Category: Café

The Leather Market Workspace, Bermondsey, SE1 3ER

Here is The Leather Market Workspace. The Victorian building on the left is the back of the Grade II listed former “London Leather, Hide & Wool Exchange”, 1878, designed by George Elkington and Sons.

The Leather Market, Bermondsey, sketched 7th November 2025 in Sketchbook 16

My idea had been to sketch the front of the Victorian building from Weston Street. But the front was obscured by delivery vans.

We were on the point of abandoning the project, when Toby appeared.

Lynn’s sketch of the same view
(c) Lynn Adams, used with permission.

Toby, it turns out, is in charge of a café. He was standing on the pavement next to a huge arch by the Victorian frontage. Come in! he suggested. Lynn and I followed him through the arch. The space opened out into a large yard, with seats. Toby went into his café and we walked around the yard, sizing up the artistic possibilities. Lynn uttered a shriek of delight. She had discovered a point at the edge of the courtyard with an unexpected view of The Shard. And trees. This was her quest. She settled down to sketch while I went to procure coffee from Toby and his team. Then I started sketching too.

“The Leather Market” is one of a collection of co-working spaces managed by Workspace Group plc. We sketched and drank our coffee in the calm yard. Workers passed by and made encouraging comments.

Working on a sketch of The Leather Market. Pen: Lamy Safari fountain pen

We returned our coffee cups to the friendly café, and set off to explore more of Bermondsey. By the time we emerged out through the arch, the delivery vans had gone from the front of the building.

Thank you to Toby and his team from Skinners Café for making us so welcome!

Here’s a map:

Map showing the viewpoint in the sketch
The Leather Market workspaces – page spread, Sketchbook 16

Colours, all Daniel Smith watercolours:

  • Fired Gold Ochre for the bricks
  • Burnt Umber and Ultramarine Blue for the grey and blacks
  • Serpentine Genuine for the greens
  • Some Transparent Pyrrol Orange and Mars Yellow for the light indoors
  • all the whites are the paper, fine lines achieved using masking tape and rubber resist.

My pen is a Lamy Safari with EF nib, and De Atramentis Document Black waterproof ink. Paper is Arches Aquarelle 300gsm CP, in a book made by Wyvern Bindery of Hoxton

Work in progress

I have sketched in Bermondsey before:

St James Bermondsey SE1

Walking back from the Little Bread Pedlar with my bag of goodies, I came to a standstill in front of St James’ Church, Bermondsey. This is a…

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The Market Café, Broadway Market, E8

Here is the Market Café, which is at the South end of Broadway Market, near the canal.

Market Café, Broadway Market, Hackney E8, sketched 12 November 2024, 12″ x 9″ [sold]

I’ve sketched the Market Café before, and written about it on this post. This latest sketch was a commission to celebrate a happy event which took place there.

Here are some details from the sketch:

It was a bright and cold day. I did the pen and ink on location.

preliminary sketch
Packing up.
Working on location

The photographer Nick Hillier came by and took some photographs of me working, which he kindly sent me later.

Sketching on location, image credit: Nick Hillier. Pen is a Lamy Safari.

I added the colours at my desk. The colours are:

  • for the brickwork: Fired Gold Ochre
  • all the greys and blacks are: Ultramarine Blue plus Burnt Umber
  • the sky is Phthalo Blue Turquoise
  • the green tiles are Serpentine Genuine
  • there’s a bit of Permanent Yellow Deep on some of the highlights and some dots of Transparent Pyrrol Orange
  • the fine white lines are made by using a rubber resist gum. I use Pebeo drawing gum.

For my current palette see this link. I have 12 colours in my palette. For most pictures I fewer colours. This picture used about 7 colours.

Thank you to my client H for the commission and for allowing me to post this image here.

I’ve sketched around the Broadway Market area before. See this link for a sketch of Climpson Coffee, and here is a sketch done at E5 bakery on the other side of London Fields.

Sketch location

Climpson & Sons – Broadway Market E8

Here is a sketch of the coffee merchant Climpson & Sons, on Broadway Market in Hackney.

Climpson & Sons, 67 Broadway Market, London E8, sketched 22 October 2024 in Sketchbook 15

I was sitting at a table in the café opposite, which is called “Route”.

Climpsons are a coffee merchant and roastery based in East London. They roast their coffee in Walthamstow, and their HQ is just the other side of London Fields from Broadway Market.

They were doing a brisk trade as I sketched, and people drank their coffees on the benches outside.

I did most of the sketch on location and finished it at my desk.

Sketchbook 15

Vauxhall Tea House Theatre, SE11

The Vauxhall Tea House Theatre is one on my favourite places. It is a “tea house by day, theatre by night”. Here is a sketch of the outside:

Vauxhall Tea House Theatre, 12″ x 9″ pen and wash original. [sold]

Here is a sketch of the interior by day:

Vauxhall Tea House Theatre, interior with cat. 12″ x 9″ pen and wash original. [Sold]

There are winged chairs you can sink into, wooden tables you can work at, magazines and newspapers you can read. There is tea. There is cake. There is at least one cat.

It’s a short walk from Vauxhall station. Definitely worth a visit.

Above is from their Summer 2024 programme.

From the Tea House Theatre website:

“We are trying to be different. We will not hurry you. If you visit us on your lunch break, then have one, you will be more productive in the afternoon. If you want to have a meeting, we will not disturb you. If you are ‘working from home’, we have wifi. If you have children, we have highchairs, a chest of toys, and milkshakes. We always have the daily papers, so please, relax, and share in what we are trying to create, take a load off, and have a cuppa.”

Magnificent!

E5 Bakehouse, London E8

Sometimes I go out and find a view for my sketch. Sometimes the view is determined simply by where I find myself. Here is one of those occasions.

I had breakfast in the seating area at the back of E5 Bakehouse. At 09:15 I was the only person out there. I looked at the view. The various roofs made interesting angles. The cyclist who delivers their bread arrived and loaded up his formidable cargo bike. Customers arrived, and came outdoors. The tables filled up, each new arrival nodding a greeting to those of us already there. People made room for each other. It was quiet, no background music, perfect. I went back to the counter and bought another Gilchester bun. Time to do a sketch.

Sketching at E5 Bakehouse
The view from my table

E5 Bakehouse is not in E5 but in E8, right next to London Fields Overground Station, on the line out of Liverpool Street. Their website says

“The name E5 is a nod to our former local postcode and our intention to remain rooted in our community.”

They produce wonderful bread and pastries. My fellow customers were enjoying substantial breakfasts of eggs and all sorts of greens, or a kind of piled up yogurt and fruit dish. My favourite is the Gilchester bun: the archetypal currant bun – “Made using Gilchester’s organic flour , these are so simple and so tasty you can eat them on their own, or toasted even just with butter is all you need!”

A colleague of mine once told me that the way he judged a hotel was to ask for a glass of orange juice. The orange juice told him all he needed to know, he asserted. Was it fresh pressed, or out of a bottle? Was it served in a glass or a paper cup? Did they provide a spoon to stir up the bits?

For me, a currant bun is the test of a bakery. Those at E5 set the standard for currant buns the world over. The currants are numerous, the bread is soft and all the sweetness is from the currants. They are just superb. So that’s why I needed another one.

Here’s the finished picture. I added the collage at my desk at home.

Breakfast at E5 Bakehouse, watercolour and collage, 10″ x 7″ in sketchbook 14.
Page spread: sketchbook 14

Vauxhall Tea House Theatre SE11

Here is a civilised place in London. It’s the Vauxhall Tea House Theatre.

This is a picture I sketched there last week:

Vauxhall Tea House – 2:30pm 7 March 2024, in sketchbook 14

The tea I drank was their “Russian Smoky Tea”.

I’ve visited the Tea House many times. Here is an outside view from June 2022

Tea House Theatre, external view, June 2022 in Sketchbook 12

They have all sorts of theatrical events on their tiny stage. I enjoy “Don’t Go Into The Dungeon” where talented actor Jonathan Goodwin plays all of the characters to amazing effect. He specialises in Victorian mysteries. The next one is “The Hound of the Baskervilles”. Dinner is served before the performance. With scones for dessert.

Here’s where it is, just a 5 minute walk from Vauxhall Station.

And in more detail:

Here’s my sketchbook page:

Sketchbook 14

Market Café, 2 Broadway Market, E8

Here is the Market Café, sketched from the “Cat and Mutton Bridge” on 19th January 2024.

Market Café, 2 Broadway Market, London E8. Sketched 19th January 2024, 15:30, in Sketchbook 14.

As you see, this building is the former pub, the “Sir Walter Scott”. A pub was on this site in 1836. The wording on the building says “rebuilt 1909”. It closed as a pub in 1999 according to “pubhistory.com”. The Market Café now operates from the ground floor.

The website of Broadway Market gives a history of this area. In the early 19th century, the canal was the major means of freight transport, until the coming of the railways in the 1840s.

In 1812 “The Regent Canal Act” was passed and the Regent’s Canal constructed. This final link was direct into the River Thames at Limehouse, completing the passageway of heavy freight to Birmingham Manchester and the entire industrial North. (It should be noted that this was at the time of horse-drawn stage coaches and ox-laden wagons).

The new Regents Canal became a central pivot for industry and supplies. Timber warehouses grew, Gas light and Coke companies were established and this once rural backwater had become a major hub of enterprise.

https://broadwaymarket.co.uk/history-part-1/

This “once rural backwater” evidently needed a pub. Sir Walter Scott was a Scottish historian, novelist, poet, and playwright. He died in 1832, which must have been around the time this pub was named and the area was growing in population and importance.

The National Library of Scotland provides a wonderful side-by-side map, so you can see how the area looked previously, alongside a modern map. Click the image below to go to their marvellous site. You can shift the images around and expand them: both maps change at once. It’s fascinating.

https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/side-by-side/#zoom=17.6&lat=51.53590&lon=-0.06196&layers=117746212&right=osm

I had a look at an 1870 OS map. The Public House “P.H.” existed here in 1870. The road currently called Broadway Market was called “Pritchards Road” then. You can see the rows of terraced houses along the canal, gone now, and the “Coal Wharf” and “Wood Wharf” which used to be on the south side of the canal.

Broadway Market is now a street of modern coffee shops and small enterprises, with a street market of stalls down the middle. The jeweller William Cheshire has a workshop at the south end of the street. Climpson Coffee are further up. There are bakers, grocers, greengrocers and an opticians. At the North end, Broadway Market gives onto London Fields, a lovely park, with a lido.

It’s a great area to explore.

Rheidol Rooms, London N1

Rheidol Rooms is a café in Islington, just North of the Regent’s Canal. I sketched it on a bright cold day.

Rheidol Rooms, 16 Rheidol Terrace, London N1 sketched 3pm 10 January 2024 in Sketchbook 14

The tree cast its image onto the café. The twigs is the shadow were so sharply defined that it was hard to distinguish the shadow from the tree.

Despite that bright blue sky, the temperature was 2 degrees C and there was a wind. I froze, and walked across to the café. Sadly, it was closed, but it looked like a really good café and I will go back. I finished the drawing at my desk.

The colours in the picture are:

  • Mars Yellow
  • Ultramarine Blue
  • Burnt Umber
  • Serpentine Genuine (green, for the window frames)
  • The grey and black is made from a mix of Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Umber

The café is at the junction of St Peter’s Street and Rheidol Terrace. It is in a 19th century row of terraced houses. “British History Online” indicates that this terrace was constructed in 1848-52.

Sketch map location of the Rheidol Rooms
Map (c) OpenStreetMap contributors

Reference: British History Online: the history of this area is here: A P Baggs, Diane K Bolton and Patricia E C Croot, ‘Islington: Growth, South-east Islington’, in A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 8, Islington and Stoke Newington Parishes, ed. T F T Baker and C R Elrington (London, 1985), pp. 20-24. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/middx/vol8/pp20-24 [accessed 11 January 2024].

“….the block bounded by St. Peter’s Street, Rheidol Terrace, and Cruden Street as far as the backs of houses in Queen’s Head Lane, with provision for 14 semi-detached and 74 terraced houses, was taken by James and Thomas Ward and built up by James Ward and sublessees. Leases for nos. 7-21 St. Peter’s Street, pairs of stuccoed villas originally called Angell Terrace after the Clothworkers’ surveyor, Samuel Angell, who probably laid out the estate, were granted in 1848 and for the rest of the block from 1848 to 1852.”

Compton, St John’s Square, London EC1

Clerkenwell has many interesting corners. Here is a view across St John’s Square. I sketched it earlier today, sitting on the step of the Priory Church of the Order of St John. The restaurant is called “Compton”.

View across St John’s Square, Compton restaurant, 21 June 2023, in sketchbook 13

Here’s a map:

Thank you to the kind person from the Priory Church. They emerged from the door behind me. There I was, low down on the step, at the pen-and-ink stage, with my materials laid out neatly on the stone. They obviously had not expected anyone to be sitting on the step. I had not expected anyone to come out of the dark door. It had looked as if it had been closed shut for millennia. After a moment of surprise, politeness prevailed and we both said hello. Thereafter, I grouped my materials into a compact heap, and they came and went, tolerating me amiably, and skirting around me to operate the card key system.

This picture has just four main colours: Ultramarine blue, Brown umber, Mars yellow, and Green Serpentine Genuine. The only other colour is Fired Gold Ochre for the terracotta: the chimneys and the flowerpots. All colours are Daniel Smith watercolours.

Here is work in progress:

67 Redchurch Street E2, “Jolene” bakery

Jolene bakery is on the corner of Redchurch Street and Club Row.

Jolene, 67 Redchurch Street, from across the road. 19th August 2021. 10″ x 7″ in Sketchbook 10

This is a lively corner in a street on various edges: on the edge of the City, at the boundary between a new London and an old one, at the intersection of 21st century entrepreneurial culture and 19th century housing projects.

Redchurch Street is just North and West of Brick Lane. There are restaurants, independent clothes designers, hairdressers, and various 21st century businesses I couldn’t identify but categorised in my mind as broadly “creative”. It’s a good place to walk around, and Jolene is a great place to pause for coffee. They close at 3pm, though, so best be quick.

I arrived there at about 1pm today, and sat outside on one of their benches. Here’s the view looking up Club Row.

Looking North up Club Row, from “Jolene” Redchurch St. 9 September 2021, 2:45pm 10″ x 7″ in Sketchbook 10

Further North up Club Row, to the left of my drawing, is Arnold Circus. This is the centre point of the Boundary Estate which was the London County Council’s first social housing project, completed on 1900. I have drawn there and written about it here: