No 38 - The Pub That Lost Its Community

When people ask me what I most like to photograph, the word I find myself using often is ‘survivors’ - I like to record examples of things that have largely been swept away over the years - a ghost sign, a telephone box, an old shop front or a traditional pub. We hear so much nowadays about communities losing their pubs, but here is the story of The Palm Tree, a pub that lost its community.

Bethnal Green 1922

Imagine for a moment that it’s the early summer of 1922 and you’ve been given a lift on a coal barge from the Regent’s Canal Dock in Limehouse. Piano music and the sound of indifferent singing drifts across the Grand Union Canal from an enclave of tight little streets. You step off the boat as it approaches Twig Folly Bridge in Bethnal Green, where Green Street crosses to become Roman Road. The air isn’t too fresh because of the smoke from countless chimneys, both domestic and industrial. On the left bank lies Palmer’s Wharf, one of three where the Oil Storage Company stores all the turpentine imported into London along with immense quantities of petroleum, lubricating oils, linseed, cotton seed and other vegetable oils. Rosin, tar and pitch are also landed here and stored by the company.

Palm Street, to which I've added the house numbers. [Deed - Attribution 4.0 International - Creative Commons]

On the right bank, a community of tightly packed terraced streets lies between the canal and Grove Road. It’s worth remembering that you can catch an electric tram along Grove Road later. They’ve only been running since December. Before that, the last horse tram service in London covered the route between Victoria Park and the West India Docks until 1914, when the army commandeered the horses for war work.

More wharves and stinking chemical works line the canal banks and many of the people that work in them live in these terraces - Burnside and Belhaven Streets, Cordova Road, and further north Hamilton Road, Palm, Lessada and Totty Streets. The enclave is bounded to the south by the Great Eastern Railway line from nearby Coborn Road Station into Liverpool Street.

In the Boozer

The rough piano music that ebbs and flows on the toxic breeze comes from a pub on the corner of Palm and Lessada Streets. Built in the early 1850s, The Palm Tree looks like a thousand other East End street corner boozers. Inside, Charlie Hawkins sits at the piano bashing out a Marie Lloyd medley. The old girl ain’t what she used to be he’s heard, but the old songs still go down well as he tackles ‘When I Take My Morning Promenade’. In conversation, Charlie is quick to let anyone know that he’s in the entertainment business himself, although he’s currently between positions - ‘resting’ he calls it. Most recently, he was working with well-known music hall artiste Charles Austin, who some have called ‘The King of Cockney Humour’. By ‘working with’ I mean he was his dresser, but although they did not collaborate artistically, Charlie likes to think they had quite a rapport. The stars appreciate an accomplished dresser who knows when to offer sage advice, and who also knows when to shut his cake hole and act like he ain’t there. Still, that job’s finished now and he is grateful for the few shillings he earns through tickling the ivories for Rose Sutherland, the esteemed landlady of this back street public house.

The Palm Tree in 2026. The apartment blocks are on the opposite bank of the canal.

Sitting nearby are two youngsters, Elsie Platt and Fred Smith, both from Number 39 across the road. Blimey, what a houseful that is! There are eleven of them in there when six would be a squeeze. There’s Mr and Mrs Platt with their three daughters and grandson, they have the downstairs, and Mrs Smith with her four sons has upstairs. Are Elsie and Fred walking out together? Maybe. Or maybe it’s too soon to say. They could just as easily have fled from all the noise in their respective gaffs. Fred has quite a nice voice as he sings along between swigs of wallop and what Elsie lacks in tone she makes up for with enthusiasm. It’s a good job that Andersons’ dairy is right down the other end of the street because her voice could easily curdle the milk. Elsie is 21 and Fred only 19, but they’ve earned their victuals - as a singing career is out of the question, she slaves away making brushes in a factory up at Old Ford and he drives carts out of Grove Road, although he’s learning how to drive the motor lorry that his firm, Jeremiah Cade & Sons, has just invested in.

There’s another Fred in this evening - Fred Stabb, a railwayman from Old Ford Goods Depot. His pint of mixed has been well earned and he’ll likely sink at least one more before crossing the road to No 27 to join his wife Mary, three sons and a daughter. He’s sharing a table with his next door neighbour Alf Vincent who works for the Corporation of London - he attends to the public lavatories at St Martin’s-le-Grand, where the General Post Office used to be. He is also delaying his inevitable return to Ada and their four kids, not counting daughter Anna, who at 14 has a job now, rolling cigars for Imperial Tobacco.

The smartly dressed gentleman ordering a whisky at the bar is Joe Deane. He works as an inspector for the Exchange Telegraph Company in Cannon Street, so he’s quite well-to-do for this neck of the woods. He has several rooms to himself in Lessada Street, with just one old fellow living below him. When the schools are out, Palm and Lessada Streets become raucous playgrounds for the streets’ rumbustious children. With just the two men in it, no 42 is an oasis of relative calm, but even then, Joe sometimes leaves old Mr Croker downstairs to growl at the nippers for making a noise, and flees to The Palm Tree for some refreshment. He's 46 and single, so there's no pressure for him to drink up and go home. Mind you, he isn’t entirely sure whether Charlie Hawkins' medley sounds any better than the noisy kids, but a whisky or two will doubtless make him seem better.

1935 windows and 1970s interior

The Holmes family are singing along heartily with Charlie, who has now launched into 'The Cock Linnet Song', better known as 'My Old Man'. They're from No 6 at the other end of Palm Street. Edward mends shoes in a cobblers' shop on Grove Road and tonight he’s accompanied by his wife Annie and his two grown-up daughters, another Annie and Rose. Like a lot of people who live in the area they make clothing, blouses to be precise, at Bresler’s over on City Road. Young Annie is hoping to bump into Archie Swettenham who lives across the road from them. She told him they’d be in and as they had been walking out together, after a fashion, she expected him to put in an appearance. Archie drives motors for a living, for a general produce merchant on Bethnal Green Road. If he can borrow the motor, a Sunday afternoon jaunt to Epping Forest may be on the cards. Besides, at 25 it is high time Archie started thinking about finding himself a wife. He surely couldn’t want to share a bedroom with his younger brothers Vic and Reg for too much longer.

Death of a Small Community

This evening session at the pub is fictitious, like the opening scene of a period soap opera, but the people featured were real enough, as were their occupations and addresses. According to the 1921 Census, they all lived in these overcrowded streets beside the stretch of the Grand Union known as the Regent’s Canal. The pub was rebuilt in 1935, but although its appearance may have been improved, by Eedle and Meyers for Trumans brewery, it retained the size and layout of its Victorian predecessor.

Having survived the Blitz, in November 1944, Lessada Street, Totty Street and a large part of Palm Street were destroyed by a V2 rocket. Stubbornly, the community persisted in the near derelict remnants still standing amidst the ruins, including the pub, and the south side of Palm Street, which although damaged was complete. It also survived in the prefabs that were placed on the land once the rubble had been cleared.

In 1977, the remaining buildings and the prefabs were finally cleared leaving an area of waste land that became Mile End Park. Lessada Street, Totty Street and Palm Street were gone - they no longer feature on the map. Hamilton Road has been rechristened Haverfield Road and because some of its terraced houses have survived, one can get a feel for what the other streets must have been like, bearing in mind that each house would have accommodated two or more households.

A Wonderful Place

Palm Street may have gone forever, but by some miracle The Palm Tree pub survives. What once was a typical street corner boozer now stands in glorious isolation. Its address is127 Grove Road, but you can clearly see the 24-26 Palm Street address on its facade. There are a great many pubs that cherish their old school atmosphere and I love many of them, even if they have had to recreate it. The Palm Tree is a rare example of a pub that hasn’t had to recreate anything, because it simply hasn’t changed much. From the outside it looks as it did when it was rebuilt in 1935.

As warm and welcoming as every pub should be.

Inside, it is much as it must have been in 1977 when the surrounding houses and prefabs were cleared just as the current landlord moved in. It has old school tills and famously, it is ‘cash only’ at the bar, which is fine as long as you were warned in advance. Sometimes there are some old-school acts performing mostly jazz, but usually it provides a room, a table, some seats and some beer - and from my own perspective, apart from good conversation, I don’t need or want any more than that. It is a simple, atmospheric, wonderful place.

A few years back Londonist observed, “The Palm Tree is a remarkable survivor, standing alone in a Blitzed-out street. Inside, too, time has stopped. The same couple… have presided over the bar for years, and they rarely change a thing…You don't come to the Palm Tree for great beer or beaming smiles, but for the unique atmosphere of a genuine survivor.”

Among the Links

• The two Marie Lloyd songs are from the BBC's biographical drama 'Miss Marie Lloyd', where Jessie Wallace captures the essence of the Queen of Music Hall.

• Also linked is a 1924 film called 'Barging Through London', which has been restored by the BFI, showing a coal barge going from what is now called the Limehouse Basin to the Paddington Basin, so it will have passed right by The Palm Tree, 102 years ago.

• There is an arial photo of the area featuring prefabs and the pub accompanying an article on the park in the excellent Tower Hamlets Slice.