BRICK LANE: A CELEBRATION
Michael Cashman (Lord Cashman of Limehouse)
This is a personal view of a part of the East End of London I know well, the East End where I was born and brought up and whose streets I tore along as a young boy in the 1950s and ’60s. A time when the world was changing faster than we could keep up with, a world of black and white television, queues outside the ‘picture houses’, pubs filled with working men, and mums and dads on their Saturday nights out as Sputniks launched into outer space. The days of East End markets where my nan bartered and harangued costermongers for ‘over charging’, or just plain ‘robbing’ her. It is an East End of memories and Brick Lane is at its heart. Brick Lane, where some of us were destined to work as tailors, fitters, clerks, cabinet makers or labourers – I found the stage and politics – and where my mum worked as a cleaner in a hidden-away recording studio. As a child I stood mesmerised by the street traders with their incessant banter as they berated and entertained the crowds into buying their ‘never to be repeated bargains’, and in my twenties I queued outside the Beigel Shop after a long night out at an illicit karaoke drinking den. At first glance Brick Lane appears an unprepossessing narrow street coming off the infamous Whitechapel (forever associated with Jack the Ripper) and snakes its way alongside the beauty of Spitalfields and the grandeur of Georgian architecture, ending its journey as it nudges at the Bethnal Green Road and the once deeply unfashionable Shoreditch. But Brick Lane is much more than a street; it is a neighbourhood, a seductive refuge, that nestles alongside the shadow of the Tower of London.
Every great city is a rich, absorbing tapestry and London is no exception. But the East End of London is a fusion of competing differences precisely because of the constant flow of peoples; it was the great gateway to the world and the world landed on our doorstep. From the nearby reaches of the majestic River Thames, the Pilgrim Fathers began their journey to the New World in search of a place where they could live without persecution, and where famous explorers set off in search of the Northern Seas and a Northwest Passage to China. While they were leaving our shores, others were entering in greater numbers, in search of work or fleeing from persecution in their home countries: French Huguenots, the Irish escaping famine, Jews fleeing the pogroms of Eastern Europe; Lascar seamen seeking a refuge from their life at sea. Further waves of migration followed in the twentieth century as a result of wars, famines, and dictatorships and our ports opened up to Jews fleeing the onslaught of the Nazis, Asians escaping Uganda’s Idi Amin, Bengalis and Pakistanis, Somalis, all seeking a better, safer life, a place where they could belong.
Once through the docks they would set about finding work and a place to live. There was always poorly paid manual work and lodgings that were cheap, shared rooms, shared kitchens, cold water taps, no bathrooms, outside toilets, ravenous landlords, and landladies. Accommodation around the docks, densely packed streets of public housing, were primarily for local people who worked in the local economies. It was in nearby neighbourhoods that new communities put down their roots, places
where others often did not want to live and the indigenous population frequently shunned, where migrants lived alongside other migrants and frequently tensions ran high. The area had its challenges, and the welcome was not always warm; Oswald Mosley and his fascist Blackshirts often abused the Jewish communities there, leading to the infamous Battle of Cable Street in 1936 when anti-fascists of all political and religious persuasions united against them. Despite these occasional setbacks, this melting pot of cultures replenished the East End, and indeed the country. It was a place where migrants could celebrate their identity, their language, beliefs, folklore, rituals and customs, which made separation from the home country bearable, a place to work, invest skills and talents.
If the East End of London was the gateway into the capital, then Brick Lane and its surrounding streets became the refuge where diverse cultures could grow and thrive. And arguably that is the secret of Brick Lane; everything is in a constant state of flux. It is as if nothing stands still, not even the buildings: breweries have morphed into art houses and shops, warehouses are now housing developments and creative hubs, the Huguenot church now a fine resplendent mosque. The built environment of Brick Lane is a mosaic that tells the story of its rich, varied past and embraces the absolute constant challenge that is change. In the maze of side streets and byways, each place has its own tale to tell: the back-alley entrances to the forgotten abattoirs, the old
BRICK LANE IN LONDON
All the World’s a Stage
Editors and Concept
Beatriz Chadour-Sampson and Sonya Newell-Smith
Copy editing
Sophie Lee, London
Offset reproductions
Paladin Design- und Werbemanufaktur, Remseck
Printed and bound by GPS Group, Villach
Paper
Gardamatt Art 170 g/qm
arnoldsche Project coordination
Greta Garle
© 2025 the artists, the authors and arnoldsche Art Publishers, Stuttgart
Photo credits
If not indicated otherwise, all photographs by Sonya and David Newell-Smith © photographs by Sonya and David Newell-Smith
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ISBN 978-3-89790-737-9
Made in Europe, 2025
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available at www.dnb.de.