Mark Aston: Islington Museum & Local History Centre Manager

Everyone on Islington Faces Blog has a story. Any idea what you do if you want to find out more about your Islington roots – either your family or the places you know in the borough? Or maybe you want to know more about Tufnell Park, Clerkenwell or the people who’ve lived in Islington like Joe Orton or find out who is buried here?  If you’re curious about the old Islington then try booking an appointment at the Islington Local History Centre, where there’s a good chance you’ll meet enthusiastic Mark Aston who is in charge of Islington’s local history.  Interview by Nicola Baird

“This isn’t a crusty museum,” says Mark Aston who runs Islington Museum and Local History Centre. “I’m keen to get more popular culture into  this museum – sport, music and literature – because there’s history in everything.”

Mark Aston lives in Camden but he knows Islington better than most. It’s not just his job as Islington Museum and Local History Centre manager – it’s also because he walks to work at St John’s Road, where Finsbury Library and the museum and local history centre are based. He’s well qualified, with a BSc in IT and librarianship and then an MA in Victorian studies; plus his passion for the area, especially Clerkenwell Green. “The last 20 years I’ve been working in local history,” explains Mark, who is in his early 50s. He enjoys the museum’s collection – his favourite items are the book covers wittily defaced by Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell (see photo below) – but admits that his own “house is full of books, old maps of the local area and Victorian photographs. And my wife, well she’s a history graduate, and therefore sympathetic.

Just 3 things to do in Islington by Mark Aston

1. I walk a lot around the area If I go to the Town Hall, Central Library or North Library (off Manor Gardens), I’ll always take photos of roads. I take the sign for context, then a long shot north and south, and after that random pictures of things that catch your attention. In 20-50 years time even a new build of houses or flat conversions will be historic. Remember, just 20 years ago is last century!

2. I particularly like the borough’s music venues – The O2 Academy in N1 and The Garage at Highbury Corner.

3. Come and find out about the animals in the borough since the 17^th century at our Beastly Islington exhibition at the Islington Museum, which runs until 30 September. There are lots of free events.

“Islington is very much a people’s borough,” he explains telling me about how the south has medieval roots and the north is a bit younger – developed as London expanded. “I’d like to find out more about places like Tufnell Park. There must be some great stories to be discovered,” says Mark, “it’s a relatively newish area, now about 130 years old and mostly residential.”

This remark rather proves Mark’s appetite for local history. He reminds me that in 1901 there were nearly half a million people in what is now the area we call Islington. Between Angel and Archway there were approximately 335,000 and in the south there were 110,000.

In comparison 2014 Islington is a borough of around 210,000 people.

 

Mark Aston: Islington Museum and Local History Centre Manager: “Whenever I’ve moved I’ve wanted to find out about the area. For example Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell  were only in the borough for 15 years but created a cult. They defaced book covers 50 years ago but they are still attracting interest. It’s a way into a local library collection. One of the pieces they defaced I had to bid for as it was filmed by the BBC’s Flog It programme. I was a bit nervous with the camera up my nose, but Orton and Halliwell get the youngsters in!”

 

Marx Memorial Library in Clerkenwell.

Places to look at twice in Islington – Clerkenwell – recommended by Mark Aston

• There’s such a timeline of history at Clerkenwell Green. I never get bored of going for a walk around it at lunch time. There are lots of nooks and crannies and a 360 degree turn gives you the Marx Memorial Library which predates the court across the road. There’s the hugely popular Crown Pub and St James’s church, which dates from 1792 when it replaced an older chapel which dated back to the 12th century.

• Have a look at the Clerks’ Well (after which Clerkenwell is named). It’s like a static time machine. The River Fleet used to flow through here and the parish clerks (who were a minor order of religious workers) would perform religious plays by it.

• During the 1381 peasants’ revolt Watt Tyler and Jack Straw met in Clerkenwell before burning down the monastery of the Order of the Knights of St John. These monks were the medical arm of the Knights Templar and it’s where St John’s Ambulance takes its name.

• Have a look for the sites of gin factories – both Booths and Gordon’s distilled on Clerkenwell Road.

 

Notable Islington residents – now in metal – wait outside Finsbury Park tube station by a bench in Station Place. Edith Garrud, who taught suffragettes jujitsu, is the sculpture on the right.

Islington people
“Islington doesn’t have many fancy old iconic buildings – they are mainly in the city of London,” he explains. “It’s people that make the borough! And look at the artists that lived here and the radical politics! Lenin was here, and Stalin. George Fox, the founder of the Quaker movement, is buried in Bunhill Fields burial ground, Islington, which also has Daniel Defoe and William Blake as ‘permanent’ residents. Mary Wollstonecraft was at Newington Green (the mother of Mary Shelley who wrote Frankenstein), and one of my favourites, Edith Garrud a suffragette, an Islington resident who taught jujitsu to protect fellow suffragettes. There’s a plaque to her in Thornhill Square, as well as being featured in a special portrait bench in Finsbury Park at the bus station…”

It’s clear Mark could talk about famous Islington people for a long time.

Turns out he “feels like an honorary Islingtonian and Finsburyite” after researching his own family history in a bid to better understand what the local history centre clients needed. “People meet their cousins – or other family members for the first time – sometimes at the Local History Centre,” he says with some awe.

In fact Mark has proper London roots. “My ancestors were born in Finsbury, the Clerkenwell area and Islington. My great-great-great grandfather – that’s the mid-19^th century – was a train driver. And my great, great grandmother was born in Berry Street, Clerkenwell. She married a German immigrant in 1858, from Berlin, at St Clement’s and St Barnabus’s Church in King’s Square and then moved to a house almost where this library is (Coburg Street), which was swept away in the post war re-development.”

Follow the arrow on the red sign and you’ll be at Islington Museum & Local History Centre. It’s a 10 minute walk from Angel tube, or try bus 153. Farringdon station is  quite close too.

It’s always interesting finding out why people want to know stuff about long dead relatives, but Mark understands the compulsion.

“There’s a need to do it, it gives you a sense of place. And people make a place. As you get older you spend more time looking back than forward and want to know where did I come from? What are my roots? What did my ancestors do?” The good news is that Mark thinks “it has never been so easy to trace your family history – there are on line resources, TV guides, like Who Do You Think You Are, and antique shows. There’s also great work from people at the Islington Archaeological and Historical Society.”

The museum gets at least 15,000 visitors a year including many school parties. “The trick is to share an object that has a story – and then to ask ‘what would we use today that this used to be used for?’” explains Mark. The tactic seems to be working as he’s found that ”when kids come in to the museum with school they tend to come back with their parents.”

Mark’s excellent storytelling makes me want to have another look around Islington’s museum. It’s a really interesting collection – a mix of objects and stories that help brings long dead Islington people to life. The museum helped me get a better grip on the huge sweep of history that’s happened here in Islington, and then share the info with my own family. I’m happy to tell you that this was a great success – especially when I added a jujitsu move as taught by Edith Garrud. I’m certain Mark would agree that martial arts definitely have a place at a modern museum.

If this interview has inspired you to find out more about your roots then very good luck finding out more about your family or the people who’ve lived in the places you now know well. And a thank you to Mark Aston for making it a little bit easier for us all.

• Islington Museum is by Finsbury Library, 245 St John Street, EC1. It’s an easy 10 minute walk from Angel station. Open Monday – Saturday 10am-5pm. Closed on Wednesdays and Sundays, www.islington.gov.uk/heritage
• Islington Local History Centre is open 9.30am-8pm Monday and Thursday; and 9.30am-5pm on Tuesday, Friday and Saturday. It is closed daily for lunch (1-2pm) and also closed all day on Wednesday and Sundays. To book a place in the search room and for visitor information call 020 7527 7988 or email local.history@islington.gov.uk
• Info about past exhibitions at http://www.islington.gov.uk/islington/history-heritage/heritage_whatson/wo_exhibition/Pages/pastexhibitions.aspx
• Islington Museum “accepts meaningful objects and materials, and appreciates having first refusal.” It’s particularly keen to add to its historic photographic and illustrations collection. The collection has lots of photos of Upper Street, Holloway Road and Pentonville Road but not the smaller roads… Could you help?
• Mark Aston is the author of Foul Deeds & Suspicious Deaths in Hampstead, Holborn and St Pancras. His other books include Cinemas of Camden and King’s Cross: a tour in time.

Over to you
Would you like to nominate someone to be interviewed? Or would you like to write a guest post for this blog? if the answer is yes for either please email nicolabaird.green@gmail.com

If you’d like to feature on this blog, or make a suggestion about anyone who grew up, lives or works in Islington please let me know, via nicolabaird.green@gmail.com. Thank you. 

If you liked this interview please SHARE on twitter or Facebook. Even better follow islingtonfacesblog.com (see menu top right), @nicolabairduk

This blog is inspired by Spitalfields Life written by the Gentle Author.

If you enjoyed this post you might like to look at the A-Z  index, or search by interviewee’s roles or jobs to find friends, neighbours and inspiration. Thanks for stopping by. Nicola

Michael Hayle: house detective

Everyone on Islington Faces Blog has a story.  How much do you know about the people who lived in your house years ago? Or do you have any idea what the area looked like before the builders arrived? Convalescence enabled Michael Hayle to uncover everybody who’d ever lived in the Victorian-built Plimsoll Road house he shares with his partner – not far from where the 19 and 4 bus drivers used to park up for a cuppa.  In August 2014 the Daily Telegraph rated this corner of Finsbury Park as the 19th friendliest place in the country to live. Interview by Nicola Baird

Michael Hayle moved to Islington, in his 50s, when he re-met Caroline who’d been at the adjacent school in Newcastle. “I thought she was lovely when I was 17 (and she was 16), but I didn’t tell her, and she felt the same because she’s showed me her diaries.”

“It’s important to be connected to the place you are in,” explains Michael Hayle as he shows me into the house he shares with partner Caroline, a Fitzrovia GP with a passion for choral singing, travel and her home. In the hallway are framed censuses showing the names of people who’ve lived at their house – a poignant reminder to anyone with a terraced Victorian home that many families will have passed through the rooms.

Michael’s house detective skills began years ago when he was living in an old Georgian house in Cheshire with his first wife, before they had children. “I remember sitting on the steps thinking about this wonderful life and how interesting it would be to see who else had lived there. I wanted to know about the house, but as I researched I got really hooked into the families.”

Fast-forward a couple of decades and he’s able to tell me all about a typical Plimsoll Road house in N4. He has pages of orderly notes, maps that show how the area expanded and a spreadsheet listing the 17 families who’ve lived in number 12 since Mr Lidstone, a dealer in provisions, first moved into his new residence in 1880.

Find information out about your house from the deeds as well as electoral rolls, censuses, trade and telephone directories. Here’s a list of everyone who Michael Hayle knows has lived at 12 Plimsoll Road.

Writing it down
“You start with the families,” explains Michael. “It’s very atmospheric. I realised if Mr Lidstone had children they might have died in the first world war. So I tracked down Lidstone’s sons – the first children born in the house and was able to find that ‘our’ two boys didn’t die. One moved to the Isle of Wight and died in his 70s.

There’s a sense that they are our families because they lived in our house, see this one, Minnie Freezer living here in 1944. I do like her name but I lost her until I discovered she’d married but stayed in the house and was now Mrs Arthur Davies. You sort of adopt them. And then it expands to an interest in the street and the people they knew. Over the next five years I want to find the signature of everybody who has lived in this house and then paint their signatures around the hallway,” he explains.

Plimsoll Road*, which has a distinctive curve, was built between 1877-1881 on land where bricks had been made. “The fields were flattened [for construction ) and there were often complaints from visitors to the area because there were no trees, but in three years they’d completely filled the gap between Blackstock Road and the new St Thomas’ Road,” he says passing me a map dated 1869 when Plimsoll Road was no more than empty fields.

“The original houses to the South were built as Templeton Road*, Lorne Terrace, Florence Terrace and Albion Terrace but were joined to Plimsoll* in the North and the whole street was renamed Plimsoll Road in 1883,” he explains. “The houses were probably speculative. Plots were sold off and built in sixs or eights. If you walk down the road you can see the blocks – some still have the same doors, tiles, window bays and window heads.”

Au Lac on Higbury Park is a favourite restaurant. Try the La Vong fish or other Vietnamese specialities.

Places Michael Hayle enjoys in Islington
“It’s the people that make these places – everyone is so friendly. Caroline and I live out of Arsenal corner shop on Ambler Road. It has everything you might ever need, and they are so friendly. There are so many restaurants and cafes you can walk to:

• We always plan to get a take away at Yildiz (Turkish restaurant) on Blackstock Road but end up staying. They do very good kebabs, nice bread and humous.
• When my children come up to stay they always hope we will get pizzas from the Organica Pizza Company on Gillespie Road. Their delivery bike often beats us home if we dawdle on the Blackstock Road.
• Islington Family History Centre at St John’s is great for information. If you want photos or copies of things work out everything you want to copy as you research and then go back another day with an organised list. The fee for copying anything is £5 a day
• A couple of years ago we were in Au Lac – which does great La Vong fish* – and Caroline was talking about how much fun Vietnam was. I’d never seen her smile so much, so that night we went home and booked a trip to Hanoi with the aim of seeing whether it’s a place we could live when we retire. I thought Vietnam would be a difficult place to be a Westerner but people were charming and had a wonderful approach to life in general: life was for living now. In five years we may move there, we’ll see.”

Minutes, maps & buses
Michael is enthusiastic about his research and happy to show people tips if they want to find out about their houses. But he warns it is easy to get side-tracked. “I was hijacked by the Vestry minutes when I found out that two brothels were operating in Plimsoll Road until they were closed down by the police, the first in 1883 and another in November 1884. I keep wanting to knock on those doors and say ‘Do you know this was a disorderly place?’ But I haven’t…” he adds with a laugh.

Maps can be distracting from the business of research too. Michael has two favourites: the 1895 map of a completed Plimsoll Road and the Bomb Damage maps made just after World War Two, which “shows all the blast damage houses in London. You know people were bombed here during the war but when you see this map you realise how hammered this area was while people were living here.” Despite the plethora of dark spots on the map signifying bomb damage, the area was after all just by the railway works where Quill Street and Gillespie Park are now, Michael thinks that only one house was so badly damaged it had to be pulled down – where the access gap is on Romilly Road to Ambler School.

Not a lot of people know that in the 1950s Plimsoll Road had a rest stop for bus drivers where 20a is now. Michael explains: “Just after the war they parked a bus for use as a canteen. It served buns and hot tea. Then they put in a modest building as a tea shed. It’s strange to think that Plimsoll Road was officially on the route of the 19 and the 4 and the buses would pull up and park here for the bus drivers to have their tea.” This link shows a bus outside No 20.

Michael celebrated his 55th birthday cycling 15km round Goodwood at the Brompton World Championship 2014 – an event for Brompton folding bikes where lycra is banned. “Men had to wear jackets and ties and there was plenty of tea and Sipsmith gin”.

Taking stock
Michael is far too young to retire, although street research might seem like a retirement hobby. The work he’s done coincided with a disenchantment with the slippery career pole, a serious shoulder operation and his father dying in 2012. “Dad couldn’t talk or swallow for the last two years of his life so he wrote notes when I visited. He’d been a policeman and made the point that he’d lost all three of his brothers to cancer. He felt there were better things in life than trying to prove yourself in a demanding job. He said ‘see yourself as going through life moving through a series of rooms. You can spend time in one or two rooms or do interesting things by going to more rooms’.”

Michael had been a career junky involved in government bids, enjoying the adrenalin rush of winning a big contract, so his father’s advice took time to sink in.

“Dad said you’ve only got a certain time left, so enjoy it. Do interesting things with nice people and enjoy yourself, because there will come a time when you can’t. I realised I was worried about having money when I should be worrying about having time,” says Michael.

As a result he’s had a major life change – besides moving to London. For the past year he’s been doing some coaching and supervising students at LSE and from November 2014 will be doing a PhD in public management and governance. “I’m so looking forward to getting perspective on my 30 years in engineering and procurement, but not having to bring the work home,” he says sipping the last bit of green tea.

Here’s wishing Michael very good luck studying, and plenty of time to organise the writing on the wall that he’s promised his Plimsoll Road house.

• Fabulous photos on flickr comparing then and now Finsbury Park are at https://www.flickr.com/photos/warsaw1948/sets/72157626005913574/

Words*
Daily Telegraph, Britain’s 20 friendliest places to live (31 August 2014), see article here

Plimsoll Road is named after Samuel Plimsoll (1824-1898), who was a campaigner for safety at sea and the protection of mariners and led a huge public campaign in the 1870s. He would have been a very popular figure to the kind of people occupying these houses in the early 1880s. In 2007 a modern local resident, Nicolette Jones, was so inspired by the street name that she wrote the award-winning book, The Plimsoll Sensation: the great campaign to save lives at sea. To buy kindle or paperback copies click here.  The road even has a Facebook page – anyone who lives or has ever lived on Plimsoll Road is invited to join, see here.

La Vong fish is a popular North Vietnamese dish. In Hanoi some restaurants serve nothing else. It’s a grilled fish dish served with Turmeric and Dill, cooked on a burner at your table, with rice vermicelli, chillies and peanuts.

Templeton Road was on opposite sides but had overlapping numbers, 1a-16 on the west, 1-11 on the east. It must have been a confusing time for the postmen.

The rateable value of the new Plimsoll Road houses was between £30-£40. It cost £377 to completely pave nearby Prah Road (In 1881 rateable values were about £42) with a £9 five shillings and four pence [£9 5s 4d] charge for Mr Aspinall to lay the cobbles and paving stones outside one house, some of which you can still see on the kerb. Plimsoll Road got its paving stones a year later in 1882, and Michael’s house was charged £12 7s 6d.

Over to you
Would you like to nominate someone to be interviewed? Or would you like to write a guest post for this blog? If the answer is yes for either question, please email nicolabaird.green@gmail.com

If you’d like to feature on this blog, or make a suggestion about anyone who grew up, lives or works in Islington please let me know, via nicolabaird.green@gmail.com. Thank you. 

If you liked this interview please SHARE on twitter or Facebook. Even better follow islingtonfacesblog.com (see menu top right), @nicolabairduk

This blog is inspired by Spitalfields Life written by the Gentle Author.

If you enjoyed this post you might like to look at the A-Z  index, or search by interviewee’s roles or jobs to find friends, neighbours and inspiration. Thanks for stopping by. Nicola

 

Cyril Mann: painter & sculptor

Everyone on Islington Faces Blog has a story.  Painter and sculptor Cyril Mann (1911-1980) battled for a much wider public recognition during his life. But now his name and sun-filled paintings are starting to become better known thanks to local people honouring him with an Islington People’s Plaque in his memory on a council block (his former studio and home) at Bevin Court. Here Cyril’s widow and muse, Renske Mann, talks about life with her “husband and unlikely hero” in that tiny Islington flat.  Interview with Nicola Baird

Cyril Mann Self Portrait 1956 (all pictures used on this blog post with kind permission from             Renske Mann, c. Cyril Mann Estate)

Renske Mann: “This self-portrait drawing was done by Cyril in 1956, the year he moved into his flat in Bevin Court, Cruikshank Street, WC1. Today it is in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery (to see it you need to arrange a viewing ‘on request’).”

“I moved into Bevin Court with Cyril in 1960. We married on September 1, 1960, when Cyril was 48 – I’d just had my 21^st birthday. One of the two rooms in the flat (which was under 500 sq ft) was used to store Cyril’s unsold paintings and sculpture. We lived, worked and slept in the other room. Cyril gradually turned our flat into something of an “art factory”. He was not just a painter and sculptor, but also taught pottery at evening classes. He would pick up big chunks of London clay, which he then washed and stored in our bath for weeks on end. It meant having to use the communal baths in Ironmonger’s Row.”

Cyril Mann and Renske in Bevin Court.

“We were desperately poor, but never felt ‘deprived’. I persuaded Cyril to give up art teaching at Kingsway Day College, run by London County Council, in order to concentrate on painting. It meant I had to support him. Jobs were easy to find those days. As a multi-lingual secretary (Renske has Dutch-Indoneisan heritage and only moved to London In July 1959, aged 19), I was well paid comparatively. Whenever we ran out of money, I went out temping. We lived frugally buying bargains on Chapel Street market, such as broken biscuits, mushroom stalks and bacon offcuts.”

“There were no mod-cons, such as a washing machine or TV. We barely listened to the radio and sometimes didn’t leave the flat for days on end.”

“We were completely ‘wrapped up’ and dedicated to Cyril’s art. He never previously had a willing model over such a long period. We were the only people we knew at the time who had completely missed JFK’s assassination, as we had so little contact with the outside world.”

Renske with plaque in front of two pictures of her done by Cyril Mann – Renske in a Green Jumper and Seated Nude.

When I was modelling for Renske in a Green Jumper and Seated Nude in our flat in Bevin Court (see pic above), I had no idea that half a century later, Cyril would be honoured with a commemorative plaque on the council block. Cyril follows in the footsteps of Water Sickert, an earlier Islington artist, who was similarly honoured in a previous year with a green plaque, in Islington’s People’s Plaque competition, held annually. The plaque was a wonderful thing for me as it gave Cyril proper official recognition. Many of his best paintings were done in Islington.

From the Islington People’s Plaque nomination form (2012):
Flooded with light, Bevin Court allowed Mann to explore the dynamic effects of sunlight and shadows in a different way from previous artists. He was fascinated – to the point of obsession – by fierce, dazzling sunlight bouncing off surfaces in constant movement.

You can watch a short film of the plaque being unveiled at http://vimeo.com/user14388890/review/86888364/25a8ee7418

Bevin Court’s famous staircase. The council block in Finsbury, in the south of Islington, is designed by Berthold Lubetkin (who did the original penguin pool at London Zoo) was listed by English Heritage in 1998 (Grade 2*). According to legend, a memorial to Lenin (who lived at this spot when exiled in London editing Iskra ‘The Spark’) is buried under this staircase.

“Bevin Court was designed by the modernist Russian architect Berthold Lubetkin. It was built on the site of the bomb-destroyed Holford Square and completed in 1954.  Cyril moved there in 1956. Bevin Court was ‘listed’ by English Heritage in 1998 for its architectural interest. Its famous staircase is widely visited and admired by architectural students and historians.”

“Bevin Court was to have been named Lenin Court.  Exiled from Russia, Lenin lived in Holford Square around 1902. When Communism (and Lenin) lost respectability during the Cold War, the authorities decided to name the building in honour of Ernest Bevin, post-war Labour politician and Foreign Secretary.”

“Berthold Lubetkin, the Russian Modernist architect who designed Bevin Court, is perhaps best-known for what was the ‘Penguin Enclosure’ at London Zoo (now demolished I believe).”

“For Cyril, the tiny one-bedroom council flat was the height of luxury. For the first time in his life – he was in his mid-40s by then – he had a bathroom, hot water on tap, and communal central heating. From an artistic viewpoint, the flat on the seventh floor was flooded with daylight. His previous flat in Paul Street, allocated to him as a returning soldier after the war, had been above a gold-bullion storage. For security reasons, it had all its windows barred, depriving Cyril of daylight.”

From the Islington People’s Plaque nomination form
Cyril and Renske left Bevin Court in 1964, moving to Walthamstow and then Leyton in East London. Throughout the 1960s, and into the following decade, the artist presented his work in a series of successful exhibitions and one-man shows. Suffering severe health problems in the late-1970s, Cyril Mann died in 1980 in his 69th year.

 

Trolley bus in Finsbury Square painted by Cyril Mann.

“I lived with Cyril in Bevin Court, off Cruikshank Street, from 1959 to 1964. When we met, he had been living and working in the block since 1956. Prior to that, he lived in Paul Street, in another Islington council flat near today’s Barbican. After the war, Cyril painted many Islington scenes showing the areas bomb damage, which you can also see on the website.”

“Cyril’s paintings were little appreciated shortly after the war, when his most favourite subject matter was bombsites. People were not interested in buying pictures of London’s bomb damage, so soon after the blitz.”

Cyril Mann: Modern Venus – referencing Botticelli.

“We worked, ate and slept in one room at Bevin Court. One morning, as I got out of bed, Cyril said: “stop right there”! He called this picture Modern Venus, as the scene reminded him, with me emerging from the bed sheets, of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus painting. Note the sunlight streaming on the wall and a round table with a blue alarm clock, seen by Cyril as a streak of blue light as the sun strikes it.”

“This is a large painting, almost life size. By this time, Cyril would paint direct and no longer from sketches. These pictures are highly emotional and inspired by the moment. Because they are so swiftly done and observed, they are ‘alive, far more so than a finely finished nude could have been.  Cyril was now truly a ‘painter of sunlight’, and Bevin Court gave him the scope.”

Cyril Mann gets an Islington People’s Plaque on Bevin Court, Cruikshank Street, WC1. It is the first council block to have a people’s plaque.

Renske’s wish
“I was 28 years younger than my husband, which explains why I am here, half a century later, to tell the tale.”

“I’d like more people to see Cyril’s work – a lot will be from the Islington period. And I’d like people to realise that there’s a great deal of art about. When photography came about it wasn’t the end of painting. There will be figurative artists, like Cyril, quietly revitalising what is a very old art form – Cyril called it ‘putting new wine into an old bottle‘.”

•  Self-portrait of Cyril Mann can be seen at the National Portrait Gallery. It is not currently on display – to see it you need to make an appointment on request.
• There is a selection of drawings by Cyril Mann in the British Museum department of prints and drawings, which can be seen on request (no need to give prior notice. Just turn up and ask).
•  Go to the Cyril Man website to find out more about his work http://www.cyrilmann.co.uk/
•  A fascinating book, The Sun is God: the life and work of Cyril Mann, written by The Times Art Critic John Russell Taylor (2000) is on sale on Amazon here.

Over to you
Would you like to nominate someone to be interviewed? Or would you like to write a guest post for this blog? if the answer is yes for either please email nicolabaird.green@gmail.com

If you’d like to feature on this blog, or make a suggestion about anyone who grew up, lives or works in Islington please let me know, via nicolabaird.green@gmail.com. Thank you. 

If you liked this interview please SHARE on twitter or Facebook. Even better follow islingtonfacesblog.com (see menu top right), @nicolabairduk

This blog is inspired by Spitalfields Life written by the Gentle Author.

If you enjoyed this post you might like to look at the A-Z  index, or the A-Z of jobs to find friends, neighbours and inspiration. Thanks for stopping by. Nicola

 

 

 

 

 

Miles Brown: garage boss

Everyone on Islington Faces Blog has a story.   Three generations of the same family have run Brownings Garage just off Amwell Street. They’ve never advertised and don’t use a website, but business is booming in the newly refurbed garage. So, what’s business like for the grandson of the original garage mechanic, the well-named Miles Brown?” Interview by Nicola Baird

Miles Brown, whose dad and grandfather also ran Brownings Garage in Islington, with dog Olly.

It’s dark now at 7.30pm so the shutters are down at Brownings Garage. But owner manager Miles Brown, 39, is still at work. In the spotless garage are a mix of cars he and the team of mechanics are working on, and in the office, with its cosy under-floor heating, Miles’ dog Olly is sleeping happily.  “I only live five miles away, in Finchley, so sometimes I ride a bike here,” says Miles but mostly he drives to work with Olly.

Questions for a mechanic…

Q: If money was no object, what would you drive?
“The only cars that really stir me are Porsches. I’d have a 911 Carrera if I had £100 grand burning a hole in my pocket. They are so well engineered.”

Q: Is it hard to mend/service or maintain a car?
“Cars are boxes on wheels aren’t they.  They are filled with electronics that hate heat and cold and vibration but they get a lot of that! You do try your hardest, and do sometimes get caught out, so it’s how you deal with it.”

Q: Are you and your team all petrol heads?
“We like to go to the Goodwood Revival (historic car race meetings for pre 1966 models held regularly in Sussex, see here.“

Q: Do you use the local shops?
“Sometimes we all pop to the Amwell Street deli and have lunch – in theory the garage is closed from 1-2pm.And we use Amwell Wines, the off-licence across the road too.  I use Dale at Amwell Street vets for Olly and I get my hair cut at the hairdressers across the road.”

Q: Do you recommend this job?
In summer it is brilliant – the garage is south-facing and the sun comes flooding in. It is cold in winter, and the vehicles drip, but we’ve got fleeces gloves and hats  – and there’s underfloor heating in the office.

Back at the turn of the century Amwell Street and the roads off it were famous for dairies – indeed Miles’ great aunt had come up from Aberystwyth in Wales to London to find work in “service” [rather like below stairs at Downton Abbey, just done in the smaller Islington terraced houses]. Later on his great aunt ran a dairy right next door to what would become the family garage.  Opposite is number 72 where Miles’s father was born.

Rewind to 1910 when metal fabricator and mechanic, Mr Browning used the building to repair motorbikes.

“In Islington before the second world war no one had cars – it was all motorbikes and sidecars,” says Miles looking proudly around his refurbished garage. It’s a site that has been used as a place to fix vehicles since 1910, though back then it looked more like a cowshed.

“My grandfather, known as Sonny (but really called William), was friends with old Mr Browning’s two sons as they were all mad about motorbikes. They used to do long distance bike rides. Then one of the sons, Cyril, was killed in a motorbike accident and the other not interested in taking over the business after World War Two (1939-45) when his father was ill with cancer.

My grandfather had spent the war building tanks and jeeps with Leyland, in either Richmond or Morden, and he was keen to take the garage on. Soon there were more customers with cars than motorbikes…

Amazingly Miles’ grandparents ran three businesses – the garage as well as a newspaper shop, by Smithfield Market on St John Street, and a petrol station opposite what is now ITN.  “They were working from 5 in the morning until midnight, hours and hours, but made no money. They had no business brain between them,” says Miles good-naturedly.

Like father like son
A sure way of making children rebel is to insist they take up the same career as their dad. “Sonny’s father was a watchmaker and he didn’t want his grandson David (my dad) to come into the garage trade. So he was sent to be a watchmaker, but after two years he’d had a gut full of that. My dad wanted to be a merchant seaman, but it was a closed shop. He couldn’t get on a ship unless he was in the union, and he couldn’t be in the union unless he was on a ship. So my dad worked with my grandfather at the garage. “

Brownings garage has been open for business since 1910. When it was first used to repair motorbikes, back in 1910, it was more cowshed than bespoke garage.

Cars
Messing about with cars is what Miles has always loved.

“I used to come down to the garage in the school holidays. There were lots of mechanics and you’re a kid so you get to take a wheel off. It was fun and interesting and you’re making mistakes that you learn from.” Although MIles went on from Highgate Boys School to study engineering product design it wasn’t long before he was back fixing cars. Nowadays the cars his customers mostly drive “are German – VW, Audi, Mercedes and BMW.”

Until six or seven years ago the family had been leasing the site from the council, but in the mid 2000s there was a big sell off of properties. Thanks to some effective campaigning from an Amwell Street action group led by Dale Barter from Amwell Veterinary Practice and others, tenants were allowed to buy the property freeholds.

Olly the dog checks to see if Miles has treats. “I‘m in at 8am every morning and generally do a 12-hour day.”

Everyone knows us
“When we were fixing the garage up, everyone kept asking if we were turning it into flats,” says Miles. “I think they were surprised we were keeping going. But I like projects, and I like the personal touch: we do work that’s quality and value for money. Over 90 per cent of our customers I know by name – a lot of them knew my father, and some knew my grandfather (who died in 1978)!” explains Miles.

Miles seems a happy man – not just because the business has been here for 100 years, but he and his team of four mechanics, plus a local apprentice who he has just taken on, get to speak to the customers – some of whom are definitely famous. Talking to your customers about their car is now considered an old-fashioned style but the regulars love it. It’s an approach very much missing from the modern chains of car dealerships where mechanics do the cars and blokes in the office take the payment.

Islington is lucky to still have a real garage run so effectively by such a dedicated local character.

• Brownings Garage, 71 Great Percy Street, London, WC1X 9QX tel: 020 7837 5450 or email: browningsgarage@yahoo.co.uk 
• Amwell Veterinary Practice is run by Dale Barter at 52 Amwell Street, London, EC1R 1XS, tel 0207 833 1320

Over to you

If you’d like to feature on this blog, or make a suggestion about anyone who grew up, lives or works in Islington please let me know, via nicolabaird.green@gmail.com. Thank you. 

If you liked this interview please SHARE on twitter or Facebook. Even better follow islingtonfacesblog.com (see menu top right).

This blog is inspired by Spitalfields Life written by the Gentle Author.

 

Steve Hatt: fishmonger

Everyone on Islington Faces Blog has a story.  In 1895 Steve Hatt’s great grandfather, Mr William Morris, opened a fish shop on Essex Road, which he ran until 1920. Amazingly four generations of the same family have now run this famously good fishmongers. Meet the man at the helm today, Mr Hatt.  Interview by Nicola Baird

Steve Hatt: the fourth generation in the same family, dating back to 1895) to run a  fishmongers on Essex Road, N1.

TIMELINE by Steve Hatt

1895-1920 my great grandfather ran this fish shop (he died in the flu epidemic)

1920-1951 Between the wars my mother Pamela Morris lived upstairs with her mother, father and grandparents. During the war the top of the building was hit by an incendiary (bomb) and they had to move out.

1951- 1970 Pamela’s husband, Steve Hatt, ran the business.

1970 – present Their son, our Steve Hatt, modernises. The smoker has gone but there’s now super-efficient ice-making machinery and three flats above the shop.

“I’ve seen a lot of changes in Islington and the industry,” says Steve Hatt, now 61, contemplatively from the centre of his office. The office is tucked behind the shop, allowing him to keep an eye on his fast-talking white wellie booted-staff -serving lobster, octopus, hake, Dover sole, farmed and fresh salmon or trout, mullet, etc, etc – and to greet the regulars. Mr Hatt, as he’s known in the shop, is a master of juggling: between my questions orders are noted down for tigers (prawns) and haddock plus phones answered. Turns out he’s expert at sorting out bricks and mortar too – essential given the way retailing has changed.

“There used to be two individual cottages at the back on Elder Walk. Number 90 was used as a stable for the horse that drew the cart to market,” says Steve, “then as refrigeration became prominent my great-grandfather acquired #89 to expand the ground floor. We used to smoke lots of haddock, mackerel, cod and trout on the premises, and it was a great asset because we could smoke the fish exactly how we wanted it.” These home-smoked products were popular, indeed the chimney for smoking was so large Steve could probably have hidden his staff in it.

Tiles with an old fashioned feel, put in during the early 1990s.

The drawback was that traditional fish smoking emits a lot of smoke which is “unacceptable to the modern environment,” admits Steve, “but because our smokery was in a separate building, that had been there before 1920, it beat the regulations.”

Then in September 2007 the smoker caught fire*. “I could have walked away and retired if I didn’t own this building,” says Steve. “I eventually managed to rebuild the ground floor and keep the business running at the same time.This was a most stressful two year period. Total commitment to handling the best fresh fish in the best facilities was my main priority at all costs. Now we have the best plant and machinery on the market for storage, loading and unloading, but we’ve maintained the old-fashioned part, with the wet fish counter which the customers like, at the very front of the building.”

The fire was the second time Steve had fought hard to run this fishmongers. “I always enjoyed the outdoors when I was at school. We lived at Southgate and my mother, Pamela Morris, had the shop but my father [also called Steve] ran it. My father wanted me to go into a profession – be an accountant or a solicitor. But once I’d decided, that was it.”

All change
The fishing industry had changed as much as retail.

Over the years about the only thing that hasn’t changed is the crazily early time Steve gets up – 3.20am. “It’s so I can collate overnight orders and source anything particularly hard to get.”  He then drives from his home in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire to New Billingsgate Fish Market* now sited near Canary Wharf.

“I have tried fishing on boats but found it an intolerable way of earning a living. It’s extremely hard: 25 years ago fishing was statistically the most dangerous occupation – you couldn’t get life insurance.” Even working on land the trade is tough, characterised by heavy weights, inhospitable conditions (especially in winter) and a lot of contact with ice. Perhaps for these reasons very few women choose to be fishermen.

“The retail industry has changed dramatically in 20 years mainly due to modern food handling regulations, which have done away with many old traditions, or made them no longer viable. Is that good or bad, question mark?” asks Steve leaning back in his chair.

Steve Hatt fishmongers: a rare view without a queue emerging on to Essex Road.

Supermarkets
And then there’s the way we all shop: at supermarkets.

“I don’t regard supermarkets as competition,” says Steve. “They can provide parking and late night shopping, but they cannot provide the same quality fresh fish, 24 hours out of the water. All fresh fish caught locally around our coast is sold at auction. Auctions are held on Monday to Friday. The last fish to come to London each week arrives on Saturday morning, having been auctioned on Friday. So any fish sold on Sunday or Monday is one day older… how can a supermarket do that?

Plenty of fish in the sea?
Critical fish stocks and how to fish sustainably has been a huge part of the modern food debate. In supermarkets or any shop that sells packaged fish customers can opt for the MSC – Marine Stewardship Council label, a system that promotes sustainable fishing practices. http://www.msc.org/about-us/what-we-do

However pre-packaged fish isn’t sold at Steve Hatt’s shop.

“The best quality product is all I’m interested in. The MSC approved label is for the segment of fish that ends up in boxes. This is where I think fish auctions are critical, because all fish sold at auction is graded and the sea area in which the fish was caught identified. In the old days you would have the name of the boat and the port where it was registered. Now with modern satellite tracking devices and fish logs the fish is traceable not only to the boat but to the sea area, and has to be within the quota system.  If everyone sticks to the rules laid out by the scientists then fish stocks should slowly recover. A Spanish trawler can’t suddenly slip in and hive off 50 tonnes of mackerel, then slide off again.”

The fishmonger’s secrets

Q: What’s your best selling fish?

Farmed salmon. Be clear, there’s a world of difference between farmed salmon in the supermarket and from a top class fishmonger. Just consider the time passed from the moment the fish is killed.  We also sell a lot of mackrel and sardines.

Q: Can you cook?

Yes – I love cooking fish. Last stime I cooked was salmon in the oven with a honey and mustard glaze. In 15 minutes it was done.

Q: Can you recommend a cook book?

Susan Campbell’s Poor Cook (1976, co-written with Shirley Conran) and Family Cook (1974) have the best descriptions and hand drawn pictures of how to clean and fillet a fish. It’s a painstaking delight.

Q: Where do you go in Islington?

I don’t normally have lunch. In the late ‘80s and ‘90s there were some small, character restaurants in Islington – Monsieur Frog (now a showroom), Anna’s Place, off Liverpool Road, and the Camden Passage heydays with Robert Carrier (the founding father of modern food photography, especially fish), although there is still Fredericks. I feel the quality of food in the area has been sacrificed for volume and alcohol consumption – alcohol helps make the figures add up.”

Q: What do you like to do when you’re not at work?
I used to shoot, partridge and pheasant mostly, but I’ve got arthritis in my  shoulder so my main hobby now is skiing.

Eel trouble
Islington – renowned for its foodies but miles from the sea – has struck lucky with Steve Hatt’s shop. On Saturdays there is invariably a queue snaking out of the door as people who want the freshest fish, wait patiently to be served, often chatting in a range of languages. Once you’ve chosen your fish the staff always offer to clean or even fillet it for you.

Occasionally there are mishaps to enjoy… “I was serving an old lady with live eels one day,” says Steve, “when one of the eels slipped out of my hand and shot up in the air like a missile.  Very near the front of the queue there was an extremely tough looking 6 foot 3 inch American gentleman who was absolutely terrified and nearly fainted! The old lady thought it was hilarious.”

The queue is typically customers picking out the fish they want to cook at home. “We don’t serve many restaurants,” continues Steve. “The key change is the amount of pre-processed fish that restaurants buy. The modern restaurant kitchen has shed staff so no longer buys whole salmon or whole fish, or even slices. They don’t fillet or clean themselves.  It still amazes me how little people know about fish and the actual simple cooking processes. The British have a very low consumption of fish – the Spanish eat over five times more.”

People often say that fishing and fishmongers are a dying trade, but the facts don’t always add up. Not only do we have Steve Hatt offering the freshest fish around, two new fish shops have opened in the past year in Islington – Meek and Wild at Highbury Barn and the Prawn on the Lawn on the corner of St Paul’s Road and Highbury Grove.  Perhaps best of all Steve Hatt’s business is now fully-modernised, making it possible to run an old-fashioned counter-serving fish shop for many years to come.

As for who will run it, Steve’s on the case: “Both my children will almost certainly not actually work in the shop. However, like myself, they both want to see the name of Steve Hatt over the door in the future. Staff committed to the business will be the key. Ruthless discipline in work practices and judgment of quality product will need to remain solid… but for the foreseeable future I remain doing what I enjoy, here in Islington.”

Steve Hatt fishmongers is open Tuesday – Saturday from 8am-5pm. Find it at 88-90 Essex Road, N1 8LU.

Read an interesting piece about Steve in the Independent (18/9/1995)  here.

Words*

Fire in the smokery – see the news coverage in the Islington Tribune, here

New Billingsgate Fish Market, is open Tuesday-Saturday, 5.30-8.30am. Short video here http://www.theguardian.com/travel/video/2011/oct/18/billingsgate-fish-market-london-video

Over to you

If you’d like to feature on this blog, or make a suggestion about anyone who grew up, lives or works in Islington please let me know, via nicolabaird.green@gmail.com. Thank you. 

If you liked this interview please SHARE on twitter or Facebook. Even better follow islingtonfacesblog.com (see menu top right).

This blog is inspired by Spitalfields Life written by the Gentle Author.

If you enjoyed this post you might enjoy the most popular of all islingtonfacesblog posts, Nina Marcangelo from Alfredo’s Cafe on Essex Road which had 800 viewers in a week, 187 views on its 2nd day up and 97 facebook shares.

Joan Lock: crime writer

Joan Lock: “When I finished Dead Born and read it again I thought: ‘I did a lot of research’, so that’s why I wrote the history of The Princess Alice Disaster.

Everyone on Islington Faces Blog has a story.  So far during 2013, crime writer Joan Lock has had two books published – a Victorian crime novel, Dead Born, and a non-fiction book about The Princess Alice Disaster. Later this year she is to have a book re-released. She has also been a winner in a John Lewis art competition. Not bad for someone just about to celebrate their 80^th birthday.  Join in the competition to win a copy of these books, see how below. Interview by Nicola Baird

Dead Born – the latest in Joan’s popular Detective Sergeant Best mystery series to be issued in paperback – starts with the handsome hero, Sgt Best, living in Barnsbury next door to a suspected Islington baby farm. The plot deepens when Sgt Best ends up on the Princess Alice, a pleasure steamer which sinks on the River Thames, in 1878, after being rammed by another boat at near Woolwich. Around 650 people drowned, making it Britain’s worst-ever inland waterway disaster.

“The Princess Alice went down in two minutes, taking with it a lot of people from Islington who were enjoying the sudden improvement in the weather with a day out on the river. Their chances of survival were hampered by the fact that both sexes wore boots, the women  wore long skirts – and  most of them could not swim. Islington vestry (parish council) had turned down the suggestion of public swimming baths so, after the disaster, they were severely criticised by the Islington Gazette,” says Joan from her desk in her Barnsbury flat.

Mixing real Victorian news events with fiction has become Joan’s speciality.

“When I first decided to do some fiction I wasn’t sure I had enough imagination so based my first crime book, Dead Image, around the real Regent’s Canal boat explosion in 1874,” she says with a wicked chuckle. Joan is being modest though. Her first two books were autobiographies about her experiences working, first as a nurse in the north-east and then as a policewoman in Mayfair and Soho.

Joan Lock’s flat is full of books she’s written, and pictures she’s painted. She is a member of a local art group and also paints when she stays at the John Lewis’ staff (known as partners) and ex-staff holiday hotel Brownsea Castle, wich is on an island in Poole harbour.

Lady of the night
She left nursing because she was “underpaid, overworked, and the conditions were awful”. She then left policing when the feeling of novelty was overtaken by recognition of the limited work and career opportunities for women. “It’s all in the book,” says Joan patting her hardback copy of Lady Policewoman. “As a police woman in the West End I went to film premiers and all the Royal occasions, like Princess Margaret’s wedding, which was all rather fun but the work was probably less interesting than that in the poorer and more residential areas such as the East End or Islington. At the time, the West End was teaming with prostitutes but when the Street Offences Act came into effect the authorities were anxious to find out how the women would now seek customers. I had had this disastrous red hair rinse, which rather clashed with my new salmon pink duster coat, which may have been why they asked me to pose as a prostitute and go to newsagents to enquire how much they would charge to advertise ‘my’ services.”

Reluctant Nightingale, to be renamed Please Nurse! (which is about Joan’s student nursing life in the 1950s) is due to be re-published by Orion this autumn in part due to the popularity of the TV show Call the Midwife. A new edition of her The British Policewoman may be published soon, while her only modern crime novel Death in Perspective and the non-fiction Blue Murder (about police officers suspected of murder) are about to come out as eBooks.

“Policing and nursing are very similar. A large part is dealing with people under stress and pretending you know what to do next,” said Joan with characteristic good sense. “As a police woman I saw some sad things such as the senile, mentally retarded couple who had not been seen for a couple of days. When we broke into their flat we found them in bed.  The woman was cuddling and talking to the old man’s lifeless body and she refused to be parted from him, or to believe that he was dead. The mentally disturbed seemed to gravitate towards me. I also dealt with quite a number of attempted suicides.”

Joan is well-known in policing circles for her history of The British Policewoman: Her Story (published in 1979, 60 years after first police woman joined the Metropolitan Police), as well as campaigning articles and radio programs asking questions such as ‘When would the first female chief constable be appointed?’ Her efforts paid off when Pauline Clare was appointed to run Lancashire’s policing in 1995. Though there’s clearly a way to go as of the 52 chief constables only seven are currently women. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_constable

After finishing as a police woman Joan opted to work part-time on a John Lewis in-house journal to give herself enough time to do her freelance writing.

Early life
Joan was six and had just started school in New Malden, Surrey, when World War Two started. “I remember a test siren and all this panic,” she says. “We moved to my father’s home Barrow-on-Furness and settled there in the middle of the shipyards as people thought the German bombers wouldn’t have enough fuel to get that far. They were wrong and we were bombed to bits. I wasn’t allowed to go to school there because my legs were too short – I just couldn’t run fast enough to reach the bomb shelter in time,” remembers Joan with regret.

“We slept under a steel table but were constantly being dragged out to go to the air raid shelters.  I have a vivid memory of my mother, Ena, screaming for us to get out of bed blending with the scream of a dive bomber…”

The family managed to escape to an aunt’s house in Cartmel in the Lake District – now famous for sticky toffee pudding – and then moved to Tyneside where they were duly bombed again. “I attended 10 schools, but not to grammar school because I failed the entrance exam. After leaving I did various jobs and then went into nursing the same as my mother,” she explains.

Take a break
Joan might have stayed working as a nurse at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Gateshead if it hadn’t been for a fantastic birthday present. “My parents gave me a trip to Paris for my 21^st. On the way we passed through London where I saw a police woman sheltering in a doorway and thought ‘That’s an idea!’ It wasn’t exactly a vocation, but I wanted to go to London so I joined the Metropolitan police and was posted to West End Central, just behind Regent Street. There were 20 of us women at the station and six hundred men – which was very good for our social life! It’s where I met my husband, Bob. We married when I was 24.”

“My relatives in Alnwick, Northumberland say all their friends are jealous that they can borrow my flat in Islington right at the heart of London. When they are here they like to breakfast at Carluccio’s. I like the egg and chips at the Workers’ Café opposite the Town Hall.”

JOAN LOCK’S LIFE IN ISLINGTON
Q: What do you love doing?
I write for around four hours a day. I go to the RA, Tate and the Mall Gallery exhibitions; play board games with neighbours and I’m a long-time member of Book Circle at Islington Central Library.

Q: Where’s good to eat?
Recent very good finds have been the John Salt in Upper Street with very innovative food, and the Pig and Butcher, Liverpool Road – hate the name but loved the food.

A favourite Turkish is The Gem in Upper Street – nice family place with wonderful lamb (a farmer relative was most impressed!) and it is a very convenient place to meet friends alighting at the Town Hall bus stop.

Q: What about shopping?
I use the shop and drop service at Waitrose, Holloway Road so I don’t have to carry my shopping home.

At The Sampler wine shop in Upper Street you can taste before you buy and get a chance to at least savour wines well above your price range.  Wish it had opened before my husband died – he would have loved it.

Moving to Islington
Joan has lived in London since that birthday trip, moving to Islington in the 1970s. “I’d been to the Tower Theatre with friends and thought Canonbury looked very attractive, so when we had to move out of our police flat near Tottenham Court Road we asked for one of the police flats in Canonbury Park South.” When Bob retired the couple found a Barnsbury Housing Association flat, on the other side of Upper Street, where Joan still lives.

“I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. London is the best city in the world and Islington is perfect – it’s very lively and so near the West End and all my research places:  the British Library; Guildhall and the marvelous London Metropolitan Archives where I found the Princess Alice disaster inquest papers.  The local Coroners who drew attention to Islington baby farming were Dr Thomas Wakeley (founder of The Lancet and MP for Finsbury) and Dr Edwin Lankester who carried on Wakeley’s work by insisting on proper post mortems and inquests for the babies and encouraging murder verdicts.*

While researching in The Islington Gazette about the finding of baby’s bodies behind hedges and railings Joan came across a report on the Police Fete at Alexandra Palace.  “This set me off writing Dead Letters (2003) which is to be the next in the Sergeant Best series to come out in paperback – except that he is now an inspector – a reward for the hard time he had in Dead Born!”

Find out about all Joan’s books and life story at http://www.joanlock.co.uk/ Also see Joan Lock’s amazon page, here http://www.amazon.co.uk/Books/s?ie=UTF8&field-author=Joan%20Lock&page=1&rh=n%3A266239%2Cp_27%3AJoan%20Lock

COMPETITION & BOOK GIVEAWAY: If you would like a FREE copy of Dead Born and/or The Princess Alice Disaster please add a brief comment below stating (1) which book/s you want and (2) whether you knew anything about Islington baby farms or the Princess Alice sinking before reading this interview. (3) You’ll also need to include your email. Names will be picked out of a hat two weeks after this interview is published (so last comp entries will be at midnight on 24 September 2013). Entry only accepted if you have a UK address the books can be posted to.

WORDS*

Islington Vestry – the Vestry criticized by the Islington Gazette would be the Parish Council – similar to today’s Islington Council.

 The Book Circle at Islington Central Library also known as The Central Library Reading Group meets monthly on the penultimate Monday of the month between 6-7.30pm. Meetings are held in the Gallery at the Central Library. New members are always welcome. The next meeting will be on Monday 23 September, and the group will be discussing Bring up the bodies by Hilary Mantel.

• If people are interested they can contact the Central Library on 020-7527-6900, or email centrallending.lib@islington.gov.uk  or Lisa Tyas Lisa.Tyas@islington.gov.uk
• For details of this and other reading groups in Islington, see http://www.islington.gov.uk/services/libraries/morethanjustbooks/Pages/1359.aspx

Islington baby farming – there was one at College Cross, N1. According to Joan: “Amongst the last of the baby farmers to be hanged (in 1903) were Annie Walters of Danbury Street, N1 – behind Islington Green near the canal and Amelia Sachs of Hertford Road, East Finchley.”

Over to you

If you’d like to feature on this blog, or make a suggestion about anyone who grew up, lives or works in Islington please let me know, via nicolabaird.green@gmail.com. Thank you. 

If you liked this interview please SHARE on twitter or Facebook. Even better follow islingtonfacesblog.com (see menu top right).

This blog is inspired by Spitalfields Life written by the Gentle Author.

If you enjoyed this post you might enjoy the most popular of all islingtonfacesblog posts, Nina Marcangelo from Alfredo’s Cafe on Essex Road which had 800 viewers in a week, 187 views on its 2nd day up and 97 facebook shares.

Nina Marcangelo: Alfredo’s café family

Everyone on Islington Faces Blog has a story. Opened in 1920 Alfredo’s café was an Islington landmark for years, sited at the end of an 18^th century terrace at 4-6 Essex Road. It was probably best known as a fabulous working man’s café (then reborn as the S&M café, now Meat). But it wasn’t just the big plates of food that made it special says Nina Marcangelo, who was born in the flat above the café, and is still one of the owners of the property. Interview by Nicola Baird

“I was cooking before I could walk,” says Nina Marcangelo who was born above Alfredo’s cafe and started work there in 1953.

Nina Marcangelo started working at Alfredo’s in 1953, only leaving when she married Elio and moved to run a café with him in Barnet High Street. “At Alfredo’s I’d be up at 5.30am and start preparing all the food. We had fry ups, steak and kidney pudding, steak pies, braised steak, braised liver, apple pies and bread pudding,” she says. Everything was made at Alfredo’s, including the famous vanilla ice cream*, except the bread and rolls delivered by a German baker called Mr Dickens.

Nina’s family are Italian so they know how to make great food. Many Londoners also got their first taste of spaghetti and minestrone here.

The generous portions and amazing tile interior attracted all sorts of punters – including music hall stars Marie Lloyd and Max Miller when they worked at Collins Music Hall (now Waterstone’s book shop on Islington Green, see photo).

Even the Kray twins were customers.

UNTIL 3/1/13 there was a pic here which I put up mistakenly. It was of a scene from Quadrophenia shot outside Aflredo’s Cafe. The caption said “Alfredo’s biggest claim to fame is surely starring in the cult ’70s film about Mods & Rockers, Quadrophenia. Pic sourced from www.classicafes.co.uk/Best.html” The moment I received a letter from Getty’s legal department (3/1/13) I instantly removed this photo. 

Achingly cool
But Alfredo’s biggest claim to fame is featuring in the classic cult ‘70s movie Quadrophenia. The café starred as the Mods’ London hangout. “The scenes had to be shot at night so the café could stay open as normal (from 6am-6pm six days a week),” says Nina.

Alfredo’s also played a star turn in the less-well known film Mojo (1997).

The original Alfredo’s tiles are listed. See them now if you eat or have a cocktail at Meat, 4-6 Islington Road, N1.

“Daddy bought it in 1920 from my Grandfather Vincent de-Ritis. Actually he was called Alfonso, but he thought Alfredo’s sounded more business like,” says Nina, now 75. “Daddy was born in England. He was a Londoner who wouldn’t leave Islington. Mum came over from Italy when she was 21 to work with her sister, who had a café in Hackney,” says Nina warmly. “When I was little Mum used to stand me on a box to do the washing-up (these are the days before dish washers),” says Nina. “At the end of the day (when I was older) I’d collect all the tea towels and scrub them on a board until they were really white, then ‘spin’ them on the mangle we kept downstairs in the cellar.”

The interview is taking place on a scorchingly hot July day, reminiscent of an Italian summer, in Nina’s sitting room in Barnett. Pride of place goes to a painting of Alfredo’s and, on the opposite wall, a giant photo of her mother’s picture perfect hilltop Italian village home, Picinisco, between Rome and Naples. “Whatever house you go into they all cook amazing,” insists Nina. To prove her point Nina shows me her “favourite book ever’ Dear Francesca (and also Dear Olivia) cookbooks by Mary Contini whose family also hails from the same village.

There are also framed photos of Nina’s parents meeting the Pope, socialising with champion boxer  and Question of Sport TV star Henry Cooper (who “married an Italian girl”) and family snaps of her daughters, Lisa and Rita, and the grandchildren Leo and Rosa.

“Life felt very Italian. Mum always spoke Italian to me. We bought pasta at Gazzano’s, an Italian deli down Clerkenwell Road.” The family also went to church at St Peter’s in Hatton Gardens which Nina says “is like a miniature Vatican inside.” As the years passed the Italians around Clerkenwell moved. Nina says they went to “Highbury, then Finchley and then on further afield. There’s a very big community in Hoddesdon, Herts.”

Family life

“After I married I moved to Barnet with my husband, Elio. We ran a café in the High Street next to the Mitre pub. It used to be called The Terminus, because that’s where the trams turned around. But now it’s called Georges.”

“I had wonderful parents,” says Nina with a big smile. “My mother was a very friendly lady. Within minutes she knew your life history. I think Daddy tended to spoil me – at 21 he bought me a brand new red mini!” But her early years were tough – the youngsters (Nina’s the third child in a family of four, and all the rest are boys) were evacuated during the war to Tamworth, Staffordshire. “We were all near but not together,” remembers Nina. “My parents did it for safety, they stayed in London. But I had a wonderful five years as the people (I stayed with) looked after me like a princess – I stayed in touch until they died. There were no animals, but there was a lovely big field to play in. You’d hear doodle bugs pass over. I think they were heading to Birmingham. And we had bomb shelters – it’s where I learnt to knit and do jigsaw puzzles.”

Once it was safe to come home to Islington Nina went to school at St John’s the Evangelist in Duncan Terrace. “I loved it,” she says. “I wanted to go to the school my brothers were at, Brompton Oratory, but mother said it was too far for a girl. What could I do? It’s not like now. You had to do what your parents said.” The result was secondary at St Aloysius near Euston. And then on to work at the café full time.

Cafe life
“When it was quieter I’d start preparing for the next day. I loved to go to the meat market (at Spitalfields) as the chaps made a fuss of me. There was no nastiness. I used to drive down and then had to give a two and six tip*. I was 17 when I took my driving test, and only 18 when I drove my mother to Italy.  My dad had such confidence in me.” Here she laughs, adding, “To be truthful there wasn’t the traffic. Driving was great fun – once a week I used to drive Mum to the West End, park the car, and we’d go shopping!”

Despite being an early car fan, Nina and her husband are now carless. “We’ve got bus passes, save on insurance and can always catch a cab,” she says practically – showing the insight that led to classic Italian dishes – spaghetti bolognese and minestrone – being added to Alfredo’s menu because “It’s what I thought English people would have a go at.”

“My favourite customers were the builders – as long as you gave them a big plate they were happy,” she says. Nina still remembers where comedian and singer Harry Secombe sat when he tipped her after a fried breakfast. “The Kray brothers used to go there too,” Nina adds more warily. “When you read the terrible things they did it’s a surprise. They were charming – you wouldn’t think butter would melt.”

“When I was a little girl Islington was a right dump. If people asked you where you came from you’d say very quietly ‘Islington’,” says Nina. “Now I’m quite proud to say I come from Islington.”

• London still has working men cafes, but nothing beats the experience Alfredo’s gave. You can find more info about it at http://www.classiccafes.co.uk.
• Alfredo’s site is now occupied by Meat – a posh restaurant and cocktail bar which cooks meat sublimely, and offers veggie options – at 4-6 Essex Road, N1. http://meatpeople.co.uk
  

  Alfredo’s site is now occupied by Meat – a posh restaurant and cocktail bar which cooks meat sublimely, and offers veggie options – at 4-6 Essex Road, N1. http://meatpeople.co.uk

• To enjoy a taste of Italian life in Islington on the Sunday around 16 July each year at 3pm (“an Italian three o’clock,” warns Nina, “so it may be nearer 3.30pm or 4pm”) there’s a religious procession along Clerkenwell Road and past St Peter’s church. There’s always lots of pizza, clothes, tops and seeds (for your garden).”

WORDS*

Vanilla ice cream/gelato – Alfonzo had a place over the road where he kept his ice cream making equipment.

2/6d is two and six (two shillings and six pence).

Over to you

If you’d like to feature on this blog, or make a suggestion about anyone who grew up, lives or works in Islington please let me know, via nicolabaird.green@gmail.com. Thank you. 

If you liked this interview please SHARE on twitter or Facebook. Even better follow islingtonfacesblog.com (see menu top right).

This blog is inspired by Spitalfields Life written by the Gentle Author.

Marco Wouters: flower seller

Everyone on Islington Faces Blog has a story. Belgian-born Marco Wouters has been running Angel Flowers opposite Islington Green for 20 years.  He knows who loves who, who is saying sorry and which houses have been visited by a new baby. But amongst the 87 varieties of flowers for sale there’s also a cracking history of how Upper Street is in constant flux.  Let’s start by finding out about the shop’s macabre good luck charm. Interview by Nicola Baird

Marco Wouters points at the burnt beams in the ceiling of his business Angel Flowers – possibly rescued from the Great Fire of London in 1666. The shop’s ceiling hides another secret.

“I’d be intrigued to know if there are any more cats in Islington,” says Marco Wouters, as he kneels on his office floor and starts to pull up the loose wooden boards by the stairs. Out of the second floor window there’s a thoroughly modern view of the Business Design Centre and the Hilton Hotel. Nearby some of his 10 staff are taking internet orders for flowers.

Slowly Marco’s efforts are rewarded and the dark shape under the floorboards snaps into focus – it’s clearly a mummified cat. There are four skinny legs, still with claws, and a long tail. The beast lies outstretched as if asleep under the floorboards. A hint perhaps of the magic and superstition that troubled-Londoners used years ago to deal with family and business worries?

Has anyone else found a preserved cat in an old Islington building? This one still has a hint of fur and is still at Angel Flowers.

“The cat’s 400 years old,” reckons Marco. “It was in the wall of the next door house – number 60 and 61 was originally one building built after the Great Fire, maybe in the 1670s. I was told by a customer that there were no other buildings when it was first built and this road (he points to the Upper Street/Essex Road junction) was known as the Hedgeway.” He stops speaking for a moment, seemingly lost in thought as to how Islington has changed over the centuries. “You’d have been able to see all of London from here when it was the only house…”

Downstairs in the shop, filled with beautiful blooms plus some astonishingly-coloured cacti, you can clearly see vast, partially burnt ceiling beams (see photo at top). Marco says these beams originally ran into the next door premises, although they were replaced by metal girders when the building next door was refurbished. It’s now a popular Japanese restaurant. 

Helen sweeps the old York flagstones that were once part of the outside pathway around 60 Upper Street.

What customers know
“Somebody came in and said these oak beams are from ships or they were in the Great Fire and got recycled – it is a very simple building. And it’s not listed, the Building Design Centre used to own it. Somebody re-did the roof and knocked down the chimney. When I moved into it in 1995 it was a second-hand clothing shop known as the Glorious Clothing Company which sold vintage, obviously. One of my customers said that 50 years ago  it was a spectacle shop and there used to be bedsits – she’d lived here as a student.”

Nowadays 60 Upper Street is a burst of colour squeezed by O’Neills and the Japanese restaurant, but it’s clearly a unique Islington survivor. Could it be because the cat was put in the house for good luck?

“She was next door – builders put her alive in the wall and she’d have starved to death,” explains Marco apologetically. “People after the plague (1665) and the Great Fire (1666) were quite superstitious! I want to stay here for a long time, but if I do leave I’d like the new owner to keep this cat.”

Marco lifts up the loose floorboards to reveal a 400 year old mummified cat – put there for good luck.

Why here?
Unlike the cat Marco chose to make his home and business in Islington. He grew up in Belgium – so speaks Flemish, Spanish, French and German. His fifth language is English “it may have moved up a bit now,” he says with a self-effacing grin. “I came to Islington for a drink and it reminded me of a little town in a big town, like anywhere in Europe, not London. I lived in Smithfield for a while and I’m now near Chapel Market. Living here you don’t have to leave – nearly everything is here, though perhaps there are too many big chains – but they bring people in as well.”

WHAT DO FLOWER SELLERS KNOW ABOUT HUMAN NATURE?

Q What’s changed?

“I used to know everyone and have many more regulars in the first 10 years, but that was before supermarkets sold flowers. Now business is functions, account customers, corporates, lots of weddings and civil partnerships. For the last few years the shop’s been on line so we can deliver flowers to people in Islington who have friends and family overseas.”

Q What’s the best flower?

“I prefer to take tulips home. I get excited every three months when a new season starts and new flowers arrive.”

Q Who buys flowers?

“There are quite a few sorries, it’s mostly birthdays or new born babies. And that love thing still keeps coming up…”

Q Best place for lunch?

Try and support your neighbours. I go to Don Matteos café, 74 Upper Street, N1.

Angel Flowers is at 60 Upper Street, London, N1. The shop offers same day flower deliveries (if orders taken by 2pm), tel: 7704 5312. For opening hours see http://www.angel-flowers.co.uk/contact-us.php

Find out more

• Detailed info about Angel’s development here.
  
• Islington flames. There was a fire along Islington High Street in 1839. The so-called Second Great Fire of London during World War Two – which produced the iconic photo of St Paul’s Cathedral surviving the flames – was on 29-30 Dec 1940. The blaze stretched from St Paul’s churchyard to south Islington, see here. 
  
• More about mummified lucky cats from the Daily Telegraph (2009) and the Daily Mail (2012).
  

Over to you

Do you know of any other buildings in Islington that boast a mummified cat, if so please leave a comment or let Marco know at Angel Flowers? By the way, if you’d like to feature on this blog, or make a suggestion about anyone who grew up, lives or works in Islington please let me know, via nicolabaird.green@gmail.com. Thank you.

If you liked this interview please SHARE on twitter or Facebook. Even better follow islingtonfacesblog.com (see menu top right).

This blog is inspired by Spitalfields Life written by the Gentle Author.

Martin Burton: circus founder

Everyone on Islington Faces Blog has a story. Founder and director of Zippos Circus, Martin Burton, sprinkles his fabulous tales of big top life with some tidbits about Islington clowns. Interview by Nicola Baird.

“I spent a year in intensive care after a fire eating accident,” admits the unflappable Martin Burton, 59, “so I promised my mother I wouldn’t do it again.”

Fortunately clowning wasn’t off limits. During the interview – held in Martin’s carpeted office (a cosy trailer) lined with circus memorabilia – he shows me a large skin graft scar braceleting his wrist. “Well, I was 25 and invincible! But the audience never know if something goes wrong,” he jokes and then recounts how the amazing Lucius Team motorbike stunt – four leather clad riders and their bikes seemingly defying gravity in a circular steel cage – have had one slip-up. “They really look after their equipment,” says Martin, “but one time there were three laid in the bottom and the fourth one had to keep going round and round above them [in the Globe of Death]. The problem was that he was getting increasingly dizzy, but he couldn’t come down without hurting the others.”

Nell, 12, meets Scooby (a riding school rescue horse who now stars in the circus with Nicky de Neumann) and Martin Burton, owner of Zippos Circus.

The death-defying acts on motorbikes, horses, trapeze or ropes are as much a part of the circus’s appeal as the carefree life on the road.

Red tail-coated ringmaster Norman Barrett puts it succinctly, “You are never too old or too young or too cool for the circus.” That’s certainly the case when my family visit – grannies, teens and tots seem equally gripped by the action. The circus gives away 100 tickets to the “parish needy” but London’s massively successful theatre producer – think Blood Brothers, Joseph & The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat – and Everton Football Club chairman Bill Kenwright and family (including his partner Railway Children actress/political activist Jennie Seagrove) are just some of the famous faces spotted recently in the 1,000-seater big top at Finsbury Park.

Even the Queen’s had Zippos Circus set up in the grounds of Buckingham Palace.

Trials of a clown
Martin began working as a clown in 1976. “I toured places where I wanted to go – Australia, Singapore, Bali, Philippines and Malaysia – but couldn’t afford to holiday. For quite a while I did theatrics, but a friend in the 1980s said I must get a circus, and that’s how Zippos began.

Hercules juggles tyres.

“We actually started Zippos on Highbury Fields and we did amazing business, but slowly something changed and we no longer go there. The last visit to Highbury Fields was in 2004 when Paul Newman (yes THE Paul Newman, star of The Color of Money, Cool Hand Luke and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) joined us for one performance. He was giving money to a number of charities including Clown Care which sends clowns into hospitals. Then we were trying to send clowns into Chernobyl. There’s research in America that shows that if clowns cheer children up then they recover more quickly, so the insurance companies like to use clowns to get people out of hospital. It also means in the US clowns get highly paid.”

That year Martin battled with Islington’s Head of Parks to put down aluminium tracks so that the taxi drivers chauffering a party of circus-going children in wheelchairs could drive across Highbury Fields to the big top. Islington wasn’t keen. “At the last minute the mayor – a woman – accepted an invitation to come to Zippos,” explained Martin, “and then I found out she was in a wheelchair. I told the Head of Parks that I’d be telling his Mayor, Cllr Doreen Scott, as I pushed her across the fields ‘it’s all your fault’. In a flash we had permission.”

Pete May bravely stands in as a flower with Zippos Circus clowns.

Clown guide
“To be a clown you have to be willing to metaphorically and physically stand naked in front of an audience. That’s why women generally make bad clowns – they’ve got more self respect…” When Martin sees me shudder (at the thought of being naked you understand in an English winter, not just the anti-women line) he adds, “I’ve seen clowns all over the world and I think Andrea from our show’s clowns is the best lady clown.”

England’s most famous clown has close links with Islington. Joseph Grimaldi (1778 -1837)  was just four when he made his first appearance at Sadler’s Wells, Islington. He had a tough childhood, in a performing family explains Martin. “He’d be at Sadler’s Wells for the first act then run over the fields to the theatre at Covent Garden, it was all fields then.”

Martin Zippo Burton’s clown is the top row, in red.

Grimaldi introduced the white face paint and two-sided personality of the clown that’s still used today. Traditionally clowns paint their face makeup on to a chicken’s egg to register the design.

Martin’s clown cabinet includes egg-heads of Zippo’s Delbosq Clowns, Martin Zippos Burton and Norman Barrett (for once not kitted out as ringmaster). There’s also a large collection at Wookey Hole, Somerset.

Nearer home Holy Trinity Church in Dalston, is famous for holding a service to remember clowns, attended predominantly by clowns, on the first Sunday of February.  Grimaldi is buried at St James’ Church, Pentonville Road in Clerkenwell.

Come to the circus

The Globe of Death can have four motorbikes tearing round inside it – seemingly defying gravity.

“In order to sell tickets we have to promote the romantic idea of the circus,” explains Martin. “You’ll read in the press ‘Last week I looked out of their window and saw the circus had come. Now it’s moved on and there’s just a fairy ring left in the park where the big top was pitched.’ The reality is a circus is where people live, we’re a travelling village. For me today its 2pm on Sunday and I’m in my office making sure that all the vehicles comply with the low emission zone in London. I’m always doing health and safety. People are surprised how highly qualified we have to be.”

“Everywhere we go is different, this is just cosmopolitan London. Most important people seem to quite like Zippos Circus and are happy to see horses on Finsbury Park. “And I love coming to Finsbury Park. There’s a great bagel shop with the best and biggest chocolate croissants in London . And I’ve been into Lidl about five times already this weekend.”  On the sofa there’s a Lidl bag full of red wine bottles.

There’s one small hitch. Finsbury Park is run by Harringey, which Martin remembers as “the first London council to ban performing animals 40 years ago. Islington did follow eventually and I even know what act was the problem. We had three Italian clowns who put a duck down their trousers. Actually I had a pet Indian runner duck which I trained to sit in the oven when people came round for dinner…” It’s a funny aside, but he swiftly comes back to the point which is that the few animals used in the circus are cared for extremely well – nothing like the circus followed in the novel and film Like Water For Elephants. “We’re only allowed to bring horses, dogs and birds into Finsbury Park by special permission of the council. And there’s a vet check too [which you can read on the Zippos website].

Ringmaster Norman Barrett, MBE with his budgies (not badgers!).

Being on the road so much Martin has a million tales – many about animal care and his battle with authority. Most are hilarious. “We had a Romanian girl in the box office who was asked what animals we had. She said horses and budgies, but it sounded like badgers. Later six police armed with machine guns and two RSPCA officers turned up asking us why where we kept the wild badgers! I said “We’ve got budgies. The police went beserk at being called out wrongly.”

We were in Stevenage, Hertfordshire and had little Falabella ponies. One wore a headcollar with a nice foam horn. I took a photo one misty morning and it was really good – he looked like a unicorn and the press loved it. Then the Head of Leisure called me in to his office. He made me stand in front of his desk. I know about that, I had to stand in front of desks at school. He said we’ve approved animals but this doesn’t include unicorns… We were banned from Stevenage for having a unicorn!

Go join the circus

“The great secret is that wherever we go people think it’s their circus. In East Ham the audience will be from south Asia, Kerala on the southern tip of India where circuses come from – he points to a photo on his frame-filled wall – they think it’s their own. Last night in the restaurant in Green lanes the Turkish were claiming it.”

Martin lets them think it… but he’s also super-adaptable to particular community needs. Locally some Jewish families can only attend the circus if there are no women singers on the soundtrack and no female performers. This year this might mean one show with the horses on the sidelines, as they are ridden by equestrienne Nicky de Neumann.

Each year Zippos Circus offers fresh acts. This year the team of palomino ponies are gone and instead there is fascinating trick riding by Nicky de Neumann on her lovely horses and a tiny Welsh pony. “I was madly into ponies as a kid and then read an article about trick riding when I was 13,” says Nicky who went on to train as an actress and singer. The photo is taken after the show with Zeus, an ex-Arab racer.

It’s also why Martin set up the Academy of Circus Arts, a unique big top training programme for people who want to runaway and join the circus. It runs from May – September each year and the 2013 intake is full. “There are always more girls and most want to learn aerial,” he explains.

For six months the circus trainees are on the road developing skills, suppleness and the ability to pitch a big tent, plus they hold a show open to the public each Saturday –Martin’s idea. “When I was training with Johnnie Hutch [the circus acrobat/theatre trainer who died in 2006 aged 93, see obituary here] we never used to bother to learn anything unless it was going to be in front of an audience. It’s the adrenalin… and how the circus performer learns what can I do for this show,” he adds.

More info:

• Zippos Circus  Tickets between £24 and £5. Check their website for discounts and locations.
• Clown Care
• Follow Zippos Circus on Facebook

Over to you

What made you get involved in Islington life – do you find it a way to make friends or something to be proud about doing?  By the way, if you’d like to feature on this blog, or make a suggestion about anyone who grew up, lives or works in Islington please let me know, via nicolabaird.green@gmail.com. Thank you. This blog is inspired by Spitalfields Life written by the Gentle Author.

COMPETITION to win the Last Wild children’s novel — SEE WHAT TO DO HERE. 

Alex Smith: heritage assistant

Everyone has a story on the Islington Faces Blog. Alex Smith from Islington Local History Centre and Islington Museum helps keep many more local stories live and accessible – a hard task when you realise that there are more than 100,000 pieces of information stored on site at the Finsbury office. Interview by Nicola Baird.

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Books worth studying if you want to know about local school history.

Alex Smith can help you unlock family history and Islington info right back to the 1600s.

Books for sale at the Islington Museum. (including top row, right, the fascinating record of a house in Cross Street getting a makeover)

More titles on sale at Islington Museum.

There’s no doubt: Alex Smith loves talking history, which is lucky as she’s working with an historic archive that includes maps dating back to the 16th century, lots of information about Hugh Myddleton (who funded the New River and has a square named after him and is splendidly ruffed up at the statue on Islington Green). There are also photos, electoral registers, census details and the archive of newspapers for the Islington Gazette (founded in 1856), the now defunct Holloway Press, and also the Islington Tribune.

“Part of the joy is the way someone remembers, but also it makes you think about what you mean by history. It’s good if people have some feeling of enjoyment as they remember.” There’s a pause as Alex, 30, adjusts a makeshift repair to her glasses which are currently held together with a pipecleaner and glue gun after they broke when she was attempting to bend them back into shape…

Even if Alex is having trouble with her specs, she can still tell that I’m puzzled by her answer, so explains it with a story. “My step-sister (who is 11 years older) is a professional oral historian. She’s worked in coal mining and woollen industries and finds you need time to interview and time to calm the person down afterwards. The past is not always a comforting memory. Some people are happy to open up, some aren’t. It is really difficult to ask people to open up a section of their life which is either very private or very sad. And then kids can’t believe it when they hear their gran used a long drop toilet, or had to wash in a tin bath in the kitchen or didn’t have electricity.”

Try looking closely at this portrait of Gee Street (see below for the detail).

As you enter Islington Local History Centre look out for the giant black and white portrait of  Gee Street, just off Goswell Road, when the borough was overcrowded and a little squalid. The two-up, two-down homes with a front door opening straight on to the pavement would nowadays be a highly desirable location, as it is a stone’s throw from arty Clerkenwell and the City. But here the photographer has caught an old pram tied to a drainpipe; a man reading on his doorstep (probably because it was too dark inside without electricity); and there’s a harassed looking lady sitting on the opposite side of the street keeping watch over three or four children playing by the roadside – and it’s safe because there are no cars (or double yellow lines!).

“In 1910 just Finsbury had 100,000 people, there was a lot of overcrowding, ” she explains – now the whole borough of Isington stretching from EC1 up to Archway has close to 200,000 people. And with that she whisks off with characteristic energy to untangle the history of anyone who’s ever lived in Islington. So is she ever tempted to think about her own roots? “I’ve never looked at my family history,” answers Alex who grew up in Leeds and still has a slight northern lilt, “I spend most of the time talking about everyone else’s family history, that’s enough.” Go team Alex!

If you are interested in finding out more about your family – or just curious about Islington – do go and visit. The Local History Centre and Islington Museum are both wheelchair accessible, a 10 minute stroll from Angel tube or just by the 153 bus stop.

Islington Local History Centre, Finsbury Library, 245 St John Street, London, EC1V 4NB, tel: 020 7527 7988 or email local.history@islington.gov.uk. it is open on Monday and Thursday from 9.30am-8pm; and on Tuesday, Friday and Saturday from 9.30am-5pm. It is closed on Wednesdays and Sundays. It is also closed daily from 1-2pm.

Islington Museum with gallery, exhibitions and events is at 245 St John Street, London, EC1V 4NB, tel: 0207 527 2837.  Despite google claiming the museum has been shut, it is not. Visit on Monday to Saturday from 10am-5pm (but it is closed on Wednesdays and Sundays). Recent popular exhibitions include the Roma – but there’s always something special on and lots of hands-on activities for younger children too.

Over to you
What do you think  about finding out your own family history, do share in the comment section below? By the way, if you’d like to feature on this blog, or make a suggestion about anyone who grew up, lives or works in Islington please let me know, via nicolabaird.green@gmail.com. Thank you. And yes, this islington faces blog is inspired by Spitalfields Life written by the Gentle Author.