Category: London

Apr 08

The time-travelling spinsters of Brompton Cemetery

On an appropriately gloomy day a few weeks ago I finally visited Brompton Cemetery, one of the ‘Magnificent Seven‘ Victorian graveyards of which Highgate is the poster cemetery. Highgate has got so big for its boots these days you need to pay to get in, but happily the other six are free and have their own creepy mausoleums and sad stone angels and 19thC celebrity graves. Though I don’t think they have anything to top the giant Marx head, it’s true. Did you see today someone left him a commemorative bag of Mini Eggs?

Impressively Brompton managed to maintain an air of refined melancholy with hundreds of Chelsea fans trooping through it post-match on the day we were there. Compared to wonderful half-wild Abney Park, the only other Magnificent Sevener I’ve made it to, Brompton was orderly and well-kept. Even the memorials were pretty restrained. We had a look about for any fanciful tombs adorned with weeping maidens or dryads, distracted with grief at the loss of this paunchy ambassador or that balding banker, but there were none (here’s a good one though. I mean, really – her top’s fallen off as well!)

There was a tomb with an enormous lion on top, but we were informed by a passerby that it belonged to a world-famous boxing champ so it seemed a bit more appropriate.

The Time Machine, an impressively large rectangular granite mausoleumHowever, there is one mausoleum in Brompton that is so OTT it has generated its own fascinating mythology: the Brompton Time Machine.

It certainly looks the part. Peculiar and imposing, it does have quite a presence when you’re stood beside it. The design is bizarre, especially the odd ‘portholes’ at the top and the not-quite-hieroglyphs around the door. Like Bad Witch, I first heard the time machine theory at the London Folklore Conference at the Bishopsgate Institute a few years ago, and Bad Witch has a good summary of the theory put forward there about its time-travelling properties. As well as just looking a bit weird the key points that make it a bit oooooh are:

  • It’s the only tomb in the cemetery for which there is no record of it being built.
  • The key is missing, so it hasn’t been opened for 120 years.
  • Inside are three fabulously wealthy spinsters about whom virtually nothing is known.
  • On the nearby grave of famous Egyptologist Joseph Bonomi there is a relief of Anubis, whose godly snout is pointing towards the tomb. A gesture which supposedly indicates “a soul out of time”.
  • Also buried nearby in an unmarked grave is eccentric inventor Samuel Warner, who sounds like JUST the kind of guy who might convince a wealthy spinster to fund a secret project to use ancient Egyptian wisdom build a time machine in the guise of an elaborate tomb.

However, The Clerkenwell Kid reveals that the time travel theory is totally wrong. It’s actually a teleportation chamber.

Doing a little digging (online, not at the cemetery – I’m not *that* inquisitive) I found a lot about Bonomi and a little about Warner, though not as much as you’d expect given that he sounds like a bonafide mad scientist. But it was the time machine’s inhabitants I really wanted to know more about, though I didn’t have much success. Thankfully some descendants of one of their relatives have been doing some family tree stuff so there’s a bit more now than a few years ago.

The mausoleum was commissioned by Hannah Peters/Courtoy, who was the third (and final) mistress of millionaire wigmaker John Courtoy – originally called Nicholas Jacquinet, he changed his name after arriving in England from France – who had two previous families with two other women. They weren’t married, but when he died she inherited his fortune. And it sounds like she earned it, as there was a 50 year age difference between them. Groo. Hannah reportedly died of cholera in 1848.

Also in the tomb are two of her daughters, Mary Ann and Elizabeth, about whom I could find nothing at all, sadly. However the aforementioned descendants did find a photograph of Hannah’s third daughter Susannah. Look! The past has a face! And a bonnet.

And the moral of the story is: who needs a time machine when you have the internet? Hopefully this will be the first of a series as my cemetery-visiting companion and I are aiming to get round all of the Magnificent Seven this year.

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Posted in History, London, Magic n that

Jan 08

Dalston Rio and ‘It Always Rains On Sunday’

[This post has been restored following Website Death in 2009, I think it was posted in 2008 originally. Sadly the 'Silver Screen' matinees seem to no longer exist, but I did find a clip of the film which wasn't online back then.]

Last weekend I paid a visit to the rather gorgeous Dalston Rio Cinema, to watch It Always Rains On Sunday, which was showing as part of the East End Film Festival. It was one of their ‘Silver Screen’ matinees, which are free for the over 60s and include tea and cake in the ticket price. And let me tell you, the home-made victoria sponge was DELICIOUS, and not just because it was free.

Rio Cinema is very lovely inside, with a huge pale blue arching ceiling and a proper thick red velvet curtain across the screen. It has been a cinema for nearly a century, and there’s a detailed history page on their site, including pictures of it in some of its former incarnations, as the Kingsland Empire, the Dalston Classic, and the racy Tatler.

The film was ostensibly about a Bethnal Green housewife sheltering her escaped convict ex-lover, but actually the star of the film was Ealing Studios version of East London in the 1940s (including the line “Oh, I wish there was no such place as Bethnal Green!” which got a big laugh). There was a lot of detail about the daily life of the family, with their tin bath and their Anderson shelter and cheese ration. Plus a trio of Cockney crooks, a Jewish market wheeler-dealer and a philandering saxophonist. My favourite bit, however, was the switch to a film of a toy train set for the long-view action shot when the fugitive is escaping across a railway yard :-)

The only thing that slightly spoiled it was the commentary coming from some of the more elderly members of the audience, along the lines of: “Ooh, what’s this? He knows, he knows! Ah, blackmail yes. Yes. Oh no, don’t run! He’s coming home!” etc… But hey, I was crashing their performance, so I can’t complain.

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Posted in Bethnal Green, Film, Hackney, History, London

Jan 07

A visit to G Kelly Noted Eel & Pie Shop

[This post has been restored following Website Death in 2009. It was originally posted in 2008 I think]

G Kelly Pie and Mash Shop on Roman Road - FrontageYesterday I went back to Roman Road market for the first time in a while and thought it was high time to post about G Kelly’s Noted Eel & Pie Shop.

It’s not up to me to tell you why pie and why mash and dear god why jellied eels. I’ll leave that up to the wonderful and terrifying www.eelhouse.co.uk, who offer a mail order pie service, and even pie and mash gift vouchers (‘the perfect gift!’)

Trying the pie and mash at G Kelly’s esteemed establishment was one of the first things I did when I moved to Bow, and although I did think that it was pretty bland (that’s obviously what the chilli vinegar is for…) it was hearty and cheap and peculiar. The interior of G Kelly seems to have been left mostly unchanged since the 1930s, all white tiles and mirrors and long wooden benches. On their website they have some fantastic history and a slideshow of old photographs.

They have a much more varied menu than other p&m shops I have visited, offering eels both stewed and jellied, soya mince vegetarian pies, mushy peas and even sweet pies and apple crumble with custard. The staff were friendly, and clearly amused at my confusion when offered ‘liquor’ on my pie – liquor is a thin green sauce made of parsley, rather than the bottle of gin I was momentarily expecting. (“Bargain!”, I thought.)

G Kelly gets busy at lunchtime on market days (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) often with queues out the door, as traders come in and put in incomprehensible orders like “one, two and peas, please love” (I think that’s one pie, two scoops of mash, and mushy peas). Saturday afternoons it’s a bit quieter.

My friend tries the eels

Jen and the eels

I think over the years I’ve had all kinds of their pies, but I have never gone near an eel. I am simply not brave enough. Have you seen what jellied eels look like?

Seriously. Step in my much braver friend Jen, who gamely tried some stewed eels with her mash. Apparently they were ok – fishy, squidgey, and yet full of bones. Yum.

There are quite a few pie and mash shops still dotted around East London, including one just down the road from me on Leytonstone High Road opposite Harrow Green. Writing this post is making me hungry, so perhaps I’ll stop in. Hm.

Before I sign off though, photographer Chris Clunn has a great collection of black and white photos of the exteriors, staff and customers in a selection of pie and mash shops.

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Posted in Bow, Eating, History, Leytonstone, London

Jun 18

The Milk of Sorrow

This sad and strange Peruvian film is showing at the Stratford Picturehouse on Thursday. I’m miffed that I can’t go so I am sharing it with you, my tiny reading public.

The protagonist, a young woman called Fausta,  is ill with a disease contracted from her mother’s breast milk known as “the milk of sorrow”,  a condition that only affects those women in Peru who were abused or raped during the years of terrorist struggle.  This Grauniad review says “This Peruvian lament examining how distress passes down the generations is subtle and wonderfully moving.”

Here’s the trailer. Please go and support the screening of weird films at Stratford Picturehouse!*

* ‘Weird’ is intended to be entirely complimentary, btw

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Posted in Art, Feminism, Film, Folklore, Stories, Stratford

Apr 18

Trees, you have been rumbled

Fake trees at Hollow Ponds

Faking it at Hollow Ponds

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Posted in Epping Forest, Leytonstone, Random, Wandering

Feb 23

The Southwark Mysteries

Ten years since these modern mystery plays were first performed, John Constable’s raucous mystical caravan will be returning to Southwark Cathedral this April. Website sez:

Inspired by the medieval mystery plays, this modern drama is rooted in the history of Bankside – London’s “outlaw borough” – mixing Bible stories with local folklore and contemporary humour.

Crossbones Graveyard Gates

Crossbones Graveyard Gates

It’s not Shakespeare (although he is in it, and Chaucer too – both had strong ties to the area) but it should be an entertaining performance.

The play stitches together symbols from across the centuries, from high art and street scurf, and it’s full of church spires and rags, goddesses, whores, history and magic.

It was inspired by the discovery of the Crossbones Graveyard in Borough. The play was written partly to restore a voice and a memory to the 15,000 nameless people buried there outside consecrated ground – prostitutes and criminals, the sick and the mad.

The whole project is an amazing example of modern myth-making, of a community of misfits and an urban space reclaimed for the non-specific spiritual. One day I’m going to tie a ribbon to the gate and commemorate one of the thousands of born-forgotten women who are buried there.

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Posted in Art, Drama, Folklore, History, London, Magic n that, Myths, Southwark, Stories

Feb 11

Another wild night in

This is what I have been doing tonight besides working. You can’t see here, but the pony has ‘irony’ written on it in sugar letters. We wanted to write ‘ironicorn’ but there wasn’t room.

what I have been doing tonight besides working. The pony has ... on Twitpic

There were others, but they have been eaten already.

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Posted in Eating, Random

Nov 04

V&A LATE event: In The Dead of Night

Norns weaving destiny - Arthur Rackham (1912)

Norns weaving destiny - Arthur Rackham (1912)

Another one of those “hooray for living in London! oh blast there’s all these other people that live here too” evenings. Turns out that fantastic free cultural events tend to be really popular.

Anyway, on Friday 30 October I ambled along to a hallowe’en-themed addition to the London museums LATES programme at the lovely Victoria & Albert Museum, but didn’t amble fast enough to sign up for anything. I also ambled into the middle of some performance art, which was a bit unfortunate, although I don’t think anyone noticed.

So I missed a few interesting things, including a talk on witchcraft by the curator of the wonderful Witchcraft Museum in Boscastle. It got utterly swept away in the flood a few years ago, so I’m very glad to see it’s back on its feet. There was a talk about Noh masks and Japanese demons that I caught snatches of through the gallery noise and the large crowd, but gave up after a while and went to a room upstairs to look at an exhibition of witch and fairy illustrations which was beautiful.

Highlights for me were some original sketches by Arthur Rackham, watercolours by Edmund Dulac, Brothers Grimm etchings by David Hockney, and Paula Rego’s black and white witch pictures. You can see Rego’s images online on the Tate website. They were  illustrations for Blake Morrison’s book of poems about Lancashire’s famous Pendle Witches.

It was worth going just for this little exhibition, and the chance to look around the gallery in the evening (no kids!) but the party atmosphere, high goth count and foyerDJ playing Joy Division, Tears for Fears and the Ghostbusters theme tune made it a lot of fun. The next V&A Friday Late is 27 November, called ‘Making A Scene’ – about gender identity, subversion and performativity, I’m told, although there’s no information up yet. Sounds right up my street.

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Posted in Art, Fairytales, London, Magic n that, Myths, Witches

Oct 22

Bus stop public art project gets green light

When I first moved to London and had more time than friends in the vicinity I spent a lot of time riding around on double decker buses just looking at the city. My favourite moments on those journeys were spotting the random things that people at street level couldn’t see. The winning object? An apple-sized ceramic ginger cat head perched on top of a garage on Highbury Grove Road, which watched the traffic with appropriately catlike disdain. Having shared a childhood home with a large number of cat ornaments, I am pretty sure the head was the lid of a teapot.

Ginger Cat Teapot

Ginger Cat Teapot

The flat tops of bus stops also yielded a fascinating array of items (including the Shoreditch meteorites) but rather a lot of single shoes and empty vodka bottles. So while I am very pleased to hear that the Bus.tops project which plans to cover 64 bus stop roofs in LEDs to display digital artworks has got the go-ahead, there’s a little wistful nostalgia mixed in. Regular readers will know I have strong feelings about public art, and I like this idea a lot. It has the potential to brighten the grim journeys made by millions of Londoners every day, while getting art out of the gallery and clawing back some of our shrinking public space before advertisers get hold of it (although I wouldn’t be surprised if they cotton on soon). But I can’t help wondering if any of those bus stops are already decorated with bizarre discarded items, and whether some lonely passenger will miss the mystery. Anyway, here’s their short video introduction on the Bus.tops site. There’s some annoying ‘urban’ jazz, and one of the artists describes bus stops as ‘street furniture’ but don’t let that put you off the whole project.

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Posted in Art, London, Wandering

Sep 26

Fantastical furniture at V&A Telling Tales exhibition

Supposedly taking its inspiration from “the spirit of story-telling” the free Telling Tales design exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum is well worth a visit before it’s packed up on 18 October.

Taking up a small space near the main entrance of the museum, the exhibition is divided into three sections – ‘The Forest Glade’, ‘The Enchanted Castle’, and ‘Heaven and Hell’, featuring intriguing, appealing, appalling and entertaining objects from a range of designers. Each apparently “tells a tale through their use of decorative devices, historical allusions or choice of materials, sharing common themes such as fantasy, parody and a concern with mortality.”

It’s difficult to pin down the thread running through the collection, but I loved it. It was gorgeous and grim and quite otherwordly, and UNCANNY in huge neon flashing letters, so right up my street. Perhaps the best I can do is link to a few of my favourite pieces to give you a flavour:

Linen Cupboard-House – I just wanted to climb inside!

‘Smoke’ Mirror – A mirror with a deliberately charred and blackened frame, which is surprisingly evocative.

‘Moulded Mole’ Slippers – I think the artistic merit / craft credentials of these are less clear, but I’m a sucker for taxidermy.

I’d also recommend taking a peek at the Princess Chair, the pig’s skull teapot, and the ‘Lover’s Rug’, which still makes me feel a bit queasy. There was a good mix of highly desirable objects, and thought-provoking items which were closer to art in the way it is normally understood, and clever things had been done with a very small exhibition space.

The themes seemed to break down a bit towards the end, but there was plenty to mull over. Here’s a video by the curator and others explaining some of the ideas behind the exhibition, and if you want to find out more about fairytales (and what sort of empty-souled person doesn’t?) you can hand over £45 for a study day linked to the exhibition on Sat 3 October.

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Posted in Art, Craft, London, Magic n that, Museum, Stories

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