Haggerston Treasures walk this Saturday, places still available

The Haggerston Treasures walk takes place this Saturday at 11am from the Geffrye Museum!

Email us to join the walk (free of charge): mail@buildingexploratory.org.uk

Join Nicole Crockett on a guided tour of some of the listed buildings of the southern part of Haggerston. Meet at the Geffrye Museum reception at 11am.

The walk begins on the lawn just outside the main entrance at the Geffrye Museum and ends at Shoreditch Town Hall.

It is approximately 1.5-2 miles long and will take around an hour and a half.

Final session at NANA’s

It was the final session at NANA’s where we have been running a series of activity sessions with older people.

We met at the Convenience to review the last few weeks. The group discussed how the sessions have been really worthwhile - they’ve enjoyed learning about the local area, coming together as a group to share a common interest and finding out new things about the history and buildings of Clapton.

As the sessions have focused on how the buildings and built environment of Homerton and Clapton have changed over the years (and been based in a café that was formerly a public toilet) it was a fitting end to visit Chat’s Palace – originally a library, now a community arts centre.

Candy Horsbrugh, Centre Director, kindly showed us around, talking us through the history of the building and how it came to be a community arts venue. 

The group were fascinated to see the original features of the building. They inspected the commemorative foundation stone, admired the decorative coving, parquet flooring, the matching criss-cross motif on the windows and balustrades.

It was not hard to imagine the building in its former use; indeed some members of the group remembered visiting when it was a library.

Many of the group also remembered the building when it was as the base for the Hackney Marsh Festival in the 70s and 80s. [image source: Chat's Place]

The highlight was going up into the lovely bright and airy room on the first floor, top lit through an impressive roof light (which used to light the library below – now separated into two floors to create a dark theatre space on the ground floor).

 
The group were delighted to see that 100 years after it was built as a library, Chats Palace is still in use by the local community: for dance and performance events, workshops, a youth group, a community photography project, darkroom facilities and a café.  

We look forward to revisiting with the Senior BEEs in the autumn – with a view to exploring Chats Palace’s fascinating photographic archive as well as the building.

A big thank you to NANAs for hosting the activity sessions!

Delightful feedback from Sundial Centre Timber Lodge visit

Our thanks to Pauline from the Sundial Centre for sending us this lovely feedback following a visit to Timber Lodge with her members. Here is what she sent us... pictures coming soon!


Hope you are enjoying your Easter break. Just wanted to tell you about our trip to the timber lodge the trip went very well the members had the time of their life.

Charles stated that the park was breath taking he couldn’t wish for a better place to be he was one of the lucky ones to be there.

Margaret  said she was very pleased that she could come otherwise she wouldn’t have experienced such a lovely place like the Timber Lodge.

Lenny was very happy to have come he said that there should be more organisation like the Building Exploratory who assist members of community to visit such beautiful buildings - thank you Karen for what you’re doing for the older people keep up the good work.

Elizabeth - your stress levels are definitely low when you come to visit this fabulous places and also minimise negative thoughts.

Last but not least me (Pauline) what can I say I have enjoyed all our visit l am very lucky to be the one to take the members to these fantastic places and giving us the chance to explore this places I have explained the trips to others and everyone wants to come with us now to every visit.

Happy reading and best wishes Pauline

Investigating Clapton's past and present

Yesterday we ran a walking tour to investigate buildings of the past and present in Clapton. The walk was one of a series of activities for older people we are running at NANAs. We set off from The Convenience in Brooksby’s Walk, following a route along Chatsworth Road, Glenarm Road, Lower Clapton Road and finally Clapton Pond.

We gave each participant a series of old photographs showing various locations along the route. The photographs included scenes of a vibrant Chatsworth Road market in the 1930s, WWII bomb damage, the classical architecture of the London Orphan Asylum (of which only the Portico remains - on Linscott Road) and grand Georgian houses, which have long gone. 

Each snapshot gave insight into how the area has changed and evolved over the years – a glimpse of a time gone by - generating discussion, debate and reminiscence amongst the group.

As well as looking at past changes the walk also provided an opportunity to take in more recent ones including new shops, cafes and homes and the conservation and refurbishment of historic buildings. At Clapton Pond the group were pleased to see how Pond House has been brought back to life but saddened to see that the Bishop Wood’s Almshouses (which date back to the 17th Century) have been shut down and boarded up.

The walk unlocked the buildings of the past but also generated discussion and debate about the change we see around us today.

 

Local and Lovely - by Gillian Lawrence

Gillian Lawrence wrote a piece about our collaboration with NANA and the Islington History & Architecture Group on her blog, Up Your Street. She has kindly allowed us to publish it here. We hope you enjoy.

Years ago there was a public toilet down Chatsworth Road on the way to Chats Palace. Now it’s The Convenience, a scrubbed up and scrubbed out homely café  where NANAs grandmas cook away plating up nourishing feasts,  and in the evening a chef does Hanoi Nights.

That’s busy enough amidst the gleaming tiles and inventive menu cards.

The Buildings Exploratory for seniors in Hackney and now Islington has teamed up with NANAs so that seniors can come along, sit ,chat, go for a guided walk, share information all about the history of Clapton and have a nice cup of tea. People from our Hackney community get to meet and learn. There are daughters of the Windrush generation, residents  who have lived in their Hackney homes since birth having  managed to escape the dreaded doodlebugs and rent-rise evictions, sons of labourers who have travelled along the Thames living and working by the Lea,  those who live in flats where the stench from the Stratford tanneries in days of yore choked their mouths and followed them on their way to work at Lesney’s.

We can’t talk fast enough to get our stories out and shared whilst our facilitator eggs us on with grey photos gleaned from The Hackney Archives.

The meet-ups are every fortnight at 10.30 am for a couple of hours which leaves ample time to stroll along Chatsworth Road and see the old kitchen utensils in a local vintage shop or smell the crepes from The Creperie.

Change is daily and that’s why it’s good to sit in The Convenience and take a breather,  cherish what we know, and make each other laugh about how things were and will be. And it’s good to come together from all sorts of backgrounds and reinforce neighbourliness. That’s what it’s really all about.

Visit Gillian's blog, 'Up Your Street' here: http://ww.upyourstreet.wordpress.com/

Senior BEEs activity - Spring term

Our Senior Building Exploratory Explorers have been busy this term. Below we show highlights with a Canal trip in January, visiting the RIBA exhibition in February, and a discussion of Hackney's Heritage at Risk in March of this year.

Islington group review this term's activities

Our Islington History & Architecture Group completed a term of interesting walks and visits last week, and kindly reviewed the sessions for us.

Here are some of their comments, as well as images from this term's visits.

"I particularly enjoyed the visit to Diespecker Wharf because although I'm fairly familiar with that area I saw a different side of it. The presentation was excellent."

"The talk on Islington's Lost Cinemas: I found this fascinating and am now able to see the buildings I walk past regularly in a different light."

"It gets people out to places we would not go to and keeps you in touch with the places of interest in the area."