Monthly Archives: February 2026

His & Hers Hairdressers, Middleton Road, Hackney

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Following last week’s post on London Fields, for this week’s post I am again in search of another of my father’s 1980s photos, also in Hackney, but this one, judging by other photos on the same strip of negatives, seems to be from 1986.

This is His & Hers Hairdressers at the Kingsland Road end of Middleton Road:

The photo is typical of the many small businesses that occupied run down Victorian shops in the 1980s, and for a hairdressers of that decade, the shop has the obligatory display of hair style photos.

This is the same shop, forty years later in 2026:

With photos of hairdressers, you can normally tell the decade of when the photo was taken by the photos in the windows, and His & Hers had photos of 1980s big hair:

Small details in the photo, such as the person inside, probably wondering why my father is taking a photo:

On the wall to the left of the shop, something that was once a common sight:

And there are details in the 2026 photo, where an earlier shop sign has been exposed:

If you go back to the 1986 photo, there is wooden boarding across the location of the above sign, so I suspect this was covered up in 1986 and dates from an earlier business.

M. Matthews is the central name. There does appear to be a shadow name, but this also looks like M. Matthews, so perhaps an earlier version of the same name. To the right is the word Tobacco, and a bit hard to make out, but to the left the letters do seem to form Newsagent.

I cannot find a reference to an M. Matthews, but the ground floor of the building has always been a shop, and searching through Post Office directories, I found that in 1899 the shop was a Confectioner, run by Miss Elizabeth Winstone, and in 1910 it was still a confectioner, but now run by Mrs Matilda Watkins.

A jump from being a Confectioner, to a Newsagent and Tobacconist, but who also probably continued to sell confectionary does seem like a natural evolution of the shop.

I have no idea when the shop changed to a hairdressers, or when His & Hers closed. In the 1986, the ground floor occupied by the hairdresser does seem to have undergone some structural alteration, as above the windows and doors, there is the full width of the panel over the name sign, and this can also be seen in my 2026 photo, where the name sign extends over the windows and two doors.

The ornate carvings typical of the sign endings on Victorian shops can also be seen in the 1986 photo, although the one of the left had been removed by 2026.

This is probably the result of the building being converted from a shop occupying the full width of the ground floor, to a building where the first and second floors became separate residential accommodation, hence the door on the left, and the door to the shop being the one on the right.

Today, the old shop on the ground floor also appears to be residential.

The shop was built in the mid 19th century as the fields and nurseries of Hackney were covered in new homes.

In the following map, I have marked the location of the shop with the red arrow on the left. The darker road running vertically just to the left is Kingsland Road, and to the right of the map is the edge of London Fields. Middleton Road is the street with the Hairdressers, and which runs from Kingsland Road to London Fields.

Nearly all of the straight streets in the map are Victorian housing, serving the growing numbers of middle class workers of London with aspirational new homes.

The shop was part of a street design where small businesses were distributed across new residential developments, so that people who moved out to these new homes would have access to the necessities of life within local walking distance, and this included pubs.

On the corner of Middleton Road and Kingsland Road is the Fox – a rare example of a London pub that closed in around 2018, but has recently reopened (I believe with the upper floors converted to residential):

At the very top of the corner of the building is the date 1881, and this is from when the current building dates, although there has been a pub on the site for a number of centuries.

The earliest written refence I can find to the Fox is from 1809, when on the 21st of July, there was an advert in the Morning Advertiser for the auction of five, neat, brick built dwelling houses between Kingsland Green and Newington Green. Details about the properties to be auctioned could be had from Mr. Taylor at the Fox, Kingsland Road.

When the 1809 advert appeared, much of the area surrounding the Fox was still farm land and nurseries, but the pub was here because Kingsland Road was an important road to the north from the City and would have been busy, with many of those using the road in need of refreshment.

Search the Internet for stories about the Fox, and a story about the pub being used to stash part of a £6 Million Security Express robbery in 1983, by Clifford Saxe, one of the robbers and landlord of the Fox is one of the common stories from recent years.

I cannot find a firm reference from the time that it was the Fox, an account of the robbery from the Sunday Mirror on the 1st of July 1984 on wanted criminals who were living in Spain referenced that “It claimed Saxe, 57, formerly landlord of an east London pub was the brains of the gang”. Presumably that east London pub was the Fox, but again I cannot find a direct reference from the time.

In the following extract from Rocque’s 1746 map, I have marked the location of the Fox with a red arrow. The yellow dotted line shows the route of the future Middleton Road, running from Kingsland Road to the edge of London Fields, over what was nursery land, and by 1823 would be known as Grange’s Nursery:

The 1881 rebuild of the pub must have been to transform the premises that had once been surrounded by fields, to an establishment suitable for the large population who occupied the terrace streets by then covering the fields.

The population growth of Hackney mirrors this housing development. In 1801 the population was 12,730, and a century later in 1901, Hackney’s population had grown to 219,110, and this new population needed local shops, and the confectioners / newsagents and tobacconists / hairdresser shop was part of a terrace of shops at the end of Middleton Road, with the following photo being today’s view of this terrace:

In 1899, this terrace consisted of (number 11 in bold is the shop that is the subject of today’s post):

  • Number 1: John Biddle – Fishmonger
  • Number 3: Mrs Stark – Baby Linen
  • Number 5: John Edward Stark – Tobacconist
  • Number 7&9; Benjamin Wilkinson – Chemist
  • Number 11; Miss Elizabeth Winstone – Confectioner
  • Number 13: Robinson Locklison – Laundry

By 1910, the terrace consisted of:

  • Number 1: Walter Hart – Fried Fish Shop
  • Number 3: James Arthur Mullett – Grocer
  • Number 5: William Leigh – Hairdresser
  • Number 7&9: Benjamin Wilkinson – Chemist
  • Number 11: Mrs Matilda Watkins – Confectioner
  • Number 13: John Hart – Bootmaker

The above two lists shows that in the eleven years between the two, there was a high turnover in owners and types of shop. Number 1 had changed from a Fishmonger to a Fried Fish Shop, illustrating the rapid expansion of this type of take away food across London, from what is believed to be the first such shop in east London in 1860.

Number 1 is still supplying food, as today it is the Tin Café.

The only business that is the same is the Chemist of Benjamin Wilkinson. At number 13 in 1910 was John Hart, a Bootmaker. In 1986 it was a shoe repair shop, just visible to the right of the photo at the start of the post, so in the same type of business.

Another view of the terrace, number 3 to 13:

Just visible to the right of the above photo, and in an earlier photo with a train, is a bridge, which adds an unusual feature to this end of Middleton Road.

Walking along Middleton Road, under the bridge and looking back, this is the view:

The bridge carries what is now the Windrush Line over Middleton Road, and the reason for the large dip in the road is because the railway is carried on a viaduct, which runs parallel to Kingsland Road, and needs to run as a level structure, so where the railway carried by the viaduct runs across a road, the runs needs to be lowered to pass under the viaduct.

This railway was built as part of the North London extension of the London and North Western Railway, and the following extract from Railway News on the 3rd of December 1864, when the viaduct was nearing completion, explains the benefits and route of this railway:

“The London and North Western reaches the City by means of the North London extension, but the undertaking may be considered as that of the North Western.

The City extension runs from Kingsland to Liverpool Street, Bishopsgate, and is now rapidly approaching completion. The advantages of this line are very considerable.

The station is within a short distance of the Royal Exchange, the Bank of England and many offices in which the chief monetary transactions of the City are conducted. Five or seven minutes walk will bring you to Threadneedle-street, Moorgate-street, or Gracechurch-street, and all the other busy thoroughfares, lanes and courts hard by – no small consideration to the thousands of railway travellers who come from the North daily within that important radius who are anxious to economise time.

Further, this line shortens the distance between all the stations on the North London line, from Camden to Kingsland and the City by no less than five miles. At present time the North London, on leaving Kingsland, goes by Hackney, Bow, and Stepney, describing nearly three-quarters of a circle before it reaches Fenchurch Street. This detour, with its super abundant traffic and crowded junctions, with therefore be avoided by all coming west of Kingsland to the City.

The extension is about 2.5 miles in length, and proceeds almost in a direct line from its junction with the North London proper to Bishopsgate, With the exception of a cutting near the starting point it passes all the way on a brick arch viaduct which has all but been finished. Running parallel with the Kingsland-road.”

The line would go on to terminate at Broad Street Station, next to Liverpool Street.

This railway helped with the construction of the houses across the fields of Hackney, as for workers to move to Hackney, they needed an easy form of transport to their place of work, and the new railway extension was ideal. For the residents of Middleton Road, Haggerston Station was a short walk south along Kingsland Road. The station opened on the 2nd of September 1867.

Bells Weekly Messenger on the 9th of September 1867 described the new station: “NEW STATION, NORTH LONDON RAILWAY – A large and commodious new station was opened on Monday on the North London Railway, in Lee-street, Kingsland Road. The new Haggerston Station commands the neighbourhood, and also the Downham-road and De Beauvoir Town, which places are situated too far from the Dalston Junction to profit by the latter.”

The line closed in 1986 (Haggerston Station had closed in 1940 due to a number of factors including wartime economy measures and bomb damage to the station).

The station and railway along the viaduct reopened in 2010 as part of London Overground, and in 2024 the railway was renamed as the Windrush Line.

So this small part of London had shops, a pub and a station connected to the City. The other important attribute of a Victorian city was a church, and In Middleton Road is the 1847 Middleton Road Congregational Church, now the Hackney Pentecostal Apostolic Church:

Middleton Road is mainly comprised of terrace houses, but there are some interesting exceptions, such as the building in the middle of the following photo:

Which has an entry to the rear of the building named Ropewalk Mews:

I cannot find the reason for this name, and why the building is very different to the terrace houses that occupy the street.

A ropewalk was / is a long length of land or covered space, where the individual strands of a rope could be laid out and then twisted to form a continuous length of rope.

London had plenty of ropewalks, but these were usually close to the Thames, as the main customer for the ropes produced would have been the thousands of ships that were once to be found on the river.

Rocque’s map of 1747 does not show a ropewalk, although the map does identify ropewalks in other parts of London. In 18th and early 19th century maps of the area, the land is shown as agricultural and a nursery, no mention of a ropewalk.

It may have been that there was a small ropewalk here to produce rope to be used in the bundling of produce from the nursery, but I cannot find any confirmation of this.

One of the architectural developments that was seen in Victorian houses of the mid 19th century was the bay window, which was a way of breaking up a terrace, and a change from the Georgian emphasis on an unbroken terrace of flat, uniform walls facing onto the street. We can see this development in the terrace houses of Middleton Street:

Another change was the semi-basement, where the ground floor is slightly raised, and reached from the streets by steps, allowing the upper part of the basement to just poke above ground level, with a space between basement window and the retaining wall to the street. This development allowed natural light into the basement, and again we can see this in the above terrace.

The 1881 census provides a view of the employment of those who moved into Middleton Road. There were a very wide range of jobs, including: Bank Clerks, Decorators, Commercial Travellers, Commercial Clerks, Boot Makers, Locksmiths, Plumbers, Stock Brokers Clerks, Stationers Assistant, Printers, Teachers, Newspaper Advertising Agents, Drapers, Draughtsmen, Watchmakers, etc. All the vast range of trades and employment types to be found in the rapidly expanding Victorian London of the late 19th century.

Where a job was listed such as a Bootmaker, these were frequently not an individual worker, rather an employer, for example at number 33 Middleton Road was George Clarke, a Bootmaker who was listed as employing 25 men and two boys.

Some of the residents had private means, for example at Oxford Cottage in Middleton Road was Fanny Smyth, listed as a widow, with her occupation as “income from interest of money”. What is fascinating about the 19th century census is how frequently people would marry later in life, and in Fanny Smyth’s household were three children, two daughters aged 31 and 21 and a son of 28, all listed as single.

Many of the houses in Middleton Road also had a Domestic Servant, again confirming that these new streets were occupied by the new middle class.

Whilst in 1881, the majority of people who lived in Middleton Road were listed a being born in Middlesex, (the historic county that from 1965 is now mainly part of Greater London), there were a very significant number of people from the rest of the country, and a small percentage from Ireland. Throughout much of the 19th century, London was expanding both in terms of employment and residents, by attracting people from the rest of the country.

More of the homes in Middleton Street in which the Bank Clerks, Decorators, Commercial Travellers etc. of 1881 would live:

Middleton Road is a perfect example of the mid 19th expansion of London, as the fields of Hackney were taken over by the houses of the growing middle class.

The shops and pub at the Kingsland Road end of the street are a perfect example of how local shops were planned as part of this expansion, and for decades served the needs of the local community.

One can imagine the early morning being busy with the working residents heading to the train station to travel into the City for their work, and in the evening, a busy pub, with the option of a stop off for fish and chips after the pub, then heading back to your terrace home in Middleton Road.

When writing these posts, I often have music on in the background, and for this post it was YouTube, as it has a random playlist based on what I have listened to before, and a track I have not heard for many years came up, the 1982 Lucifer’s Friend by the Rotherham / Sheffield band Vision.

The His & Hers Hairdressers was photographed in 1986, and the track by Vision is a perfect example of brilliant 1980s music, including the type of hair styles that you may have been able to get in His & Hers:

David Bowie Centre and V&A East Storehouse

Last week, we went to have a look at the small David Bowie exhibition, which forms part of the David Bowie archive held by the V&A. It is located at the new V&A East Storehouse at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park:

It is a small, but interesting exhibition of some of the costumes worn by Bowie, photos, song lyrics, ideas for films, plays etc.

The Bowie exhibition and archive is a small part of the Storehouse, which is home to a vast collection of items not on display in the main museums.

You are free to wander around the walkways on several levels between racks of items collected over very many years:

There were a number of London related items on display, for example a London County Council plaque recording that Emma Cons and Lilian Baylis lived here:

The plaque dates from 1952 and was installed on the house at 6 Morton Place, Stockwell. The house was demolished in 1971 and the plaque was saved with the intention that it would go on display in the V&A Covent Garden Theatre Museum. The Theatre Museum closed in 2007, and the plaque is now on display the V&A East Storehouse.

The V&A also has a number of items relating to Robin Hood Gardens, the social housing estate in Poplar, east London, including a section of the west block, to preserve the architectural vision.

One of the items on display is a collage from the Robin Hood Gardens Project:

And some of the fittings from Robin Hood Gardens:

The V&A East Storehouse is a fascinating way to display part of the collection that would not normally be on display in the V&A museums, and is well worth a visit.

The Flower Sellers and London Fields

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The Flower Sellers is a statue (not sure if that is the correct word to describe this large artwork), in London Fields, Hackney. My father photographed the statue in 1989:

Last Wednesday, the first day without any rain, and with sun forecast, I went to find the Flower Sellers, and this is how they look today (unfortunately with a bright sun behind):

Most descriptions about the statue describe the installation as being in the 1980s, which I think I can narrow down to 1988.

The two figures are holding baskets possibly of flowers (which makes sense given the name of the work), but may also contain other produce. Around the base of the work, and in the surroundings of the Flower Sellers there are a number of sheep. I will come onto the reasons for these later in the post.

London Fields is a large area of open space in Hackney, just to the west of the Weaver line station, also called London Fields. I have circled London Fields in the following map (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

Surrounding the main statue, there are a number of stone seats, each with the top made up of colourful mosaics, depicting everyday items, such as scissors, threads of cotton, and bottles in the following example:

The name of the work is the Flower Sellers, and presumably it is flowers that are meant to be represented within the baskets held by the two people. I am not so sure. There are very few direct references to the baskets holding flowers, some references are to “different produce” sold in the nearby Broadway Market.

In 2018, after 30 years of being exposed to the elements, the work was in need of some repair, and the council commissioned local mosaic artist Tamara Froud from MosaicAllsorts to carry out the work. Today, the items in the baskets do look a bit like colourful flowers, but this could have been the result of the restoration emphasising the patterns and colours:

In my father’s 1989 photo, the items in the baskets were very plain and lacking any colour. The photo was only a year or less, after the work was installed, so perhaps the contents of the baskets were still to be finished.

The work does have a direct reference to a previous use of London Fields. The work consists of a number of seats in the immediate area of the central figures, and these follow the designs at the base of the figures, with colourful mosaic topped seating, and sheep:

These sheep, around the seating and at the base of the central work represent the time when London Fields were used as a stopping off place for animals being taken to the markets of London.

Rocque’s map of 1746 shows London Field as an area of open space (in the centre of the following map) to the west of Church Street (today Mare Street). Ribbon development along Mare Street of the village of Hackney, with the village surrounded by fields:

The following larger extract from Rocque’s map shows where London Fields is located (red circle) with respect to the main routes from the north of the city down to Smithfield Market. The yellow arrow points to the main route, now the A10, Kingsland Road, and the green arrows point to a detour from this road that passes through Hackney, where sheep could be rested at London Fields, before re-joining the main route to head to the market:

Volume 10 covering Hackney from “A History of the County of Middlesex”, describes London Fields being first record in 1540, with the singular use of the name, with Fields seeming to become more frequent in later centuries.

There are references to the area being worn bare by the grazing of sheep.

Other references to this activity were, and some still are, to be found surrounding London Fields. There was a Mutton Lane (look to the lower left of London Fields in the first extract from Rocque’s map above), and there was, and still is a Sheep Lane, as seen in the following map (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

There is also a Cat and Mutton pub at the London Fields end of Broadway Market, and crossing the Regent’s Canal is the Cat and Mutton Bridge.

As could probably be expected in an open area, with lots of travellers passing through, there was a significant amount of crime in and around London Fields.

The following is a small sample of newspaper reports mentioning London Fields from the decades in the mid 18th century around the time of Rocque’s map:

7th of October 1741: “On Thursday Night, between Seven and Eight o’clock, five Persons, singly, were robbed between the Goldsmiths Alms houses and London Field, going to Hackney, by three Footpads, who have for some time infested those Parts.”

30th of July 1730: “Monday afternoon the following acts were committed by a man with one arm, very genteelly dressed – with his sword he wounded two ladies in London Field, Hackney; and a short time afterwards, with the same weapon, he twice stabbed a gentleman upon Dalton Downs.”

17th of October 1750: “Yesterday as a Servant of a Mercer in Cheapside, who had been to deliver some Good’s at a Lady’s at Hackney, was returning home about Five o’clock in the Evening, he was stopt between London Field and the Road by a Man genteelly dressed in a light coloured Coat and black Waistcoat, who seized him by the Collar, and presenting a Pistol to him, threatened to blow his Brains out if he did not deliver his Money, which he did, to the Amount of Twenty Shillings and Three-pence, and the Fellow was going away; but on the Servant’s desiring him to return the Half-pence for a Pint of Beer, he gave him three Half pence, then took of his Hat and Wig and tripped up the man’s heels and pushed him into a Ditch, and then made off across the Field.”

4th of December 1753: “On Tuesday Night, between Seven and Eight o’clock, Mr, Cornelius Mussell was robbed in London Field, Hackney, of twenty five shillings, by five men armed with Pistols and Cutlasses; and last Night, two Gentlemen in a Coach coming to Town from Hackney, were robbed on Cambridge Heath supposed to be the same Gang.”

13th of November 1770: “Last Night an out door Clerk belonging to Mr. Pearson, Wine and Brandy Merchant, in Spitalfields, who had been at a Public House in Hackney, receiving cash to the amount of £30, was stopped by two Footpads in London Field, who robbed him of all the Money he had received.”

On the 25th of February 1773, Thomas Bond was convicted at the Old Bailey for robbing Thomas Sayville of his watch and money in London Field, Hackney – he was initially sentenced to death, but this was commuted to transportation.

The threat of a death sentence, or transportation seems to have been very little deterrent to these types of crimes given the very high number of robberies that were reported across London.

There were other strange events in London Fields, including:

31st July 1789: “Monday evening a battle was fought in London Fields, Hackney, between two butchers of Bishopsgate Street, which, according to the connoisseurs of the pugilistic art, was the choicest ever known. The combatants behaved with uncommon resolution during an hour and ten minutes, when it was ended by the least being carried off the field for dead. The bets ran 5 to 3 in favour of the loser – many knock-down blows were given and received on both sides, and on the close of the contest, neither was able to stand alone.”

Almost 80 years after Rocque’s map, in 1823, Hackney was still a village surrounded by fields, with London Field continuing to be an open area to the west, and still being used to graze sheep on their way to market:

In Rocque’s map of 1746, the land to the west of London Fields is shown with horizontal and vertical dashed lines, rather than the symbols used to indicate normal grass fields. In the above 1823 map, this area is now marked as Grange’s Nursery, a large area of space almost running up to Kingsland Road, with what must have been the owners, and or nursery buildings in the centre of the space.

Another comparison between the 1746 and 1823 maps shows that there had not be that much additional development around London Fields. Some additional building, but mainly along Mare Street.

This would all change in the following decades, with the period from 1840 being one of considerable change, with rows of Victorian housing, industrial buildings and streets being developed between Hackney and Kingsland Road, with London Fields surviving as an area of public open space.

There were many challenges by developers to London Fields, with small bits of the space being taken for housing, and there was also digging for gravel at places across the space.

A campaign by those concerned with preserving London Fields as a public open space helped to make the Metropolitan Commons Act of 1866 reach Parliament and become law, with London Fields becoming the responsibility of the Metropolitan Board of Works.

There were continuing issues with gravel digging and fences encroaching onto the space, but these were always challenged and fences torn down. When the London County Council came into being, London Fields was levelled and seeded with grass, paths were created, and Plane trees planted, with a bandstand being built in the centre of the fields.

Looking towards the south of London Fields from the Flower Sellers:

Looking north along London Fields:

In the above photo, the space looks very empty, however it was busy with people, just not on the grass, which was rather muddy after many days of rain.

The main footpath to the right had a continuous stream of walkers and runners, and to the north, the play areas were full of groups of small children in high-vis jackets being shepherded by nursery school teachers, although the play area to the south was empty:

The above photo shows some of the houses that lined the eastern, Hackney side of London Fields, the first side of the fields to be developed.

As with many open spaces in London, London Fields has seen a number of political meetings. One such was reported in the Hackney and Kingsland Gazette on the 15th of March 1886:

“MEETING OF SOCIALISTS ON LONDON FIELDS – On Saturday afternoon, a mass meeting of the employed and unemployed took place on London Fields, convened under the auspices of the Hackney and Shoreditch Branch of the Social Democratic Federation, to consider what was best to be done to alleviate the distress that now prevails to such a terrible extent in the district. A large crowd , numbering some two thousand persons, gathered round a cart in the centre of the fields, from which speeches were delivered.

A large body of police, some 300 on foot and 50 mounted, were on duty. The mounted men were placed at the entrance of the streets abutting the fields, and the other constables paraded the footpaths in pairs. Most of the shops in the immediate vicinity were closed.

The Chairman referred to the rapid growth of the Mansion House Fund since the Trafalgar Square riots as indicating the re-awakening of the well-to-do classes on the subject of the increasing amount of distress in the country, whereat he was interrupted by cries of ‘No charity’, and ‘We don’t want it’. It was not the relief funds that they wanted, but the right to live and to labour guaranteed by the State. If they had justice they would enjoy the wealth they created.”

Charles Booth’s poverty maps created towards the end of the 19th century, shows the contrasting levels of wealth and poverty around London Fields from the dark blues of “Very poor, casual. Chronic want”, up to the reds of “Middle Class, Well-to-do”, with this later grouping occupying the new terrace houses that had been built in the previous couple of decades:

On the north eastern edge of London Fields, there is a pub – the Pub on the Park:

The Pub on the Park is a survivor of the 19th century buildings surrounding the north east of the park.

On the night of the 21st of September, 1940, the area around London Fields suffered considerable bomb damage, resulting in the post-war demolition of the buildings around the pub, which was restored and survived.

The pub was originally called the Queen Eleanor and renamed to the Pub on the Park in 1992.

The pub seems to date from the mid 19th century development of the area, and the first references I can find to the Queen Eleanor date from the 1850s. There may have been a pub on the site prior to the current building, as a place where people travelling through the area, and grazing their sheep in the fields, would have also attracted businesses such as pubs, although I can find no evidence of the predecessor to the current building, although I suspect it was part of the mid 19th century development.

The sign of the Pub on the Park:

From the photo of the pub, it is clear that it was once a corner pub, and a look at the other side of the pub shows that it was once joined to another house. This side is also now decorated:

The reason for the original name of the pub is clear in the following extract from the 1893 OS revision. The pub is circled and Eleanor Road runs upwards from the left of the pub (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

What is remarkable about the above map is that Eleanor Road, and the houses along the left hand side of Tower Street were not rebuilt after the war, and the area was taken into London Fields, grassed over, and is now part of that open space.

The pub is now isolated on the edge of the fields.

Follow Eleanor Road to the north and the road meets Richmond Road. The houses along the southern side of Richmond Road, at the northern end of the park, were also not rebuilt and London Fields now extends to border Richmond Road, with the exception of a small stretch of housing to right and left.

Tower Street in the above map is now Martello Street. It is always interesting to walk the side streets as there is frequently so much to see, for example just before where Martello Street dives under the railway viaduct:

At the north western corner of London Fields is the London Fields Lido:

The Lido was one of many opened across London during the 1920s and 1930s (see here for a bit about the Parliament Hill Lido), although all the news reports from the time refer to it as an open air swimming bath rather than a Lido.

The Lido was opened in 1932, and was advanced for its time, having an advanced filtration plant as well as a water aerator in the form of a fountain. As well as the pool, there was a sunbathing area, first aid room and a refreshment kiosk, and the Lido was designed and built by the London County Council.

The Lido closed for the war, opening in 1951, the same year as the Festival of Britain. I do not know if these events were connected, but the Festival did act as a catalyst for other post war improvements and renovations to public infrastructure and facilities.

The Lido remained open until 1988, after which there were proposals to demolish the Lido and return the area to grass within the overall London Fields grassland, as had happened with the post war demolition of the bomb damaged housing at Eleanor Street..

The London Fields User Group were concerned about the threats to the Lido, and the loss of such a facility, so a sub-committee was established to campaign for the reopening of the Lido.

The condition of the Lido deteriorated rapidly, with the Lido sub-committee arranging work to try and stop too much deterioration, whilst continuing to campaign for restoration and reopening.

Funding and designs were finally available in 2005 when work started, with the Lido reopening in October 2006 for a few months for testing. More work was needed over winter, and the Lido fully reopened for Easter 2007.

The Lido seemed busy on the day of my visit to London Fields, and, despite being a February day there were plenty of swimmers in the open air pool, although having the water at 24 degrees centigrade must help.

From sheep grazing to a Lido, London Fields has been a key part in the development of Hackney for centuries, and continues to be a valuable area of open space surrounded by dense streets of 19th century development, as London engulfed the small villages surrounding the city.

Watermen’s Rates, The Shock of America and a 19th Century Street View

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Three different subjects in this week’s post, but they all have a common theme of time – change over time, how centuries old data can be interpreted in modern ways, and how the future always develops in a way we can never foresee, starting with:

The 1803 Table of Watermen’s Rates

In last week post on Pageant’s Stairs, one of the references I included to the stairs, was the Watermen’s rates for taking you from London Bridge to the stairs in 1803, according to the “Correct Table of the Fares of Watermen, which has recently been made out by the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen”, as published in the Evening Mail on Monday the 16th of May, 1803..

The table included the rates for a long length of the Thames, from Windsor to Gravesend, and in my nerdy way of looking at stuff like this, I thought it would be interesting to interpret this data in a way we are familer with now, if we travel on London’s underground and rail network, where basic charging is by zone.

So taking the starting point of London Bridge, in the City of London, I mapped the rates in 1803 on to a map of the Thames, with each zone defining a specific Watermen’s price to row you from London Bridge.

If you walked down to the river in 1803 to take a Watermen’s boat to your destination, then, as with an Underground station today, we can imagine the following maps pinned to the wall of the alley leading down to the stairs, the first map starting with the zones from London Bridge out to Blackwall (the actual zone pricing is after the maps). All base maps are © OpenStreetMap contributors:

London Bridge is the bridge on the left edge of Zone 1, and this is the starting point for a journey east along the river, and as with Transport for London’s (TfL), charging today, the price increases as the length of journey increases.

There are some strange charges, for example the whole of the Isle of Dogs appears to be in a higher priced zone (6), whilst Deptford has it’s own little zone (5), which is a lower price to the Isle of Dogs.

Displaying data in this way does make some huge assumptions. For example, with the Isle of Dogs, the 1803 table does not specify where on the Isle of Dogs the priced journey would end, so as stated in the table it looks to cover a large distance of river, from Limehouse round to Blackwall.

In the next map, we continue along the river to Gravesend, which, as Zone 13 is the final easterly zone, and priced destination in the 1803 table:

There seems to be no standard length of journey, so as can be seen in the above map, the length along the river of zone 9 is much more than zones 11 or 12.

The pricing and sample locations within each zone is shown in the following table:

The best description of the difference between Oars and Sculler that I can find, is that with Oars, a rower is holding a single Oar in two hands, whilst with a Sculler, a rower is holding a pair of Oars in both hands.

I assume this explains the difference in pricing and why the price for a Sculler ends at the Isle of Dogs / Greenwich, as a boat could be rowed by a single person, using two oars, where with Oars, at least two people would be needed, each holding one oar on either side of the boat.

If this is wrong, comments are always appreciated.

The price for a Sculler ending at the Isle of Dogs / Greenwich is probably due to this being the physical limit that a single person could row along the river.

Regarding my earlier comment about the difference in length of the zones, the pricing table helps to explain this, with the jump in rates roughly rises in line with the distance travelled.

The above maps and table cover the east of the river. If you wanted to travel west, then there is a similar zone map hanging on the wall at London Bridge.

This is the first seven zones, from London Bridge up to Wandsworth:

Zone 6 covers the rate to Chelsea, and the following print from 1799 shows a party being rowed along Chelsea Reach. The boat is being rowed by Oars, as there are six rowers and three oars either side, so each rower is holding a single oar with both hands:

(© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.)

The above print shows several people being rowed by a team of six, and an obvious question is whether the rates apply to any number of passengers and number of rowers, and the answer is that there is an additional charge.

The 1803 Table of Watermen’s rates states that for the journey from London Bridge to Chelsea, for every additional passenger, there is an additional charge of 4d on top of the base rate, so in the above print there are ten passengers, plus two playing instruments who I assume also incur a charge as they are not Watermen.

The man at the back is wearing a Watermen’s badge on his arm, so presumably comes with the boat, so if the above boat had been rowed from London Bridge to Chelsea, the charge (see table after the next two maps) would have been 2s 6d base rate plus 12 times 4d (passengers plus musicians), so a total charge of 5 shillings and 10 pence.

Continuing along to Zone 18, Shepperton, Chertsey and Weybridge:

The final two zones, 19 and 20 run all the way to Windsor:

The table of rates travelling west from London Bridge:

The final five zones from Hampton Court / Town up to Datchet and Windsor:

The journey out to Windsor is considerable, and is way beyond the area of Port of London Authority’s responsibility, which ends at Teddington, the last westerly point on the tidal Thames.

Including Windsor in the Waterman’s rates must have meant there was demand for travel this far west, and is probably due to the times when the Monarch was based at Windsor Castle, so there would have been a need for travel from central London out to Windsor.

The price is also considerable for 1803 at 21 shillings, and on top of this there was a 3 shilling charge for additional passengers. Assuming the traveller from London to Windsor required a return trip, then the price would have been double, so not a journey that the average Londoner would have taken. Only one for the rich, and those on state business.

As well as listing charges for additional passengers, there were a number of other additional charges:

  • If the journey is not a direct journey between places on the river, for example, if the journey is taking or collecting passengers from a ship, which may include waiting at the ship whilst passengers and luggage transfer, then the Waterman has the option of charging either the standard distance rate, or a time rate of 6d for every half hour for oars, and 3d for scullers.
  • If the Waterman is detained at a stop by the passenger, for example having to wait at the destination stop whilst the passengers wait to disembark, wait to be met etc. then the Waterman can charge an additional 6d per half hour of waiting for oars and 3d for scullers.
  • A journey directly across the river is charged at the standard rate of 2d, or if more than one person, 1d per person
  • There were also standard rates between different stairs or landing places on the river, these were roughly the difference between the zones in which the different places were located. As an example, Wapping (Zone 3) to Greenwich (Zone 7), was 1 shilling 6 pence. The difference of the London Bridge standard rates of 2s 6d (to Greenwich) minus 1s (to Wapping, Zone 3).
  • No more than six persons are to be carried in a wherry (the standard Watermen’s boat), and up to Windsor and Greenwich, up to eight in a passage boat (which I believe is a larger boat than the basic wherry).

One surprising omission is any reference to the state of the tide, as for a rowed or sculled boat, it would have been considerably harder rowing against the tide than rowing with the ride. It may be that this is expected to average out over a series of journeys with half being against the tide and half with the tide.

It would also be interesting to add a time column to the listing of rates, as the journey to the furthest reaches to the east and the west must have been considerable. This was reflected in the rates for the watermen, however it must have taken many hours to reach the furthest places in the table, and time of the journey would have been variable, depending on tide, weather, other river traffic etc.

Despite what seems to be well regulated pricing, there were challenges for the passenger who used the river to travel through London.

The following print dated 1816 from the Miseries of London series shows a woman walking down the steps at Wapping Old Stairs, presumably wanting a boat to travel to her destination, and being “assailed by a group of watermen, holding out their hands and calling Oars, Sculls, Sculls, Oars, Oars”:

(© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.)

The Watermen are wearing their badge on their arms to signify that they are a Waterman, and the following is an example of such a badge:

(© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.)

Not adhering to the rates would often result in being brought to court, for example in 1847, waterman John Thomas Jones was in court on a charge of overcharging a passenger 12s 6d for a fare that should have been 4s 3d. The Waterman was fined 20s.

Watermen also were at a number of risks, as well as the daily danger of rowing along a congested river, they were also valued for their skills, and were prized as recruits for the Navy.

A report in the London Magazine in 1738 on the need to crew several new naval ships, states that a “press” took place on the river, with 2,370 men taken and enrolled in the Navy, the majority of them being Watermen.

The 19th century saw a gradual decline in the need for a Watermen to row passengers along the river.

The growth of steam ships on the river, the growth of the railways, underground, improved roads, bridges etc. all made it easier to travel without the need to be rowed.

Steam powered boats started ferrying passengers along the river, although initially this method of transport was not always safe and reliable. The following print from 1817 titled “Travelling by Steam” shows two Watermen watching a steam packet boat exploding and throwing the boat’s passengers across the river:

(© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.)

The newspapers listing of the Watermen’s Rates were always dense columns of text, and showing these visually on a map, in a similar way in which TfL display underground and rail fares helps with understanding part of the rich life of London’s river.

One big difference between 1803 Watermen charges and today’s TfL charging is that in 1803 there was no capping of the daily charge, so in 1803, you would have been charged for each journey you would have taken on the river.

The Sunbeam Weekly and the Pilgrim’s Pocket – Shock and Outrage at the Evolution of the United States of America

There is a wonderful statue at Cumberland Wharf in Rotherhithe, which is today a small area of open space alongside the river at the place indicated by the arrow in the following map:

Once a wharf between Rotherhithe Street and the Thames, servicing a large granary across the street via conveyors which ran across the street in the photo below, and which shows the area occupied by Cumberland Wharf:

If you look to the left of the space, there is a walkway with a statue at the end, which is alongside the river:

The statue consists of a taller figure – William Bradford, who was Governor of the New Plymouth colony in the United States for a number of periods between the years 1621 and 1657. The boy is in 1930s clothes, and represents a local boy reading a comic of the time:

The work by Peter McLean dates from 1991 and is titled “Sunshine Weekly and the Pilgrims Pocket”:

William Bradford was one the Pilgrims who left Rotherhithe on the Mayflower in 1620. The ship sailed from Rotherhithe from the area around Cumberland Wharf, although not their last port of call in England, as they stopped off at Plymouth before crossing the Atlantic on a two month journey.

Bradford is looking over the boy’s shoulder at his comic with, as described in the adjacent information board, “a look of shock and outrage” as he turns the pages of the comic:

The Sunbeam Weekly was a comic from the 1930s:

Why was the Pilgrim William Bradford, who had a long career as the Governor of the Plymouth Colony at what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts, looking at a 1930s comic with a look of shock and outrage?

The reason is that the pages of the comic are showing how the United States of America has evolved since the Pilgrims landed in 1620.

(Sorry, the photo is slightly out of focus. It was grey, overcast, raining, breezy and cold).

The pages of the comic show the Statue of Liberty, an aeroplane, cars, a train, skyscrapers, the Space Shuttle and King Kong:

William Bradford was a Puritan, the strand of English Protestantism that believed that the Reformation had not gone far enough in ridding the Church of England of Roman Catholic practices. Puritans, and the clash between reformers. separatists and the established church would play a major part in the English Civil War and the Protectorate which would take place during the 1640s and 1650s.

I am sure Bradford would be absolutely shocked how the United States has developed in the 400 years since he was part of Plymouth Colony. I am not sure about the outrage, as Puritans were against Roman Catholicism rather than what can loosely be described as technical progress, however they were strict religious adherents (which is where stories about Christmas festivities being banned during the Protectorate, although in reality the vast majority of the population continued to celebrate).

The pocket of William Bradford includes some key symbols.

A 1620 A to Z of the New World, a lobster claw and fish to show the seafood that was key to the Pilgrims survival in the early years of the colony, and a cross which is symbolic of the religion that the Pilgrims carried to the new colony. There is a small US badge at the base of the cross:

The artist’s tools are shown at the feet of the statue:

And along the edge of the base is the sculptors name and year the work was created:

I think this is a wonderful work of art.

I often wonder when looking at old photos, what the people in the photo would think about how the future has developed, as it is always in a different way to that expected at the time.

My father mainly photographed scenes rather than focusing on people, however whilst it is a gap of only 73 years, compared with the almost 400 years in the Rotherhithe statue, it would be interesting to see how those waiting for the 1953 Coronation procession in one of his photos, would look at the London of today:

If you walk the Thames path in Rotherhithe, or along Rotherhithe Street, stop at Cumberland Wharf to take a look at “Sunshine Weekly and the Pilgrims Pocket” and also consider that whatever we expect the future to be – it will almost certainly be very different.

And for the final look at a different aspect of time hopping, another of my first post of the month looks at the resources available if you are interested in discovering more about the history of London:

Resources – Tallis’s London Street Views

Today, if you want to look at a street and see the buildings and businesses along the street you can use Google Street View.

Imagine if it was possible to do this for the years long before photography and Google made this possible, well for the years between the late 1830s and early 1840s there is a Street View available, which whilst being drawn, and not as comprehensive as Google still provides the opportunity to take a virtual walk along a London street.

This is Tallis’s London Street Views.

(Before going further, the version of Tallis’s Street Views available on line is the 2002 reprint of a London Topographical Society (LTS) print of the street views. The copy was held by the University of Michigan and digitised by Google, and is made available online by the HathiTrust, a US organisation who describe themselves as:

“HathiTrust was founded in 2008 as a not-for-profit collaborative of academic and research libraries now preserving 19+ million digitized items in the HathiTrust Digital Library. We offer reading access to the fullest extent allowable by U.S. and international copyright law, text and data mining tools for the entire corpus, and other emerging services based on the combined collection.”

The HathiTrust have made the work available under Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives.

It is difficult to know the true copyright status of documents such as this, when you have very large organisations such as Google digitising vast amounts of works and many, often US based organisations making these fully available online, a situation which I expect is going to get more problematic in years to come).

John Tallis was the publisher of the Street Views. He was based at 15 St. John’s Lane, near St. John’s Gate.

Tallis was a prolific publisher of prints covering people (real and fictional), actors, landscape scenes, buildings, places etc. As well as multiple prints of London, he published images of other places, for example the following print of Margate Pier and Harbour:

(© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.)

Initially, Street Views was published in parts before being published as a complete set.

The following, from the Gloucester Journal on the 21st of July 1838 is typical of advertising for the Street Views:

“TALLIS’S LONDON STREET VIEWS. For the sum of Three-half-pence, you can purchase a correct View, beautifully engraved on steel, and drawn by an artist of great talent, of upwards of One Hundred Houses, with a Street Directory, or a Key to the Name and Trade of every occupier to which is added a Map of the District, and an Historical account of such Streets, Courts, or public Buildings worth recording.”

The Street Views obviously does not cover all the streets of London, but does provide comprehensive coverage of the major thoroughfares of central London, along with many of the smaller streets, particularly in the City.

An example of the way that streets are illustrated is the following view of part of Hatton Garden:

As well as an illustration of the building, where a business occupies a building, the name and trade is also provided, so at number 109 Hatton Garden there is a Pianoforte Maker and Music Publisher who presumably goes by the name of Hart.

Next door at 108 there is Schonberg, Engraver and Printer, along with a Taylor and Draper in the same building, and at 106 there is Battistessa & Co, Looking Glass and Artificial Flower Maker.

What is fascinating is being able to find more about these business, and in the British Museum collection is a trade card for the above mentioned L. Schonberg of 108 Hatton Garden:

(© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.)

Tallis’s London Street View is a fascinating way of walking the streets of London in the late 1830s and early 1840s, and a reminder that John Tallis came up with this format of recording a city long before Google Street View.

The Tallis’s Street View can be found at the HathiTrust, by clicking here, where you can scroll through the pages or download a copy.

Google Street View is a brilliant equivalent resource of today. Imagine being interested in London’s history in a couple of centuries time, and being able to walk through a photographic view of the City’s streets, however continuing the theme of the future is always very different to that we expect, and that services such as Street View are digital, will they survive that length of time given the magnitude of change that can occur over such a period of time.