Doctor Carrot Guards Your Health

Bob's taught quite a bit in and around Walthamstow, so since he was in the neighbourhood again today, we decided to do a walking tour of Walthamstow Village. It turns out that there is in fact a very lovely village-y bit of Walthamstow hidden away in the middle of the urban mess that seems to make up the rest of the area, and we were glad we came exploring to find it. Our first stop was at the Vestry House Museum, from which we didn't expect much--but it was a pleasant surprise!

Housed in Walthamstow's former vestry house, originally built in 1730, the museum's back garden is filled with artifacts like this early 20th-century signpost

and this machine, said to be "a very common sight in backyards during the Victorian era and later." Can you guess what it does?

It's called a "mangle" and it enabled quicker drying by squeezing water out of washing that was run through the rollers. In addition to housing the local administration, the vestry house was also the site of the the local "cage"--an adjacent building where prisoners could be held overnight.

The museum is filled with all sorts of items from Walthamstow's past, including this trio of lovely carts:

Employees of Walthamstow's Law Land Building Department were paid hourly, and punched in and out by swinging this machine's arm around and slotting it into their employee number, thus leaving a printed time on the paper inside the device:

"There's no cooker better than the Marmion":

Here's another mangle (what a name):

Quite a few of the displays centred on food rationing, and the more I peered into these displays, the less I could imagine eating this type of diet.

Still, rationing was very much a part of many Britons' lives, with effects lingering through to the present. As the smallest example, Bob and I felt slightly guilty last summer when we stayed with Grahame and Josephine, and they first served us coffee. We asked if they had any sugar, and as she brought some over, Josephine mentioned that she had given up on sugar during wartime rationing, and just never got back into using it. "We were just doing our bit," she said nicely as we spooned the valuable sweet into our coffee. We both suddenly felt the weight of our privileged lives, where food rationing is just a display in a museum instead of an everyday hardship--when we run out of sugar, we just go to the store to buy more! Speaking of sugar, in the 18th century it was sold in cones like this one, for easy storage:

When sugar was needed, a hammer was used to break up the cone and then "sugar nippers" were used to further grind the sugar into powder or lumps. After we left the museum, we passed these attractive almshouses:

The sign reads: "Thefe houfes are erected and endowed for ever by Mrs. Mary Squires widow for the ufe of six decayed tradefmens widows of this parifh and no other. AD 1795." Nearby Orford Road held the area's important shops during Victorian times, and there is still an attractive grouping of shops along this short stretch. Brooms and brushes are no longer sold from this attractive storefront--it's now the home of a theatrical agency.

Regular readers will know I'm far more partial to dogs than cats, but this kitty in another shop window was a bit too photogenic to pass up--and look at that tail! It's like there's a raccoon hiding behind the cat!

Orford Street even has its own fancy deli/ restaurant/ music venue, which incorporates the first part of Walthamstow's postcode into its name--a business tactic that is much more popular in London than you may think. I suppose there's no quicker shortcut to associating a business with a place, but it still seems a bit lazy to me . . . still I guess expanding E17 into Eat 17 shows a bit of imagination. In any case, the food looked great, but the prices were definitely of the central London variety (way out from the centre).

Along with such a foodie haven, this building was one of the last things I expected to find in Walthamstow:

The 15th Century timber framed house was first restored in 1934, at which time the brick portion you can see in the photo was purposely built to mimic deformed Tudor brickwork. When the house was again restored in 2001, this 1934 addition was kept "as part of the history of the house." The small church and graveyard across from the house added to the feeling that we were somewhere other than northeast London.

On our way back to the station, we passed another set of pretty almshouses, dating to 1527:

Walthamstow also has one of London's longest street markets, but by the time we made it back to the station, the market was closing up for the day, so we just headed home, content with seeing a lovely bit of a neighbourhood that we didn't think had such an oasis--all the more reason to keep exploring!

A Tall Order

I met Bob at Southwark station today and we popped into Jerwood Space to see what the current exhibit was, only to find that it was a display about the Jerwood Moving Image Awards, and that the shortlisted and winning videos could be seen online. I had a peek at the winners while I was writing this post, and I quite liked the image that went along with "It's checking your emails" in Johnny Kelly's Procrastination. Anyway, we left the gallery and had a wander through the neighbourhood on our way to London Bridge to catch our bus home. We passed a bit of a run-down church, with an adjacent peaceful garden,

and a row of lovely, quaint cottages just behind.

This nearby sign is asking for a lot!

The Hop Exchange was the centre of London's brewing industry in the 17th century, and images of hop gatherers grace its entrance:

Now housing offices, the interior is meant to be incredible. The final photo for today is one that Bob requested I take as he made our afternoon coffees when we returned home:

Serenade

Ever since Bob bought a guitar on our Japan trip, he's been strumming away most nights, sometimes coming up with songs just for me that he quickly makes up and then forgets almost before he's done singing them:

Floating

Today was one of those sunny, crisp days that makes spring so great:

Fulham

Today we made a long overdue return visit to one of our favourite places for a cheap, delicious lunch: El Vergel. Last time, I showed you the menu, but not what we had, so this time I'll give you a better idea of the delights that await you at El Vergel--I had the churrasco palta (rump steak, avocados, tomatoes),

and Bob had the torta Mexicana (chicken breast, refried beans, salsa, cheese, lettuce, and guacamole).

Both were made with what El Vergel calls "village bread," which has an amazing consistency--chewy yet light, with just the slightest bit of pleasant sourdough tang. The fresh ingredients and bread really make these humble sandwiches shine. Ah, but you must leave room for dessert at El Vergel! Although they have several dessert offerings, the most popular (it always seems to sell out an order or two after we put in our order) is the addictive cheesecake, which melts in your mouth--all the more reason to quickly replace it with another mouthful. El Vergel also does fantastic coffee, and at prices that are hard to find in London.

As we walked toward the tube station after lunch, we passed by this exclamatory sign:

What was going to be a relatively quick journey on the Jubilee and District lines ended up being a bit of a longer trip, with our District-line train sitting in St. James's Park station while we waited to hear if we would be let through. It turned out that our train was the last District-line train to run that particular route before the line was shut behind us (due to signalling errors), and we got off at West Brompton station feeling lucky to have been on this train, even with the delays. We were in the west London neighbourhood of Fulham to do another online walk, and got through most of the six-mile route before heading for home on the tube. I liked this bakery sign

and this odd house definitely caught our attention:

It appeared to be several residences and a possibly-out-of-business restaurant, Gasworks, whose empty menu holder looked a bit lonely on one of the doors:

In case you're wondering about the restaurant's name, perhaps this nearby sight will clear things up a bit:

I can't imagine living in one of these houses and opening my front door every day to the sight of these gasworks. There are actually two of these enormous structures here, side-by-side (the other one is to the left of this photo). We spotted a slightly more modest sight across the Thames, but the waterfront location of this church still struck us as interesting:

At one point along the walk, our information told us that "Chelsea College of Art & Design is on the left," but this was the sight that sat to our left:

The only Chelsea College of Arts & Design that I know of is near Tate Britain, so perhaps these abandoned buildings were part of an earlier campus. As we continued walking, the neighbourhood slowly changed from working-class to middle-class to more and more upscale. Bob spotted a rather posh resident peering out at us from the first-floor window of this house,

which was topped with wee lions. When we paid closer attention to the street, we noticed that all the houses were topped with lions:

Apparently, this bit of decoration was a trademark of the builder responsible for erecting these houses in the 1890s--kind of a nice touch, don't you think?

St Augustine's Tower

Today was a bit of a dreary day, but we decided to venture out to see the oldest building in Hackney, which has limited openings on the last Sunday of the month. Dating back to the 13th century, St Augustine's Tower is all that remains of Hackney's original parish church, which was demolished in 1798 to build the larger church which still stands nearby.

The building is listed Grade I, which means that it is in the top 2% of listed buildings in the country.

Since our recent trip to Barcelona didn't include that essential European-getaway activity of paying to climb up numerous narrow, winding stone steps for a view, we did a bit of that today, albeit without the paying part.

On the first floor, the backlit clock pendulum swings,

while the clock workings themselves are on the second floor. Dating back to the beginning of the 17th century, the clock was manually wound for over 400 years before automatic winding was installed.

The clock face you saw in the first photo is just on the other side of this mechanism.

Although this face was a later addition, at one point, the chiming of the clock was the only way to tell time in Hackney village. Winding up to the third floor, we entered the bell room, and since it was just a few minutes before the hour, we waited until the bell rang VERY LOUDLY:

The next level opened out onto the roof, to which access was reopened in 2005 after a hefty restoration courtesy of a lottery grant.

We weren't up there very long before it started to rain, so we decided to head back down through the very small door,

down the very narrow steps.

The garden behind the tower was dotted with promises of spring,

cornerstones from the demolished old church,

and some gravestones.

At this point, the rain started to come down ever harder, so instead of heading to our next planned destination, we hurried home for a round of serious lounging over the weekend paper instead!