Circumperambulating the Angel

(Click on any photo to enlarge in a gallery).

Two street pictures.  Anything in common?  Spotting the difference seems much easier than finding any similarity at all.

The picture on the left was taken on 2^nd June 1953 and shows the residents of Affleck Street, London N1, just off the Pentonville Road, enjoying their coronation street party.  We can’t zoom in without blurring, but everyone looks decently, if not elegantly turned out, the tables look well decked with victuals, and steps and balustrades to the front doors look solidly appointed.  Perhaps up at the standard that we might expect from the top end of Charles Booth’s evaluation of the street as ‘mixed; some comfortable, others poor’ in his 1886 survey of the streets of London.

Imagine the camera swinging 60 degrees to the left and opening its shutter again 60 years later. That would just about take us to the right-hand picture above.  Affleck Street has been amputated to make way for a gated estate. On the tarmac stump that survives the operation you can still shop for life’s essentials – booze, fags, nappies, mags and sweets - in the place where a general store has always been, on the corner of the Pentonville Road.

This wasn’t what I was expecting at the start of my slightly contrived foot-slogging circular dérive around (though never seeing) The Angel, Islington.  Affleck Street is whole on my tattered 1998 London A-Z.  You may just spot it at 9 o’clock on the haphazard circle, drawn round a glass that determined my perambulation.

 

A scuttle round the estate fetched me up against the railings of the Joseph Grimaldi Park.  Some lads were clowning around as they played basketball on the rec. behind old piled-up gravestones.  Appropriately enough, as Grimaldi Park is named for Joey the whiteface clown whose tumbling theatrical antics were memoired by Dickens[1].  Grimaldi’s career was literally and metaphorically up and down and he ended his life on a low as an emaciated, depressed alcoholic, and was buried on this spot – the park is the former graveyard of the demolished church of St James – the Pentonville Chapel.  His grave is a place of pilgrimage for clowns and actors (the Poor Actors’ School is round the corner); some pay their respects in clown costume, watering his grave with a squirty flower.

Unless you’re on foot, you wouldn’t realise you’re crossing water as you pass the end of Fife Terrace.  You need to jump to see the Regent’s Canal over the wall, though you can dodge off Muriel Street and stoop to peer voyeur-like at the canal boats through the bushes strewn with litter and bunting.  At this point the canal disappears into the Islington tunnel, where the bargees going east had to leg it for a good mile before emerging bleary-eyed near the Angel to seek the lad with the horse.  Street and canal are not encouraged to meet on the moorings side; the life of freedom starts from a reinforced steel door, as though you are banged up in Pentonville nick.

On the towpath side of the canal, beefing up the amenity value of London waterways has resulted in a nicely customised spiral access ramp.  These legs belong to a guy who is neither dead nor drunk, by the way – he’s fishing.

 

A park on a rather grander scale than the Grimaldi lies just over the Copenhagen Street demarcation between popular Pentonville and burgeoning Barnsbury.  The pubs on the Pentonville side are boarded up, open-but –struggling or revamped as late-night music dens, which, during the day, look either boarded up or struggling.  Those on the Barnsbury/Islington edges are bistro’ed, gastro’ed and boutiqued.  Simulacra of boozers, with main course at £16 replacing the white bread cheese‘n’onion doorstop wedge.  It would be nice to have something in between.  Barnard Park is a big open space in a densely-populated area and melds several community strata together … footie-and-beer hackabouts, urban gardening ventures, pop-up foodie events, the patronage of politico culture-vulture Lord (Chris) Smith of Finsbury, no less, and a group of ‘Friends of …’ working with the council.  There is an attempt to confine dog-shitting to a special dog-poop extension off Matilda Street.   On the face of it, all good, except that today it looks just a little bit bare, just a little bit empty, the fences just a little bit holed, and the urban gardening just a little bit weedy, and the pop-ups have popped down.  


Good treeline, though, on the Barnsbury side.  On the fringes, interesting bits 
of infill, like these condos on the Pentonville side, with silvering softwood standing in for brutalist concrete.   

Breakout through the chicane into Richmond Avenue brings us to Islington proper where renovation in train seems indicative of an area which continues to buck the price trend and send property values notching up the millions for a semi.  Not just any semi.  A crescent off an avenue usually sends the values up further (no through traffic).  Sometimes having the ‘right’ sort of neighbours helps too – in Richmond Crescent, the Blairs have moved out, but the Hodges and Thornberrys (not the Wild ones) are still there. Sphinxes of a more literal kind live over 

the road, guarding their obelisks.  Why a corner of Egypt (incidentally, we shall journey here twice more during our dérive) resides sedately in Richmond Avenue is disputed.  Some argue that they commemorate Nelson’s victory at the battle of the Nile, but there is a multi-decade time gap between fighting and construction.  Allusions to the many Islington place names that have Nelson connections back their claims.  But isn’t that true of anywhere else in England?  My mother was born in Nile Street, Gateshead (no sphinxes there, and now demolished).

Of course, you don’t have to be wealthy to make a design statement incorporating hieratic animals.  A couple of golden poodles will doll up any gaff a treat, like this one back on the other side of the park.

Old houses can be forgiving when it comes to updating in another idiom, but is this a few glass and steel bolt-on steps too far?  It’s probably great on the inside.  Wonder what’s inside the white box.

Barnsbury Street charts further poshing up.  I came to look at a flat to rent here in 1970 but couldn’t quite afford it.  After forty years earning a public service salary and a decent pension, I certainly couldn’t afford to rent here now. 

This is Henry Licht House (r).  Sounds Lutheran, but can’t trace him or what he did.  It’s now occupied by a company that does lighting and AV gear.  So Licht has become light.  It’s distinctly urban chic here – the corner shop sells only champagne.

If you tire of urban chic, country cottages are just around the corner ….

There are pockets of arts & craftsy building on workshops, halls and churches.  Door jambs in rich rows of brick, and bits of asymmetry.  Somebody bothered to give these buildings just a little more than they needed to.

Down on Upper Street, neo-classicism in various forms, including stripped down Deco sits uncomfortably in surroundings which undervalue it – or can’t afford its upkeep.  What’s the fate of Islington South Library on the Essex Road?  And will anyone buy the old picturehouse before it’s too far gone to save?  The flashy façade hides more multitudinous sins round the back.  Even Tesco would 

improve on its present state.  No, cancel that. The library is extravagantly pleasing.  

It’s 1916.  How did they manage to do that in the middle of a Great War?  The doorway is a little over the top, which shows up the neighbours even more.

Essex Road is wackier and funkier than bourgeois-bohémien Upper Street. Old trades persist.  Someone here has taken a taxi to the taxidermist’s.  You can stuff yourself here as well – they do tea and cake.

Who’s a worker these days?  Has the old proletariat been entirely subsumed into the new precariat?  If you’re ‘in IT’ are you a worker?  Workers (and others) of this part of the world unite for lunch at The Workers’ Café, where they can handle an apostrophe as well as a thriving kitchen.

I can’t describe it any better than Henrietta Crumpet (is s/he having a laugh?) in the ‘London Review of Breakfasts’:

‘Ah, The Workers Cafe, bastion of socialist Islington, beacon of light for the Marx-reading, poll tax rioting, Labour voting reds from the time when builders were builders, new developments with loft living were factories, and all local primary schools were run by women who read Germaine Greer whilst chain smoking outside the school gates’.

There is a good chance that the school s/he has in mind is the William Tyndale Primary (formerly Junior) over the road hard by the Town Hall.  Education’s ideological battleground in the Callaghan years.  Shall we have another Great Education Debate?  Nah, Govey can fuck it up all by himself.  I muse on this as I forego the Workers’ All-Day Fry-Up for a nice new British/Mediterranean artichoke salad with balsamic vinegar for £4-95.  The prices and the hand of history sitting on its shoulder make this place popular, but in spite of being run off her feet, the server could not be more pleasant and welcoming to a woman with a young child, pushchair and caravan-sérail of accoutrements and Tesco bags which attend a toddler outing and take up a space where they could make money from six diners.

The New North Road is a fairly featureless artery and I pick my pace up, especially as I am increasingly aware that I could use a piss.  I think I passed three closed public vespasiennes.  Chained, padlocked, barred, bolted, and the steps down to subterranean relief strewn with the detritus of the ages.  What I need is a Piss App for my i-phone.  Is there such a thing?  There should be.  What happened to the idea that pubs would, for a slight consideration from the Council, designate their bogs as public?  Perhaps one of the brewers could take this on?  How difficult would it be to organise a Piss App in a brewery?  Meanwhile, the only solution is, of course, counter-productive – a half pint of beer in a bar (assuming you can find a survivor) gets me access to a urinal without subterfuge, but my bladder fills as quickly as it empties, like a Victorian water lift.  What does Bear Grills do when there are no woods?  

The ends of adjoining roads are blocked off to four-wheeled traffic, reasonably so, to prevent rat running.  But the cack-handed concrete impedimenta that have been installed make for a weedy and littered eyesore, and a perfect environment for rats to run, or loiter at leisure.  Why not have a few trees?  Or a vespasienne?

I swoop down into Eagle Wharf Road (I’ve now hiked into Hackney) and fail to help a young bloke, just arrived from Nigeria, to find number 58.  I explain I’m a stranger round here myself, but we stride out together, both of us reassured by my air of confidence.  I then discover that not only does there appear to be no number 58, but the units seem to be numbered at random.  He tells me that in streets in Ibadan, houses are numbered consecutively.

We pass Mortimer Wheeler House, where all the bits and bobs that the Museum of London hasn’t got room for in their main gallery are stored, and new acquisitions archived.  You can see them.  I try to explain to my new young friend – best mate, actually, - we have been inseparable for about 20 minutes now, padding up and down the wharf in search of number 58 – that I used to watch archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler in black and white on the tele when I was a lad.  Describing a man who looks like this is quite difficult.

A brief dodge into Egypt (our second trip) in the form of Nile Street, Hackney.  It’s being dug up at the moment (tomb excavations?).  I had hoped to bump into Jamie Oliver on the way to his pukka offices, but no deal.  There are now latter-day ziggurats in this part of Egypt, in the form of the Munkenbeck and Marshall Graphite  House, an appealing exercise in shared space – dense, but designed for privacy.  
The streets of Hackney around and off Shepherdess Walk feel positive and on the up.  

Youth Projects well accommodated, artsy street furniture, clean and pleasant little parades where you can have a haircut, a meal, put a bet on and buy something other than champagne.

See photography

studio that runs

courses.  Note to self

… must do one of

those.

The further south I go, the more I’m feeling the bad money vibe of the City, though it’s possible to look away. 

If I had an eye problem I would think that clock is taking the piss.  And that low-slung housebuilder’s sign nearly had my eye out.  I note that our second clown of the day supports Moorfields, through the Ronald McDonald House Charities.  Well, burger me!  I further note that the Moorfields is now a ‘UCL partner’ – the gorgon (are all gorgons female?) has spread from Gower Street like a rash over the city, the world, the universe.  Fine; they didn’t need that alumnus subscription I never made.

Mixed streets around here.  A glance to the left and it starts to feel like the City Road to, well, the City, a glance to the right and you’re falling into an unreformed tatty boozer of the sort where no-one goes to have a single drink; you are required to spend the whole

day there, coughing and chuntering.  The carpet has had so much beer and grime worked into the nap that it looks and feels like ceramic tiles.  Excellent.

Exhilaration in Ironmonger Row.  The Ironmonger Row Baths are about to re-open after a lengthy and costly (£16 million) refurb.  There is local annoyance that delays in the project meant that they weren’t open in time for the Olympics.  I never knew that Turkish bathing and sauna taking were Olympic events.  This building has been dogged with wrangles and delays ever since Finsbury’s 

Victorian planners sought to bring a weekly hot bath to the working classes to cleanse the toiling body in a steamy slipper bath, but also to ‘raise the moral tone of the Labouring Classes.’  Late or not, it’s looking very nice (it used to have a laundry inside, as well – wonder if they’re refurbing that) and the whole area is looking clean, smart and leafy enough to be shortly dubbed a ‘quarter’ or even a ‘gateway’.  Finsburians, resist! 

If you were a kid, wouldn’t you want to hang about at the Toffee Park club and adventure playground?     

More structured and musical fun happens across the square at St Luke’s, which has, like the baths, been the beneficiary of shedloads of dosh.  This time it’s The London Symphony and their partners (e.g. Jerwood) who have been doing the spending.  They’ve given themselves a flexible and well-appointed concert and rehearsal facility near enough to the Barbican to carry a ‘cello on foot.  By all accounts they have skimped on nothing inside – sound, space, materials – all thoughtfully tuned to the purpose.  Would it annoy them to suggest that the surrounds, formerly the churchyard, would look even better if somebody bought a £5 broom from Dyson’s and gave it a little bit of a sweep?  This Hawksmoor (with the help of a mate?) church has always had a tough time.  Planned under the bountiful Queen Anne, it never got off the ground until she swooned away and was replaced by the first tight-fisted Hanoverian.  Anyway, it was built much more cheaply than originally intended and the consequence was a design problem that nearly brought the steeple down. 

Every step brings me closer to the design and media enterprises of latter-day Clerkenwell.  As I pop across the Goswell Road I bump into Zaha Hadid – well, not her, exactly, but her design hub.  

You feel part of the buzz as you’re invited to gawp down into the design studios from the big, big windows on the street. I stare into the vast minimalism of the white, white sub-basement walls and the white, white polished concrete floor, and I see a posse of black-clad svelte bodies working angularly, in a combo, arms akimbo, around a design pod; circling like bees on a hive. I’m like ‘wow, that must be an envisioning fest for the design of a new global headquarters project’.  As I stoop closer, pushing voyeurism to the max, I see they’re doing someone’s hair.  They’re designing hair.  Zaha does hair. Hair architecture.

I lose my bearings a little, mistake the Clerkenwell Road for the Farringdon Road and find myself in Hatton Garden.  Not only have I never been here before, I never even knew it was here, and never thought about where it might be.  This could be because I’m not in the market for £5000 gemstones.  I make several observations as I pass the endless succession of identical displays: I find I can’t distinguish between a diamond ring costing £750 and one costing £7500; I don’t much like any of them as they all look like pasty bling; I’m more interested in the shops that sell machines for making this stuff (how can anything bright and sparkling come out of a chunky steel box with wires like that?).  I find the people more gem-like than the jewels.  The carefully selected 24-carat mix of London’s population are gathered here, all united by bling.  They all look like extras on a film set.

I backtrack and find myself at the end of Saffron Hill.  Odd, as I had been reminded earlier, when passing this Peabody-type tenement block,  

of a visit I made in 1971 to see Stan (a nickname) and his fiancée.  Stan used to live in a house in Finsbury Park that I shared with nine mathematicians.  Stan had moved out to live with his fiancée (I don’t blame him, the house was appalling) in a lovely little flat off an iron-railed walkway.  Stan was from Wisbech and when he ordered his wedding suit from a firm of gentlemen’s outfitters there, he received a letter which said ‘We take great pleasure in informing you that your esteemed bespoke order is now to hand …’  I couldn’t find where Stan used to live, or anywhere that resembled it.  Anyway, this reminded me of Alec, with whom I visited Stan, and with whom I used to drink quite copious amounts of Guinness in the Sir Walter Scott pub’s ‘Assembly Room’ – a faded, lugubrious cane-chaired chamber.  Alec subsequently became a Professor of Mathematics at Oxford and Manchester, and a Fellow of the Royal Society.  Guinness is good for you – though it was rather better for him than for me.

Opposite the Asian bazaar-folk and black-draped orthodox Jews of Hatton Garden live Italian Catholics who cluster their homes and businesses round the mother church of St Peter on the Farringdon Road – a very Italianate basilica whose façade, a hollowed out loggia and portico, could have come straight from a street in Bologna.

I’m back in Islington on this side of the road and I nip round the corner into Ray Street and lie on the pavement outside the Coach and Horses boozer with my head in the gutter.  Listening.  I think I can hear it.  Am I deluding myself?  The longer I lie there, the more convinced I am that I can hear the confined watery surge of the River Fleet on its subterranean way to its escape into daylight under the Blackfriars Bridge.  As I wonder whether any of my north-east ancestors wandered here off the coal boats as they unloaded the black gold that fuelled London at this very spot (Newcastle Close and Old Seacole Lane are stubby little commemorative remnants round the corner), a Japanese art student, sketch pad in hand, asks me if I am ill.  It was nice of her not to assume that I was drunk.  She is wearing a full-on panda hat with ears.

From the back, she looks like a high court judge with a pink satchel.  I take her picture then get the screen message that every snapper dreads: ‘change the battery pack’.  I have no spare battery pack to change, so the last image of this dérive is of a sketching panda by an invisible river.  This is a pity because I would have liked to capture the startling architectural and social juxtapositions around Exmouth Market, where the classless désoeuvrés daytime drinkers loll on smokers’ benches outside the Exmouth Arms, opposite the austere façade of the Church of Our Most Holy Redeemer, the most high of high anglican (Oxford movement) churches built as a sturdy buttress against the degenerate tide of evangelicals, and a brilliant Italianate twin to St Peter’s round the corner.

I would also have liked to share with you the last lap, on the Clerkenwell side of the Kings Cross Road, where the contours fall away into Bloomsbury, via Pakenham Street, where we are again chasing the Fleet flowing beneath.  Pakenham?  Lord Longford?  Did the godly Dubliners also have property hereabouts?  If not, wherefore art thou Pakenham Street?  We encounter more UCL tentacles in Wren Street, where they have pitched into the hotel trade.    St Andrew’s Gardens provides a green buffer between the wings of their estate, though I bet they would have liked to gobble it up.  Death, philanthropy and the contributions of the poor through the buying of lottery tickets have been the disparate contributors to the salvation of many green spaces among the London bricks.  18^th century urbanisation forced London churches to take the radical step of burying their dead away from their own churchyards, once full.  When these ‘out-of-town’ burial grounds in turn became replete and closed, philanthropy stepped in to save them from the developer’s grasp as ‘open air sitting rooms for the poor’.  The social usufruct from scratch cards has helped Camden Council smarten them up and open them from dawn to dusk, so that those passing through can imbibe the ferny smell of damp earth, the romantically crumbling monuments (is that a Hawksmoor urn?) and, stumbling across the memorial stone to Cromwell’s granddaughter, contemplate what is, and what might have been.  There are mysteries to solve here.  A Lady John Manners opened St Andrew’s churchyard as a garden.  Is she the one whose pleasing little portrait, (waterclour on ivory, unusually) is on display at the Fitzwilliam, Cambridge?  Did she marry into the Rutland lot, and hence is she associated with the Marquis of Granby? Boozers may hold the key, as with the Pakenham Arms.  More research needed.

I am due at a talk in Guilford Street (just off my ring route) in an hour, so I leave my magic blue circle and wend my way through more relics of philanthropy still providing public benefit, the Coram estates.  I pass through Handel Street through whose railings I see, in my mind’s eye, a watermark of smoke, and exploding cans of Watney’s Party Seven, excited by being jogged through the streets and opened, long ago, at Tony’s sub-basement place, sending foaming jets of gaseous beer over the already sodden moquette.

I promised you a third vicarious visit to Egypt.  If your navigation skills are good enough to get you past the pyramids of the Brunswick Centre, taking the A-Z as your Rosetta Stone you will come across, entombed in the  fastness of Doughty Mews, the hq of the Egypt Exploration Society [http://ees.ac.uk/index.html ].

We came across Egypt by chance on our dérive, but it recurred as though stalking us.  This set me thinking about other ways of walking London psychogeographically.  Country walks beckon … China is in London … and Brazil … Iran … 

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[1] Allegedly, he downed a few glasses of ale in The Angel while researching ‘Oliver Twist’.  Not the first social reformer to have done so; Tom Paine had dropped off there 50 years earlier to knock the draft of ‘The Rights of Man’ into shape on his way back from France.  Had he taken the Eurostar this footnote would have been meaningless; not even a footnote in history.