Back to Old Church Street with Mr Hedderly

This is my 53^rd post on this blog, so it’s almost exactly a year since my first post. When I started I wasn’t sure exactly how I would find something to write about every week but I was sure about where I would start. The one subject I knew I wanted to share with you was the photography of James Hedderly.

Just after the middle of the 19^th century an ordinary man started to haul fifty pounds of complicated equipment around his neighbourhood so he could take photographs. His friends and neighbours humoured him by standing still or just watched him in silent amazement. Or perhaps they realised that they were also participating in something new. They watched him and now we can watch them.

So once again we are in Old Church Street facing the Black Lion Tavern.

My friend the lady with the basket isn’t here on this occasion but Mr Hedderly has assembled the same mixed bag of people deliberately and accidentally posing for him.

The boy slouched against the wall, the guy with curly hair, a bowler hat and what looks like a leather jacket, the boy sitting in the window, the barman in the apron, the stout middle aged man who can’t do his jacket up, a young girl behind him, a couple of smartly dressed younger men with time on their hands,  a couple of indistinct figures behind them probably children, a girl who has managed to get into the picture twice by moving just enough and a man just edging into the right side of the picture – quite a cast for a simple daytime picture. They all get our attention. Look long enough and they might all tell their stories.

Leave the idle fellows at the tavern and come back down Old Church Street to the river to meet some of the working men.

Alldin’s Coal Wharf at low tide. Arch House marked the end of Cheyne Walk at this time. It was a substantial and solid looking building compared to the cramped old houses and shops in Lombard Street and Duke Street which lay behind it. The confident looking man perched on the precarious arrangement of planks looks like management to me, keeping an eye on the staff.

The four men standing on the river bed all carry items related to the coal business – spades, a coke sifter, a coal sack (the man holding the sack looks like a classic coal man, his face grimy with coal dust. The three on the street might be drivers. There’s a man in the window behind them joining the picture.

Behind Arch House was Allen’s Lime Wharf.

Allen’s was one of the ramshackle collection of buildings on the river bank. You can just see part of Lombard Street on the left and the poor state of the houses in it. Look in close up at the state of the roof of Allen’s.

The undulating uneven roof tiles and patches of what looks like moss, the tiny attic window which looks like it is about to fall inwards. The whole house look like it is held together by the dirt of decades. This picture is one of Hedderly’s crispest images and it captures those moments of stillness in what must have been a hectic day. No faces at the window though. I would love to see one of those in a Hedderly picture.

Just a few yards away are some more upmarket houses and retail establishments.

I can’t quite make out what sort of shop Mr White runs, but Wheeler’s Medical Establishment next door must be some kind of pharmacy. A group of middle class people are posing for Mr Hedderly, or again standing just as mystified as the tavern’s customers. One of the ladies has left a ghostly presence but if you look to the left you will see some even vaguer traces of a couple of men, possibly workers from Alldin’s.

And Mr Hedderly gives us another mystery woman standing in the doorway of the house next to White’s, a young woman in indoor clothes drawn outside perhaps by curiosity.

If we head eastwards along Cheyne Walk towards Oakley Street we can see Golding’s Pier Hotel.

Next to the Hotel is a coffee house. Look closer.

Do you see the billboards outside?

Can you make out any of the words? I see Leah, the name of a play perhaps, and the even more enigmatic words Fat Boy.

The last picture for today is quite different from the others.

I don’t know whether it’s sunlight shining down over the top of the house, or just the limitations of the camera but the light seems to isolate the garden and the solitary figure sitting in it. Who is he?

The big clue is the handwritten caption – back of Rossetti’s house. Rather than try to puzzle out whether it’s Rossetti himself or his brother William the question I wish could be answered is how did Mr Hedderly and his camera find their way there?

Go on then. One last close up.

Hard times: working in riverside Chelsea

We’ve seen the riverside at Chelsea in its pre-Embankment days documented by James Hedderly and others but this week’s pictures were all taken after the construction of the Chelsea Embankment. Duke Street and Lombard Street were swept away and the picturesque jumble of houses and taverns facing directly onto the river were demolished. This picture looks across the river towards the industrial landscape of Battersea. We’ll look more closely at that in a moment but look at our man first. He’s standing on the river bed at high tide. That walkway is still there today and many years ago when I was more agile than I am today I climbed down and stood where he is standing. I wouldn’t recommend it, and I imagine the ladder you could use then is better protected today.

I’m not sure what he’s doing. There are chains down there, mooring points for barges perhaps and he might be clearing mud from the walkway. Victorian industry was labour intensive. The cheapest way to do something was to get a person to do it with the simplest tools to hand. He had a moment anyway to look up at the camera.

Across the river there is no embankment but rather than the houses and small wharves of the Chelsea side you see moorings for large barges with spindly piers reaching out to them.

Warehouses, chimneys, a saw mill. There is a barely visible lock on the left I think behind which there was a creek with access to more industrial spaces.

We’re testing the limits of magnification here. But you can read the sign in this one:

Life and work were still conducted at a smaller scale on the Chelsea side as shown here:

The former site of Lombard Street is now part of Cheyne Walk although the shops on the northern side have survived. Mr Spells (and his daughter?)  also have time to pose for Mr Hedderly. No-one thought to clean up the horse manure which is quite visible in the foreground. It was probably a constant for passers-by.

You can make out the well-stocked windows and the sign on left which you can read the words Savings Bank but not the whole message.

The white building is our old friend Maunders’ Fish Shop. This view looking back westwards shows one of the new gardens built after the Embankment and the parade of shops called Lombard Terrace. This is one of the best views of the Old Church. It looks as though there is early morning mist – a pleasing effect but I have to admit to covering up some chemical decomposition by converting the picture to greyscale. I still like it though.

Looking in the same direction from further east is one of Hedderly’s most familiar images:

The King’s Head and Eight Bells with a crowd of shop keepers and other interested parties, all maintaining their poses, perhaps encouraged by the two policemen. The street sign for Cheyne Row is quite visible.

Moving eastward again:

Behind the trees you can see the grand house of Cheyne Walk but in the foreground timber is waiting for loading or unloading, together with a piece of casual advertising aimed at passing boat traffic.

We can’t leave the new riverside without a slightly earlier view of the Embankment under construction.

You can see how much land was gained. Cheyne Walk became a wide new highway instead of a semi-rural riverside track. Chelsea became part of Central London, losing some of its qualities as a picturesque backwater. Ironically just as this was happening the focus of commercial life was moving north towards the King’s Road.

Tales of the riverbank: Chelsea before the Embankment

I left you last week in Chelsea Reach among the boatyards and wharves at the western end of that stretch of the river. This photograph shows the intersection with Beaufort Street (then called Beaufort Row) at Battersea Bridge.

The road called Lindsey Row leads west towards Cremorne Gardens, advertised on the board at the left of the picture. (“Cremorne open daily, one shilling” – I can’t quite make out the opening time) To the right of the board you can see another sign proclaiming the existence of Greaves and son, boat builders. The house nearest the camera is Belle Vue House, one of the grandest in the neighbourhood. Its eminence has not deterred the three men leaning against the railings who are obligingly posing for Mr Hedderly.

I imagine them as a trio of idle fellows hanging around for want of anything better to do. Does the one on the right lack a leg? They are keeping a wary eye on Hedderly. Or perhaps they’re friends of his.

If we cross the road heading east we enter the  narrow passage of Lombard and Duke Streets which link Beaufort Street with Cheyne Walk. You can see some images of these streets in my Famous Fish Shop post (see list of posts opposite). This photograph shows the view from the river taken from the bridge at low tide with the river entrance to the Adam and Eve tavern .

It looks a bit ramshackle amid the haphazard arrangement of buildings which all backed precariously onto the river.

Beyond this section the riverside opens up in the area near the Old Church.

The man on the left is standing outside the King’s Head public house. The fence marks the bank of the river. Boats rest on the mud and shingle. It’s possible the waters crept up onto the road at particularly high tides as they still do occasionally today at Putney.

This picture shows the Old Church. It was almost totally destroyed by bombing in the War and reconstructed afterwards so although you can still see a broadly similar view today only the Sloane Monument remains exactly as it was. The two figures are slightly blurred but add life to the picture. Look at them more closely:

Their dress helps us date the picture to the early 1860s. The one on the right has a shorter dress so she is probably younger. They might be mother and daughter or sisters. You can only get so much detail out of photographs like these. You wish the younger one had kept her head slightly more still.

Further down Cheyne Walk the houses become bigger and more palatial as we approach the intersection with Royal Hospital Road. The painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti lived in one of the houses in this photograph.

There are still many working boats visible here and more wharves further east.

At the end of the road you can see a number of business premises but even high resolution scanning can’t tell us the name of the establishment in the pale building apart from the word Chelsea.

The next photograph is one of my favourites by Hedderly.

It’s an interesting view of the houses and some road works but look at the dude on the right (I think that’s the right word for him).

What’s he up to, in his stylish coat and bowler hat? Can you make out the person he’s talking to? It looks to me like he’s chatting up some young woman, possibly a maid from one of the big houses, if that doesn’t sound too Downton Abbey (or more accurately Upstairs Downstairs).

Despite the technical limitations of their equipment I think the early photographers like Hedderly already understood the artistic possibilities of their new medium. The portrait, the posed group photo, the naturalistic views of people and places. And in this case the candid photograph when the photographer catches someone unaware that they are being observed. So this man’s casual actions are preserved forever to show again that people in the past behaved in much the same way as they do today.

Down by the River: Chelsea Reach in the 1860s

 

This is Chelsea Reach where today you will see a collection of picturesque houseboats. The boats are a long established Chelsea institution which have braved bad weather and road widening schemes alike but long before they were there the Reach was a place for working boats. Most of the houses in the background are still there but you will no longer see sailing barges resting on the foreshore or the sign on the wall at the centre of the picture.  Don’t strain your eyes trying to read it. Here is a closer view:

The name of course is Greaves. This is the family business of Walter and Henry Greaves, amateur artists as well as boatmen. The street behind the wall looks calm and prosperous, the passersby are unhurried. This is a quiet residential stretch of the riverside. The tightly packed shops and taverns of Lombard Street/ Duke Street are just out of shot. To the left the road leads to Cremorne Gardens. But no-one is in a hurry to get there this morning. A man sits on the wall. Could that be one of the Greaves brothers themselves keeping a eye on James Hedderly, who has carried all his photographic equipment onto the muddy river bed? We think they were acquainted maybe even friends as fellow tradesmen of Chelsea’s riverside. (Hedderly was a sign writer at this point in his life).

Hedderly took many photographs of this area. Here are some of the barges moored to the west of the Greaves boatyard:

In the background you can see the old Battersea Bridge looking ethereal, although this is probably due to the quality of the photograph rather than weather conditions on the day.

Here a little further down is a pair of coal barges at Lindsey Wharf:

And a close-up of the men working on the barge, pausing to face the photographer and look out at us:

The next picture looks back at the Greaves boatyard from the east :

Just behind the boats to let sign is another for Lindsey Wharf. The boats built and rented out by the Greaves family were mostly rowing boats. The brothers rowed customers out on the river themselves. Some of those trips were purely business, taking passengers to their destinations like river taxis as boatmen on the Thames have done for centuries.  But Chelsea was already a place for artists and some of the passengers were making sketches of what they saw from the river. One of those customers was James McNeill Whistler who would have a profound effect on the lives of the Greaves family.

This is a view at low tide probably taken from the bridge, shows what must have been the whole of the Greaves business, the narrow rowing boats sitting on pontoons waiting for customers.

When I started writing this post I intended to take you all the way along Chelsea’s riverside, but we seem to have lingered in one small stretch of water. Perhaps it’s the spell of the river or perhaps post-Christmas languor. Either way we’ll be back here again before too long both with Mr Hedderly and the Greaves family.

I hope you all had a happy Christmas.

 

The famous fish shop

Philip Norman’s 1905 book “London vanished and vanishing” describes a “quaint building…four doors west of a tavern called the Rising Sun”.  It was Maunder’s fish shop and its address was 72 Cheyne Walk according to the 1889 edition of Kelly’s Chelsea Directory. The shop had been demolished by the time of Norman’s book but he had painted it.

The interesting thing for me is that he wasn’t the only one, and Elizabeth Maunder’s modest establishment was painted, sketched, etched and photographed in its time. Here is a painting by Alice Boyd:

Here is a drawing by Percy Thomas:

And here is an etching by William Burgess from his collection “Bits of Old Chelsea”:

Burgess was a talented engraver and watercolourist who created many images of Chelsea. I’ll devote a whole post to him sometime soon; this picture has one of his characteristic touches which I will explain then. See if you can guess what I mean. Finally here is a photograph of the building just before its sale and demolition.

I can’t say why all these artists felt compelled to depict Mrs Maunder’s shop. Why are certain places recorded for us while others are lost and forgotten – vanished as Philip Norman puts it? One thing is sure, that none of these images could have been created until the artists had the space to step back from the shop, which they wouldn’t have had until the creation of Chelsea Embankment. Before Maunder’s had a address in Cheyne Walk it was located in Lombard Street one of a pair of streets between Beaufort Place and Cheyne Walk (the other was Duke Street) both of which were partly demolished to make way for the Embankment. This small stretch of riverside Chelsea has been recorded in numerous formats. On the river side was the rear of several buildings including the Adam and Eve tavern shown here in a photograph by James Hedderly but also depicted by Burgess and other local artist including Walter Greaves. (We’ll come back to him at a later date)

On the land side were the two narrow streets of shops and taverns. This view is east to west with Beaufort Place, now Beaufort Street just visible in the distance.

From the other direction the streets look like this:

You can see Arch House at the end creating a narrow tunnel which leads to Cheyne Walk. And if you look carefully at the buildings on the left you can just about make out the fish shop again.

I can’t tell you anything about Mrs Elizabeth Maunder. Trading fish before refrigeration must have been a little unpleasant for the shopkeeper and the customer but you have to think it was a popular shop for a while at least, and Mrs Maunder must have had a tolerant disposition to put up with all those artists forever drawing or painting.  If we could get the Local Studies Time Machine going she’d probably be pleased to see us. Lombard Street / Duke Street is one of those forgotten streets I would have like to walk down.

Mrs Maunder’s shop was demolished in 1892 but lives on, possibly the most depicted shop in Chelsea.

I know some of you like me appreciate the facilty to zoom in on the details of old photographs so here is a close-up of Duke Street looking west. Although the image is blurred you can still make out some interesting features.

Night flight 1861: runaway balloon at Cremorne

This is a detail from a James Hedderly photograph. Among the trees on the right you can see the firework platform of Cremorne Gardens, one of the great entertainment attractions of Victorian London now gone almost without trace. There seem to be very few photographs of the place at all although there are plenty of prints on posters and handbills and illustrations in magazines like the Illustrated London News. So we think we know what it looked like and we think we know what it was like to visit the place. Mass entertainment as we know it today began in the nineteenth century in the pleasure gardens and music halls of Victorian cities. 

The staples of Cremorne were music, dancing, variety shows and fireworks. At first these would have been enough to pull in the crowds. But the various proprietors of Cremorne also needed spectacle. Death defying stunts were provided on a regular basis including performers such as the Female Blondin, the Flying Man and the Italian Salamander. I’ll return to those three on another occasion but for our first visit to Cremorne I want to talk about the first great sensational obsession of proprietors and punters alike – balloons.

Balloons were the first invention that got us into the air and although they had been in regular use since the eighteenth century for military and scientific purposes as well as the occasional spectacular public show it wasn’t until places like Cremorne started regular shows that large numbers of people got a chance to see them in action on a regular basis.

Here’s an early poster advertising a balloon event and a later print of a balloon taking off near the fireworks platform.

Of course once you’ve seen a balloon ascend a few times it might start to seem too easy and just not thrilling enough. Mr Green, the Nassau Balloon man livened up proceedings by taking “a lady and a leopard” up with him as passengers.  Later someone asked themselves what if we suspended something from underneath the basket? A horse maybe? Or a cow? How about a woman in classical costume riding the cow while the balloon ascends? She can then represent the goddess Europa whose sacred animal is the bull – educational as well as spectacular. This actually happened and I wonder how they persuaded the woman in question, a Madame Piotevin that it would be perfectly safe to sit on a terrified animal while ascending hundreds of feet up in the air dressed as a Greek goddess.  Other variations on the theme followed including the trip I’m going to describe now.

On July 24th 1861 the aeronaut Mr Lythgoe was scheduled to take paying passengers for a flight in his balloon. Mr Arthur Vivian and his friend Noel Anderson “having been disappointed a month before at Crystal Place” put their 5 guineas down to make sure they would secure a place. But the afternoon of 24^th July turned out to be cloudy, windy and looking like rain. By 4.00pm Mr Lythgoe was on his way home, but after “a gleam of sunshine” Mr Adams, the secretary authorised the inflation of the balloon and Mr Lythgoe was summoned back.  The balloon took a long time to inflate and Mr Lythgoe had some misgivings but Mr Adams thought it would be a great climax to the evening’s entertainment if they set off after the fireworks at 10.30pm. “Several bystanders now endeavoured to dissuade us” according to Mr Vivian but despite strong winds and a torrential downpour they set off at 10.45.

Night flights had been done before. The adventurous Mr Green had set off fireworks from above to the general delight of the crowds. On one occasion he ascended at night during a heavy rainstorm. He and all his equipment were soaked. He was blown off course as far as Harrow where he was rescued, dirty and dishevelled by “four young ladies” who had been following the balloon from below.

All went well at first for Mr Lythgoe and his companions. At 1000 feet they could see London laid out underneath them like a map, the streets and squares “distinctly traced by the lines of gas light” and the sounds from below, carriages and carts, human voices and even music strangely clear. They shouted out themselves startling unsuspecting animals and people below. They went higher, up to 8000 feet, now much colder.  They thought they might be 20 miles or so from London as they descended and threw out the grappling iron. They stopped for a moment but with a loud crack the rope to the grappling iron broke. They were swept upward “at a frightening pace”. “Our situation was now anything but pleasant”. Without a grappling iron the only way to land was to descend and “run the balloon against a tree or other sharp object” and burst it. The first time they tried this they crashed into some trees. Vivian was momentarily stunned and regaining consciousness found Anderson gone, flung out of the basket when they touched the ground. The balloon was ascending again “at the most awful velocity” with most of their ballast gone. Lythgoe reckoned they got to 17000 feet before they could regain control and begin to descend. They were travelling through banks of cloud. Vivian thought he could hear water below. Lythgoe assured him they could be nowhere near the sea, but a break in the cloud cover showed that they were in fact above the ocean. After this terrifying realisation there was a moment of relief. They were heading towards the shore. Once over land again a landing was imperative. They climbed out of the basket and clung on to the ropes so they could drop immediately when they were close enough to the ground. The balloon bounced along, the basket hitting the ground only to be pulled up again until Lythgoe saw them about to hit a windmill and gave the order to let go. They landed “comparatively unhurt” and tried to follow the balloon. But after Lythgoe fell into a dyke they sought shelter at a cottage “not far from Southwold”. Once they persuaded the occupants that they had arrived by balloon they were given some welcome hospitality by the farm labourer and his family. At dawn they borrowed some clothes and went out time looking for debris from the balloon. They found Vivian’s umbrella among other items. Back in their own dry clothes by 6 am they made their way to Darsham Station and caught the 7.20 train which connected with the London express. They were in London by 10.00am “without hats and coats, to the great astonishment of many bystanders”. Anderson turned up at 1pm. He had been thrown into a field of beans in Essex and had made his way by omnibus and train back to Cremorne to enquire after the fate of the balloon. The three men were re-united later in the day.

Mr Vivian wrote an entertaining pamphlet about “our balloon adventure” with some observations about future safety precautions. Mr Lythgoe foreswore further night ascents.

It’s an excellent account with all the Victorian virtues, boldness, calmness in the face of adversity and some modesty in the telling of the story. I’m glad Mr Vivian saw fit to record the adventure. I can’t help wondering though if a modern balloon party faced a similar situation, and found themselves reluctantly transported from Central London to Suffolk on a stormy night whether the transport system would get them back by 10.00am the following morning.

Mr Hedderly in Old Church Street

Mr Hedderly in Old Church Street

I can’t be precise about when this photograph was taken. The photographer James Hedderly was active in Chelsea before the building of the Embankment and afterwards. The maid on the steps on the right of the picture is wearing a crinoline which probably puts the date before 1865, but that’s just a clue. The other people in the photograph are not wearing anything which would help with the date. Fashions such as the crinoline had barely reached the working classes at that time. Perhaps the woman isn’t a servant. She’s certainly keeping an eye on the child who is barely visible in the foreground. Photographs required long exposures in those days. You had to keep still. The child, who could be a boy or a girl, has paused just long enough to leave an impression. The other people could be said to be posing for the photograph or at least have been curious enough to linger while Mr Hedderly struggled with all his equipment. They might have known him well enough to indulge him, or at least known who he was, a sign writer by trade who had taken up the new hobby of photography. What is sure is that he wasn’t taking a random snapshot. What he was doing would have been the most interesting thing that happened in Old Church Street that day.

The two men in aprons and the boy have come out to have a look. The bunch of men leaning against the fence are curious about the photographer but may simply have been hanging around outside the pub. If you look closely you can see what appear to be a disembodied set of legs with a blur of motion above them. Somehow that person left before the upper part of his body could be recorded on the glass plate.

The figure who most intrigues me is the woman standing with her half-hidden friend on the left holding a basket. It’s possible with early photographs like these with their long exposure times to bring out details with a high resolution scan. Hedderly’s photographs are full of interesting details if you can examine them at a higher resolution. But some details are just not there. I can see the woman standing looking towards Mr Hedderly. I get the impression that she’s a young woman. You can almost make out her face under the shadow of her hat. Or perhaps I just think I can. Perhaps I just want to see her face. That’s part of the mystery of photographs especially old photographs. That bright day sometime in the middle of the nineteenth century is gone, the people in the photo are dead and buried. But the moment in the photograph is still there. The maid, the child and the man by the lamppost are still there. That young woman is still standing there looking at Mr Hedderly wondering what on earth he is doing. You can almost look her in the eye but you never will. That’s the problem with photographs. Sometimes they just don’t show what you want to see.

 

She and the others might never have had their photos taken before that day. But if they lived for another ten, twenty, thirty years it would probably have happened many more times. So at some time a photograph of that woman’s face could have existed. I’ll never see it. That’s the other problem with photographs. Many more of them are discarded than preserved. So I’m grateful to Mr Hedderly for all the forgotten days he has kept alive.

This is the first of a series of posts I’ll be writing based on images in the Local Studies collection at Kensington Library. I’m not embarking on a systematic trawl through the collection just picking out pictures that have struck me as interesting. I hope you like them. Feel free to leave comments.