Upstairs Downstairs in The East End - 1680-1760: Episode Two

We shall begin our Upstairs Downstairs tour as far upstairs as it is possible to get, with the attic workshops of the silk weavers.

The front attics of the Huguenot silk merchants' houses contained the looms of the skilled weavers. These craftspeople needed as much light as possible and so the windows covered most of the width of the house.

Let us gaze across the street to our fellow Huguenots' houses and wave at the weavers toiling away at their looms to produce beautiful silks for the rich folk.

All along the street echoes the same clack of the looms and the yelps and profanities of those getting their fingers trapped.

To the right you can just make out the large skylight in the roof of le Neuve Eglise, our splendid new Huguenot church. This will eventually become the Brick Lane Synagogue and later still the Brick Lane Mosque as populations shift around London.

As you can see from the gable wall of All Saints' Vicarage on the right, the houses were double depth, with the front attic roofs containing the looms for the skilled silk weavers and the rear attic rooms acting as servants' quarters. Try to ignore the fashion shoot … this is London after all.

Here's where the children of the poor might be lucky enough to end up, in "service". This is quite roomy and well appointed (just wait until you see the scullery maid's room in an upcoming post) and likely to have housed the Mrs. Bridges of the household, ruling the under-servants with a steely glance, iron discipline and a well-starched pinny.

This is in part of a museum run by the Spitalfields Trust. They once had an American student live in the room for a season to immerse himself in "The Georgian Experience". I like the lovely little songbird cage in the window. Very Miss Flite from Bleak House.

In rain-soaked, smog-choked, soot-blackened, shit-rivered London it was probably best to dry your laundry at the top of the servants' stairs.

Next time, we'll leave the attic, tip-toe down the back stairs and venture a peek into the world of the wealthy silk merchant. A teensy bit different from the servants' quarters.

Upstairs Downstairs in The East End - 1680-1760: Episode One

"Let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of London …"

Yes, you're entitled to slap me hard for that earworm.

We'll start off in Whitechapel. It's the morning after our Jack the Ripper Tour and we're slightly fuzzy-headed from one too many pints of London Pride.

Old Dive is going to walk us all clear-headed. We are threading our merry way north to Spitalfields to see what life was like, both upstairs and downstairs, for the Huguenot silk-weavers and merchants in their heyday between the Restoration and the Georges.

We shall pass the historic Whitechapel Church Bell Foundry (where both Big Ben and the Liberty Bell were cast), soon to be demolished to make way for a hideous, glass and steel 108 bedroom "boutique" hotel with swimming pool. If you know anyone who works for US developer Raycliff, please go and kick them for me. Hard and repeatedly.

We shall turn left off Brick Lane into Fournier Street, at the junction of which stands the Brick Lane Mosque, which in the late nineteenth century was the Brick Lane Synagogue and before that, le Neuve Eglise, the Huguenot church constructed in 1743 to reflect the growing wealth of the silk merchants; a lovely building whose changing forms of worship echo the centuries of ever-evolving social upheaval in the East End.

Here the houses become larger and more elegant as we move into the silk merchants' quarter. Note the two doors on the front of the middle house above; the grand door for customers and social visitors, the humble "tradesman's entrance" for deliveries, servants and the hoi polloi. Know your place!

We shall pass (on our way to Folgate Street via Hawksmoor's glorious All Saints' Church and the joyful bustle of Spitalfields' Market) the house (left) and studio (right) of everyone's favourite living works of art and National Treasures Gilbert and George and shall pause for a moment to discuss changing fashions.

Most windows on Fournier street are like those on the right, with the sash box and frame fully visible on the front face of the brickwork (see also the photos above) and were usually painted a dark colour, though current fashion is for off-white.

After several fires, the style of window changed by legislation in the early 1700s, moving the sash box and frame back behind the front skin of brickwork and tucking them out of sight, like those on G&G's house on the left. This gave a larger glazed area for the same opening and reduced the risk of fire spreading up the building via burning sash boxes. The reveals were usually painted white to bring more light into the rooms.

So, shall we vault this perfectly positioned bollard, venture inside our time machine and plunge down the rabbit hole to the Huguenot heyday? Mrs. Bridges awaits …

Sunday Stair - Sinuous

Friday Morning Wood

These are some of the panels from a fully-panelled, seventeenth-century room which needed some TLC. I had the whole thing dismantled, the layers of paint were carefully removed to reveal the original colour (a kind of pale jade green). 

The backs of the panels were lovingly waxed/oiled/repaired as necessary, the fronts will be refinished in a bespoke breathable paint to match the original colour (the layers of white paint were oil-based and the lack of breathability contributed to the damage and decay behind the panels).

We retained all of those lovely little blacksmith's nails that hold the panels into the frames. The whole shebang will be reassembled some time in the next couple of years (there are a lot of rooms to do).

This is from the same estate that houses the old wagon from last Friday's post.

Greens

Try as we might, we'll never equal Mother Nature.

Wednesday Window

 

Thought I'd spare you the cobwebs this week and move from old barns to Elder Street in Spitalfields.

Remember the simple stone stair from last weekend?

Well this is upstairs in the same house, gazing through the admittedly grubby glass at more deliciously unspoiled and expertly restored houses under the guardianship of the Spitalfields Trust.

This tiny area of just a few streets, surrounded and overshadowed by monstrous, bullying glass behemoth office blocks is a haven of peace and sanity. Tim and his valiant handful have spent decades fighting off the massed lawyers of international corporations desperate to tear these buildings down and replace them with execrable shrines to crapitalist greed.

 

This is the kind of shit I'm talking about and it makes my blood boil.

The gas lamp marks the doorway of Denis Severs' House on Folgate Street in Spitalfields, from the back room of which the Spitalfields Trust fight their long rearguard battle against the likes of Broadgate Tower (the monstrous carbuncle towering over the street).

The corporate developers have recently won the battle to destroy the historic railway arches outside Liverpool Street Station, evicting the communities that live and work there. If you look right from where I took this photo you can still see the sky … Not for much longer.

Spitalfields, together with Brick Lane to the east and Whitechapel to the south-east fight on, though it looks like an American company wants to demolish the historic Whitechapel Bell Foundry (where Big Ben and the Liberty Bell were cast) and replace it with a monstrous glass turd of hotel and offices.

Leave our history alone, you worthless shit-stains.

Where in the World?

So where am I?

I don't mean today (I'm in the office in the middle of a Norwich Castle meeting); I mean where was I when I took the photo?

WTF Monday - Christmas in July.

Robert, Gerry and Tony looking atypically glum at Breakfast Club on Saturday July 17th, 2021.

Take a look out the window.

Pret are selling Christmas sandwiches in July!

JULY!

I know I've said this before but I feel I am quite justified in repeating it:

WHAT THE FUCKING FUCKITY FUCK?

Message ends …

Saturday / Sunday Stair

I'd intended to restart the old Saturday Statuary and Stained Glass Sunday photo-posts but couldn't really be arsed to venture out into the Choking Death Plague Lands with a camera, preferring instead to settle my fat arse into my gaming chair and play Fallout 4. That way, when I die I get to start again, unlike the post-apocalyptic world outside my front door.

Anyhoo, I had a rummage in my hard drive and discovered I've taken a ridiculous number of pictures of old staircases. What's more, stairs starts with an 'S' so I'm going to do a weekend stair photo-post instead. Saturday or Sunday; take your pick; I'm happy either way.

There are some very grand staircases to come but I shall start gently with a personal favourite, possibly the simplest attempt at a stair I have come across.

The enigmatic inscription incised into the stone reads "N D / 4 2 / 1829" which is odd because the house it sits in was built in the 1680s.

This stair lives in the basement of a Huguenot silk-weaver's house on Elder Street in Spitalfields, within shouting distance of the Jack the Ripper tours our Colonial friends enjoy so much. Don't step out of this door after dark or you may find yourself in Victorian London being offered laudanum-soused grapes by a dark, cloaked figure …

Friday Morning Wood - Don't Paint Your Wagon

Sing along now … "Where are we going? We don't know, When will we get there? We're not certain, All that we know is we are on our way … etc." A truly great movie for a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Anyhoo … I found this charmingly picturesque fixer-upper in the corner of a meadow behind an abandoned farmhouse in North Norfolk, part of a vast estate where Old Dive's historic building conservation talents were called upon.

I think that wheel's gonna take some fixing.

 

I'm just chock full of fun facts to bore you with today. You know that posh wainscotting round the lower walls of the homes of folk richer than myself? Well that originated as Wægnschott …

Wægn from the Saxon Middle German for wagon or wain (as in Constable's Hay Wain), and schott for sheet. Basically wain-sheet: wooden sheeting around the edges of wagons to stop all the stuff falling out.

As the centuries passed, wægn became wain and schott lost its 'h' and Saxon eorls and later Norman barons started to put wain-scot around the bases of the walls of their halls and manor houses.

Back then animals were kept in the great hall and the family ate and slept up at one end on a raised dais to keep them out of the pee and the poo. The wainscotting protected the wattle and daub walls from the faunal effluvia and as time passed the feature was retained in wealthier houses.

This old wagon (built in 1830 … the estate records are remarkably complete and a treasure house for an obsessive old Aspy like me) retains its wægnschott but I think it'll take more than a lick of paint to get it up and running again.