On Wednesday I went for a peregrination around Hackney, north and east of Brick Lane.
I drew this sitting on a bench on Weavers’ Fields. The tower block is Charles Dickens House. The church which you can just see is on the junction of Pollard Row and the Bethnal Green Road. It is a deconsecrated church, and looks as though it’s been converted to residential flats. The building with the roof, straight ahead, is on Derbyshire Road E2. It’s clearly been industrial in its time, now it looks vaguely high-tech. Note the long solar panel on the roof.
It was incredibly cold, about 5 degrees C. But very bright sun, so the solar panel must have been working.
I walked on back to the city. In amongst the office blocks it was warmer. I tucked myself into the angle of a building and drew this:
This is 101 Worship Street, in the beautiful row of workshops designed by Philip Webb. If I were to make the untold millions necessary, I would buy up this row and look after it. I have had my eye on it for a while, ready to campaign if it were threatened. At the far end, sketchily shown behind the cars, is a sort of font or water fountain, with a sharp angled roof. The houses are not in good repair, and evidently listed or they’d have been pulled down by now. They are surrounded by the huge developments of Hoxton and the City of London, as you see behind. This is the “fin tech” area. But these houses survive, against the odds, tribute to the utopian dreams of a previous era.
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The City is quiet on a Saturday. Here is a view along one of the City lanes, Austin Friars. I drew it from the back (east side) of Drapers Gardens, which is a new office block on Copthall Avenue.
I struggled with the sky. This is “cerulean blue chromium”. It granulated, didn’t go on flat. I think I had the paper too wet – I wetted it before I put the paint on, which was probably a bad idea. The actual sky was a clear and uniform blue, extraordinary in England in November. Don’t be deceived though, it was very cold where I was standing. You can see my hand shaking – look at the phone box.
In the distance you see the Natwest Tower on the left, now called “Tower42”. To the right and high up is the new building “TwentyTwo Bishopsgate”. The NatWest Tower was the highest in London in its day (1980). TwentyTwo will be the highest in the City to date.
Austin Friars, the road, bisects a site formerly occupied by an Augustinian Friary, hence the name. The monastery is long gone, except that the church survives, rebuilt after the Blitz. It is the “Dutch Church” in London, just out of the picture along Austin Friars.
Map showing the sightline in the drawing
I sat on the ground to put the watercolour on. A man came up and asked me if I would like a hot drink, coffee or tea? He called me Ma’am. He told me he worked nearby, in the office block behind me. Very shortly he returned with tea in a takeaway cup, including a lid. Seeing that I was still sitting on the pavement, he offered to fetch me some cardboard to sit on. This was a really nice man. I was about to stand up again though, so I thanked him for the tea and he went back indoors.
He revived my faith in human nature. I was very glad of the tea, and of the warm feeling that even here amongst city skyscrapers, there are human humans.
The drawing took about 1hour30min, drawn and coloured on location. Daniel Smith watercolours, mostly Mars Yellow, Perinone Orange and Prussian Blue, with Cerulean Blue Chromium sky, and a bit of Pyrrol Red for the phone box.
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Here is a back alley off Fleet Street, London EC4.
It is Old Mitre Court. The buildings on the right are 1 & 2 Mitre Court Buildings. They are listed Grade 2. Here’s what Historic England says in the listing:
Early/mid C19. 4 storeys plus basement. Plain classical, south elevation of Portland stone with channelled ground storey and cornice below top floor. Arched passage through centre. Plain, rear elevation of yellow brick with railings and gates.
It’s the “rear elevation of yellow brick” that you see in the picture. There are three gas lamps, at least one of which works. The other two look very rickety.
The buildings, 1 & 2 Mitre Court Buildings, are legal practices, housing Barristers and their associates. A list of the barristers is by the doors. The notice on the pavement says “Inner Temple Treasury Office, Open 10am – 4pm”. This is the office underneath the furthest gas light, the one with the right-angled support above it.
The paving slabs at the bottom of the picture were in fact green, as I have drawn them. It was damp, and there was a coating of moss-type algae on the paving slabs. A saying of my late father was, “The plants will win in the end”. When I see such a green coating on stone, in the middle of the City, I am reminded of his words, and I think he is right.
Eventually I had to stop drawing as the rain came down. The drawing got a bit wet.
Here is work in progress and a map:
Drawing took 1hour 15 mins. Colours used mostly Perinone orange, and Prussian blue, with a bit of burnt umber. Indian yellow for the gas lights. All Daniel Smith colours. Pen is Lamy Safari EF nib, with De Atramentis document (waterproof) black ink.
Later note: Article in Private Eye, Autumn 2021 (Westminster council is removing the Gas Lights)
I went out to look for more gas lights in the City. There was rain, and the back alleys were wet. I couldn’t find any more gaslights.
At the South East extreme of my peregrination I looked up and saw St Peter upon Cornhill. It is wedged in between other buildings.
St Peter upon Cornhill
The church in among other buildings. The devils are circled in red.
The adjacent building is labelled “54 & 55” Cornhill, in lovely art-deco writing. There is a branch of “EAT” on the ground floor. High up, there are three strange devils (ringed in red on the annotated picture above). The two larger and higher ones are definitely female devils, with big breasts and strong muscles. The smaller devil is yelling from his position above a window.
Map showing the buildings as seen in the drawing. Arrow shows the line of sight.
map with North at the top. Arrow shows the line of sight of the drawing.
I drew this picture from the shelter of White Lion Court, which is on the North side of Cornhill. This is one of those City of London back-alleys. It doesn’t go anywhere, just to the door of what looks like an insurance company, and off to the side is a doorway with ecclesiastical carving above. It looks like the entrance to a monastery. But that can’t be right. The modern iron gate is adorned with modern litter.
White Lion Court EC3
Litter on the gate of White Lion Court
As I was drawing a man came round from the nearby branch of Sainsbury’s to eat his sandwich and smoke.
Then later another man came by and asked me if I had seen the fire brigade. I said no, because I hadn’t. He said the fire alarm in one of the offices had gone off. He said he’d be wandering about for a bit, while he contacted the key holder. I could hear him calmly making phone calls. He was still there when I finished my drawing and packed up. I waved goodbye to him, and he nodded and half waved back, constrained in his movements as he was holding his phone to his ear and consulting a notebook.
It is astonishing how many tourist groups go down Cornhill. If I have done nothing else today, I have at least inspired a few tourists and other passers-by to look upwards to the onion spire of St Peter upon Cornhill. People pause, see that I am drawing, wonder what I can possibly be drawing in that dingy back-alley, and then look in the direction I’m looking and see the spire.
The tourist groups pause in the shelter of nearby Sun Court. I guess they are being told anecdotes about why there are she-devils on 54 and 55 Cornhill. I looked online. I can only find anecdotes, no facts. The building is by Runtz, 1853.
There has been a church at St Peter upon Cornhill since the 2nd Century AD, according to a tablet whose inscription was recorded and copied on various printed media, and now on Wikipedia. The tablet doesn’t exist any more as it was destroyed in the fire of London. The current building is by Christopher Wren, and was constructed between 1677 and 1684. There is also an entrance on Gracechurch St, which I must go and have a look at.
Here is work in progress.
Pencil
Pen
Pen
Watercolour
Finished drawing, on the pavement.
The drawing took 1½ hours.
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The Hallfield Estate is a modernist estate in Bayswater, W2 6EH. It’s a short walk south from Royal Oak Station on the Hammersmith and City Line.
It was constructed in the 1950s, to a design of Berthhold Lubetkin. The construction was supervised by Lindsey Drake and Denys Lasdun. Now it’s Grade 2 listed. Here’s what the listing says:
Reasons for Designation
The fourteen blocks and laundry at Hallfield Estate are listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
Architectural interest: a sophisticated and distinctive aesthetic approach to social housing, whereby the facades are treated like works of abstract art;
Planning: the estate fulfilled its brief to provide mass housing and open space in a crowded urban borough, in a plan inspired by Le Corbusier’s ‘Radiant City’
Authorship: designed by Berthold Lubetkin and Tecton, and constructed under the supervision of Lindsay Drake and Denys Lasdun, the estate is the work of some of the C20’s most significant architects;
Historic interest: a seminal post-war housing estate that was widely exhibited and published, and provoked divergent contemporary responses which illuminate post-war architectural theory.
Here is a sketch of Marlow House. I drew it standing on a strange hummock, a small hill, inside the estate near the Battle Bridge Road.
Marlowe house sketched on location 19th October 2019 in sketchbook 5
“The estate presents a convincing riposte to criticism that postwar council housing is grey, drab and utilitarian. At Hallfield, the exteriors of each block are treated like works of abstract art – some are patterned with a chequerboard of blue and red brickwork; others have a zigzagging screen of white concrete panels. The estate now exists amongst an elite group of 16 listed post warhousing estates estate in London – estates that are successful as places to live and are cared for by their residents.” Hannah Parham, the English Heritage Designation Advisor (2011).
Shown in my picture is the “zigzagging screen of white concrete panels”.
The gardens were beautiful, and well maintained. The buildings themselves are showing signs of wear. Tiles are chipped and cracked at the edges, and staircases look covered in soot from a previous era. But it’s still a stately collection of buildings. The white tiling is a work of art. On Marlowe House, the frame of the building is covered in ivory tiles, in squares of 25 tiles arranged in 5×5 grids, which are themselves arranged in a grid. So the effect is that of graph paper. I was impressed that these tiles are carefully made, and the edge ones are shaped, with rounded edges.
I also enjoyed the pillar, in the lower left of my drawing. It is fluted.
Fluted pillar. The lighting conductor rather mars the effect.
The stairwells are completely open. I could have gone up, but I didn’t. The postman did, however. While I was drawing I saw him doing his rounds, his black woollen hat moving along the balconies, passing behind the facade and down the stairs.
Here is a map and work in progress. Click to expand the picture.
Drawing took 1½ hours, drawn and coloured on location.
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The winter evening settles down With smell of steaks in passageways. Six o’clock. The burnt-out ends of smoky days. And now a gusty shower wraps The grimy scraps Of withered leaves about your feet And newspapers from vacant lots; The showers beat On broken blinds and chimney-pots, And at the corner of the street A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps. And then the lighting of the lamps.
T.S. Eliot – Preludes
There are still quite a few gas lights in London. I aim to draw as many as possible before they are taken out of service. It’s quite remarkable that there are so many in operation. This one is in Guildhall Yard, in the City of London. St Lawrence Jewry is in the background.
Gaslight, and St Lawrence Jewry, from Guildhall Buildings
Here is the gas light close up, drawn from Guildhall Yard, looking south.
Written on the little blue canister are the words:
“…the Solar Dial which automatically adjusted lighting times at dusk and dawn throughout the year. It was the start of nearly eighty years of Horstmann’s manufacturing involvement in the street lighting controls market.”
However before this innovation, the gas might have been lit by a person, because there is the arm for the ladder, as shown in my drawing. Perhaps that arm was always there, though, even after automation, in case someone needed to inspect the light. The North face of the light, the one shown in my picture, includes hinges on the left, and evidently could be opened.
I do not know if this light still functions. I shall take a diversion that way in the night, and let you know.*
I have drawn another local gas light, which does still function, off King Edward Street.
Gaslights on Queen Isabella Way
Location of Queen Isabella Way
All pictures drawn and coloured on location. Pen and wash.
*Update: It works!
06:45 15th October 2019, Guildhall Buildings
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Shoreditch, in East London, is a mix of a place. In this view you see many of the constituents of the mix.
The staircase on the right is “Development House” 56-64 Leonard St. It is boarded up, and adorned with graffiti. It is not, however, empty. I saw several sets of people descend the stairs while I was drawing. It was not at all obvious what they were doing there. I could not tell if they were residents, security guards, architects, property investment professionals or graffiti artists.
There is an unremarked and very lovely statue on the side of Development House. It shows people helping each other climb a steep staircase. I can find out nothing about it. It’s an inspiring image. I hope it doesn’t get scrapped when the site is re-developed.*
Statue of the side of Development House
Statue of the side of Development House
The glorious brick wall on the left of the drawing is the back of a warehouse at 62/72 Tabernacle Street. It looks as though it might still be a warehouse, since the signboard at the front says “EMA Textiles”, and cardboard boxes are stacked behind the windows. Next to it, further left out of the picture, is 52-60 Tabernacle Street, which is also a warehouse, but that one has been renovated and all the brick is marvellously repointed and neat: “warehouse space to lease” says the notice.
The red brick building is on the opposite side of Tabernacle Street. It is “McQueen” which is a night club and bar. The gap between Development House and the nightclub is what looks like an old bomb site. It is now a car park, and is a sunken area, with remnants of walls, and buddlia bushes. It all looks rather provisional, but it’s been like that for years. Sometimes there is a dance venue in the sunken area. I’ve drawn in this area before. See this post: Shoreditch skyline
The modern buildings in the background are “White Collar Factory” on the left, a multiple occupancy office space, and the Bezier Building on the right, with the flagpole or antenna. It doesn’t look like a flagpole.
The ecclesiastical building in the centre is part of the Central Foundation Boys School, a state school.
I drew this picture standing up overlooking the litter strewn area by Development House. While I was drawing, a horn bleeped. A car drew up, running its engine. The bleep had come from a motorbike behind the car. I saw to my astonishment that the back of the car was connected to the motorbike by a strap. The car was trying to tow the motorbike. This was obviously not working out well. They had stopped to reconsider. The motorcyclist dismounted and removed his helmet. Manoeuvring followed. I returned to my drawing. They tried this twice more before giving up.
When I’d finished the pen and ink I crossed the road to a little restaurant with wooden slatted tables outside. I gestured to the table, and smiled at two people of asian appearance behind the window. They nodded and smiled and continued their dialogue with the mobile phone screen. I sat down and got out my watercolours. Before long, a smiling person appeared and asked what I wanted. I said tea. She said “Bubble tea?”. I did not know bubble tea. It was 4pm and I am English so I said “ordinary tea”. This caused her to nod, smile and disappear. She came back with a menu. I pointed to the only tea I recognised, which was “oolong tea”. “With sugar?” she said. I smiled and said no thankyou. I went on with my painting.
What appeared at my table was not what I expected. I was expecting a teapot, or a mug. Steaming. Hot. Fragrant. With a spoon, perhaps. No. What appeared was a bottle. Chilled. “Oolong tea, no sugar,” announced the server, placing the bottle ceremoniously on the table. She smiled. I smiled. She went back inside. I cautiously opened the bottle. It was indeed tea. Cold tea in a bottle. Not what I expected, but pleasant, and plentiful.
Cold tea in a bottle.
The restaurant was “Buy and Bite: Popular Taiwanese Street Food”. A new experience for me. And only a short walk from home. The food looked really good. To try. Another time. Amazing London.
Sketch map of the area
Work in progress
Work in progress
*Redevelopment of “Development House”
Online I found a planning application [Development House, 55-64 Leonard Street, London Borough of Hackney Local planning authority reference: 2017/4694]for demolition and rebuilding on this site, dated 2017. Here’s what the proposed building will look like:
But since the website declares “completion in 2018” and it is now 2019, there may be a subsequent scheme. Here’s an extract from the Allford Hall Monaghan Morris website.
Allford Hall Monaghan Morris (architects)
Completion:2018
Melvale Holding Ltd with client representative Darmouth Capital
The proposal for the new Development House will replace the tired and almost empty existing building with a new 100,000sqft per nine storey building of office with A1 activities at ground floor that will activate the frontage along Leonard Street and Circus.
Melvale Holding Limited is a company incorporated in Jersey, with a registered office in Jersey which has an address in common with a large number of other registered companies: Equity Trust (Jersey) Limited. “Melvale Group”, which may well be related, describes itself as ” a diversified management, international trade, foreign direct investment and financial advisory consulting organisation and we work for both the Private and Public enterprises and institutions.”. But I am no further on. This Melvale Group has an address in Cobham in Surrey.
Dartmouth (not Darmouth) Capital is based in the City of London. They list “Development House” in their “portfolio”, and say about it, on their website:
The scheme prepared by local architect Waugh Thiselton is for an impressive new office development of circa 90,000 sq ft which will include ancillary retail space at ground floor level. The Shoreditch area is at the heart of the Technology, Media and Telecoms sector and enjoys demand for offices, particularly for unique buildings, and is a market with limited supply.
The scheme by Waugh Thiselton is quite different from the scheme above, and pre-dates it. Here’s their 2016 proposal:
They say:
“This nine-storey timber-framed office block will be the tallest engineered timber building in London, and a beacon building for Shoreditch.”
They propose a whole lot of green and environmental ideas. But since the Allford Hall Monaghan Morris proposal is later, then that’s the one we’ll get, most likely. The street which goes back on the left of the building in their drawing is the one where I had my oolong tea, and did my drawing. None of these proposals say what is going to happen to the statue.
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I drew a picture waiting outside the Garden Museum in Lambeth.
The Garden Museum is inside St Mary’s Church. The upmarket restaurant attached to the garden museum is the bronze-coloured cuboid on the right. The slab of stone which the tourist is sitting on is a tomb.
Prompted by an article in a newspaper, we were at the “Garden Museum” in Lambeth to see an exhibition of the art in Ladybird Books. I learned to read with Ladybird Books, as did so many others of my age. Here are pages from “Shopping With Mother”, one I remember with particular clarity. These are photos of the copy I still have, published 1958.
“Shopping With Mother” 1958
“Shopping With Mother” 1958
Note that Mother is wearing a hat and white gloves.
Since the exhibition was at the Garden Museum, they showed the art in the Ladybird Books of Trees, of Garden Flowers, and so on.
From the FT 10th Aug 2019
From the FT 10th Aug 2019
We also went up the tower of St Mary’s Church. It is 131 narrow steps. At the top it was very windy and we had a superb view. Here is what Lambeth Palace looks like from the tower.
In Victoria Tower Gardens, next to the Houses of Parliament, there was a huge demonstration to draw attention to Climate Change. The loudspeakers from speeches at the demonstration were accompanied by car horns and swearing of angry drivers, caught in traffic jams in the surrounding roads, and the wails of sirens as ambulances tried to reach St Thomas’ Hospital which is nearby. It was a soundscape of competing interests.
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I drew this in the Cloister Garden of the Museum of the Order of St John, Clerkenwell, a beautiful tranquil place on a hot day.
It was a very hot day, and I’d left the flat in some irritation, after a series of frustrations, mostly computer-related. Then one of my favourite cafés charged me far too much for a coffee, and added service charge without telling me. So I went to the garden.
Because I’d left the flat in such haste, I’d forgotten to bring my water pot, which was going to be a problem. However by the time I’d done the pen sketch, the woman on the bench opposite had finished her lunch, and I was able to ask her for her empty drinks bottle. This she graciously gave me, commenting on how pleased she was that it was going to be re-used. If you are reading this, thank you.
The logo of the Order of St John
The modern Order of St John is a charitable foundation. They are behind the St John Ambulance. This latter organisation has the commendably clear strapline: “We Save Lives”. They do this by educating people in first aid, and providing highly trained volunteers at events and disasters.
The Cloister Garden is by the Priory Church.
Map credit: website of the Museum of the Order of St John.
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Jane Sketching 