph Fry, the son of the more famous Elizabeth, in Stepney 50 years earlier. It moved to several sites and was planning for a new building in Bsihopsgate Street when the site was needed for an extension to Liverpool St Station and the Station Hotel, and this site further north outside the City was found.
The hospital treated outpatients and had beds for 160. It had been set up as a free hospital but failed to attract sufficient funds and and removed the ‘free’ from its name. But the income from subscribers was still not enough to keep all of its beds in use. In 1948 it became a part of the NHS and was finally closed in 1977. Since I made this picture it has been refurbished for residential use and has lost the ‘HOSPITAL’ from its frontage and is now Metropolitan House.
London Dog Centre, Kingsland Rd, Middleton Rd, Dalston, Hackney, 1988 88-8e-41
To the left of the London Dog Centre is a narrow and winding street, Glebe Road, which runs along to beside the railway line and then straight beside it to industrial and commercial premises built back to back with those on Kingsland Road, going all the way north to Richmond Road. One of these units presumably sold carpets.
The London Dog Centre claims to have good quality puppies usually avaialable and also carries a large sign for the next shop along, Waynes Removals who offered free estimates for D. H. S. S. & Cash, as well as selling cookers. It looks as if Wayne (or Mr Waynes?) has left a few random pieces of furniture on the pavement including some some of shelf unit in front of the LDC.
The Waste began in the middle of the nineteenth century when the land owner allowed people to trade alongside the road without charge and developed into a long and packed area of stalls selling secondhand goods, often of dubious utility, all the way from Middleton Road up to Forest Road, around a quarter of a mile to the north.
Back in 1988 there were still many stalls on Saturdays, but over a rather shorter length, and some of the shops also spilt over onto the pavement. But on weekdays there were only a few traders. The market got smaller over the years, and Hackney council eventually refused to renew the licences for the remaining traders in 2015, saying it generated too much waste. But there was a local outcry and they were forced to reopen it a year or two later.
My walk ended here on the Kingsland Road. I spent most of the rest of August in Paris – you can see the black and white pictures in Around Paris 1988 – and it was only 25 days later on 28th August that I was able to go for a walk in London again. More from that at a later date.
Balls Pond Road got its name from John Ball, the landlord of a pub next to the pond, in “about the middle of the 17th century … the Salutation House’ or ‘Boarded House’ ..famous for bull-baiting and other brutal sports and the pond for duck hunting.” The name Balls Pond Road was applied in 1865 to the whole length of the street which had been developed under various names.
One of the pubs featured in the Stoke Newington Lost Pubs Walk which states it was probably named after Henry Fitzalan, 12th Earl of Arundel, a page at the court of King Henry VIII; the king had a hunting lodge at Newington Green in the 1500s which explains a number of local street names including Boleyn Road. Its pub sign featured the 14th Earl, Thomas Howard, but the figure in my picture is unlikely to have been one of the Earls.
Open by 1881 it was a Trumans pub, rebuilt around 1930 and closed around 2006 and was demolished and replace by a block of flats above ground floor commercial premises.
This part of the Balls Pond Road still presents a similar appearance by Elbe Footwear has no been replaced by Isabella Mews, with a wide gated ground floor entrance. I suspect Elbe may have had owners whose names begin with L and B rather than any connection to a German river.
Balls Pond Rd, Kingsland, Hackney, 1988 88-8d-16
A nicely restrained early 19th century two storey terrace at 65-79 Balls Pond Road, Grade II listed in 1975.
Balls Pond Rd, Kingsland, Hackney, 1988 88-8e-01
The view from across the street shows its simplicity but for me is a less interesting picture.
This building, also on the south side of the street and so in Hackney looks as if it was about to fall down, but has been refurbished. Alfred Halpern Ltd at 49, Balls Pond Rd according to their fading sign were Vacuum Formers & Importers was the former Maberly Chapel or Earlham Hall, built around 1820 as an Independent Chapel, with a later school from 1844, together Grade II listed. The listing text states it has ‘MABERLY CHAPEL’ in the triangular area at the top of the frontage, but in my photograph only the letters MAB ar recognisable, with much of the plaster peeling. It has now been removed.
Balls Pond Rd, Dalston, Islington, 1988 88-8e-61
There was an impressive row of fridge-freezers and cookers in front to the shop and neighbouring billboard on the Balls Pond Road, as well as a long, well-spaced row of prints in the picture. If they were really the size on the advert it would have been worth buying a can of Esso Superlube+.
The CALOR GAS shop (were those gas fridges?) had become a dry cleaners before 2008, but the billboard site was still then emptry, but was filled with ground floor shops and residential above shortly after.
Tottenham Rd, Kingsland, Hackney, 1988 88-8e-63
This LCC temporary housing was still lived in on Tottenham Road, a long street parallel to the Balls Pond Road joining Southgate Road to Kingsland Road. There has since been extensive redevelopment in the area and and these temporary buildings have long gone and I can no longer find the building in the background.
I have to admit that during the lockdown I have become very much centred around my own work and interests. Not feeling able to get out an meet other people and not being able to travel to my favourite areas have cut me off not just physically but also mentally from much of my outside involvements.
Because of my age and medical condition I don’t yet feel able to re-engage with the world in anything like the old ways, though I have made three short trips on public transport and visited when necessary several shops, of course suitably masked. And I am still in daily contact with many friends on Facebook as well as rather fewer through phone calls and online events,
But I still feel very withdrawn from many areas, and in particular from the world of photography. With very few exceptions I just can’t get interested in the various lockdown projects and online magazines and shows that have sprung onto the web. This morning I realised that it’s almost three weeks since I last went through the long list of web sites and blogs, many photographic, that I usually skim through every few days for items of interest or controversy and that in the past have often led me to express my thoughts on this blog.
It took quite a while to skim through hundreds if not thousands of articles and posts, though for most a quick glimpse or even the headline was enough for me to move on. There were just a few that interested me enough to stop and read more, and just a few to the very end. Military historian Charles Herrick in a 3 part post on A D Coleman’s Photocritic International comprehensively demolishes another of the confabulations about D-Day photographs, the legend of the duffel bag full of film from the beaches being dropped and lost at sea during transfer to a ship. As usual there are also other posts on the site of interest.
Joerg Colberg too almost always has something worth reading, and in normal times I would probably have wanted to add my pennyworth to his piece The Print, the book, the screen. I can’t bring my mind to it, but here is one sentence which might encourage you to read and think about it and the value of any photograph:
“In the world of photography, the value is almost entirely based on commerce and on a generally unspoken and widely shared sense of elitism.”
As someone who has never been a part of that elite I can only agree, though I think there are other communities outside that of commercial art dealers and the associated museums of the art photography world that value photographs. But as Colberg makes clear, he is focusing on art photography ‘When you see the word “photography”, you will always want to add “art” in front of it.’
Perhaps it isn’t surprising that there were so many of the other photographs and articles I looked at briefly and felt entirely superfluous; ephemeral, inconsequential and with little to say.
But one particular feature from the British Journal of Photography, published around a week ago did attract me, Marigold Warner‘s article ‘Hackney in the 80s: Recovering a forgotten archive of working-class life’ about the 2016 rediscover in the basement of the Rio Cinema in Dalston, established as a community non-profit arts centre in 1979, which in 1982 set up a radical photography project for local unemployed people, teaching them to use a camera and sending them out to photograph the local communities. Their pictures were put together as newsreels and screened as a part of the cinema programmes, before the commercial ads.
Unfortunately the Kickstarter fund-raising for the production of a book of these pictures finished on the same day as the BJP published the story, but by then over £32,000 had been donated to finance it and it will appear in November – you can pre-order ‘The Rio Cinema Archive‘ now from Isola Press for £25.
It seems good value; in my scale of things, the value of these pictures is rather greater than at least most of what sells for high prices in expensive galleries.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
