Friday, 27 August, 2021
A journey to Brick Lane is always welcome. I can find so many things to do there, although these days I avoid the weekend. The Sunday markets were always a lot of fun. all the more so if I were taking someone around. On my best days we’d start in Columbia Road Flower Market then make our way over to Spitalfields Market, walk over to Brick Lane and check out all the market stalls and halls, with some lunch along the way. Then up Brick Lane to see the shops there and home again. There were always crowds.
Columbia Road got increasingly busy as more tourists found it and then one day, when I could barely move through it – shoulder to shoulder and wondering how I’d exit, like on a packed train – I stopped going. Spitalfields Market expanded into a new area where the stalls had more expensive goods, gradually the shops changed to pricier ones, and the food became less casual. Expensive restaurants popped up. The crowds weren’t too bad but worse than before. Eventually the old market where the stalls were the type you’d rummage through and be able to pick up several things without spending very much, began to change too. The eating area was moved and was now a group of tidy counters, the stalls were changed so they were fixed and neat. One area was devoted to other food kiosks with the new market uniform look. The food area began to spread and take over, with all the nicer seating. The people started to change too. No longer rough and ready, noisy and enthusiastic, they were now tidy, quiet or giggly, more money in their pockets. These days I hardly ever go. I can find nothing to buy, the food is overpriced, the atmosphere of the old market is gone. The Brick Lane markets got much busier too. The market stalls spread along the street itself, more and more of them, and mostly food. Now it was all weekend and the crowds grew, they too changing from chaotic and rebellious to more monied and trendy.
I pride myself on being a champion of change. I’ve always loved to see things moving with the times, reinventing, shapeshifting, and becoming something new but interesting. I’m fascinated with innovation and how people find different ways to design and use things. But there’s a curious and frustrating trend to uniformity. While some places stride to be unique, there can be a sameness that leaves me wondering why opportunities and tricks were missed.
Not that Brick Lane ever disappoints. When you come here on a weekday, the crowds are gone, unless you come when the mosque lets out its throngs of people. Then they fill the streets, heading home or back to work. I’m curious about them – why are they all male? what are their lives like? how long were they praying? where are the children? I love the clothing, the general quietness even in a crowd, the way they’ve imparted their calm culture in this area.
But Brick Lane is changing too. The pandemic has brought the tables out onto the pavement and some shops are closed, shuttered, or keeping shorter hours. One by one newer places have opened among the old Bangladeshi shops, more and more not Bangladeshi or Bengali. They’re more likely to be vintage clothing, small artisanal designers, cafes that sell matcha not chai, vegan brownies not samosas, burritos not tikka masala rolls.
Now Brick Lane is under a bigger threat.
It’s the usual. No surprises. The area is increasingly trendy, the landlords know this, the people are already there and eager to be part of it, and there’s a chance to make money. There’s a lot already written about this, so I’ll let you read those if you want: https://battleforbricklane.com/ and https://spitalfieldslife.com/2020/06/12/trouble-at-the-truman-brewery/ and follow at https://www.facebook.com/battleforbricklane. In a nutshell, part of the Truman Brewery complex will be regenerated to a shopping mall and corporate offices. Local residents and businesses will be pushed out by this move. It’s move to open more commercial retail space and fancy offices and flats in an area that is clinging to old trades. It’s happening in an immigrant area during a time when affordable housing is needed, local shops are struggling, and more people are losing jobs or working from home.
I doubt all the protest will come to much. Things will go ahead in some fashion, change has already started after all, and the developers who promised to do things ‘properly’ have already done irreversible damage to the brewery yards. I remember in Naples watching men painstakingly replacing numbered paving on an old street that had needed some repair. In Truman’s brewery yards, the same was expected but when it came to it, the stones were ripped up and piled unnumbered at the end of the yard. Such change and disregard is inevitable. Even writing this is painful, but there it is. Change is a great umbrella over everything.
Should people stop trying? No! Compromises could be made. Time will tell. Yada yada yada.
One person who believed that treasuring the history of the area was vital was Annetta Pedretti. Annetta was a Swiss woman who was an architect, cybernetician, conservationist, builder, beekeeper, and campaigner and bought a house on 25 Princelet St. An obsessive polymath, she worked on restoring that house until her death in 2018. During an online talk I learned that she’d collected and made or had made objects to bring the house to its original glory. Her obsessive nature meant that the house was far from finished. Her house was given to charity and is now a social centre, and a base for mounting a resistance against proprietarian society, and campaigning for land reform and housing justice for all. She would approve.
Now work is continuing by Assemble, multi-disciplinary collective working across architecture, design and art. The house has been made safe and Annetta’s house is slowly being refinished. I’ve been trying to get there for months and I’ve finally done it.
I love Princelet Street. Along with Wilkes Street it’s my favourite in the area where there’s much to be favourited. This was my second opportunity to go inside one of the houses, which date from the early 18th century. 25 is one of three houses in a row, and the Grade II listed building is described: “Early C18. Stock brick with red brick dressings. Coped parapet and brick bands between storeys. 4 storeys and basement. Nos 21 and 23, 3 windows each, No 25, 5 windows. Gauged flat arches to flush frame windows, some glazing bars missing. No 23 has modern shop front. Doorcases have been removed.”
The photos say more than I can, and many have taken better. It’s an unfinished, deep in renovation house – tall and narrow and its shelves and bookcases stacked high with Annetta’s files and pieces of carpentry ready to be used.
In higgledy-piggledy style, here’s the house. I went cautiously upstairs, but didn’t dare try the upper floors. It looked too precarious but Krish took a few photos for me. Neither one of us dared the basement.
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The best bit of Brick Lane, and there are many best bits, is the street art. It’s changing less frequently these days but I took a lot of photos of the shops, the streets, and the art that day. My long-promised visit to the new Townhouse exhibit went by the wayside again. We were just too tired, overloaded by everything we’d seen that day. I’m pushing myself to do so in its waning days.
I took a lot of photos of street art. For another time.