Creative writing and photography.
I interviewed Arthur Woodham, legendary owner of Arthur's Café on London's Kingsland Road.
Arthur’s Café, London. All pictures by Matthew Reynolds.
Matthew Reynolds: Hi Arthur. Is the café named after you?
Arthur Woodham: Yeah. Well, me and my father – he was Arthur as well.
MR: How long has the café been in the family?
AW: Since 1935. We’ve had it generations – my father, me and now my grandson. It’s on the sign out front.
MR: Have you always been in this location?
AW: No. My father used to have a place opposite St. Leonard’s (hospital about half a mile south on Kingsland Road) and then I come up here. So all together since 1935 in the road in the café business.
MR: So you were on Kingsland Road during the war?
AW: Oh yeah. And before the war.
MR: What was it like at that time?
AW: The whole thing changed people’s lives. Where we was down the road at my dad’s shop, there was the Geffrye museum just along. If you go past there round the back you’ve got houses and next to those houses you’ll see two bits of grass what’s brown – that’s where a bomb dropped on the shelter what was there.
MR: Do you remember what happened?
AW: Opposite the museum was a coffee shop and the owner of that was a woman. I remember she come out and said: “I’ve been married three times, nothing can shock me. Open up the shop!”
MR: Was that sort of attitude common?
AW: Oh yeah. Like when Nuttall Street (road adjoining Kingsland Road) got bombed down near the side of the church. They’d built shelters in the middle of the flats there for people to take refuge in. And that night when they dropped the bombs the flats fell on top of the shelters and crushed ‘em. They lost thirteen people out of one family that night. So my dad opened up the shop and he give all them what had been blasted out cups of tea. You had to didn’t you? Life goes on.
MR: Did you use the public air raid shelters?
AW: Of course – on the corner there used to be a place. Me and my father and a friend of his were standing down there one time and the sirens are going and we can hear ‘Clomp Clomp Clomp’ on the roof. So my father says to my friend that must be guns and they’ll be straight through the roof in five minutes! But what it was we discovered when they sounded the all clear was a stables above the shelter and it was the horses clomping about on top of the roof. Still, we didn’t go down there no more for fear of it being hit and us ending up with a load of horses on top of us!
MR: Was that your closest shelter?
AW: No, we used to have an Anderson shelter (temporary shelter made from corrugated iron) in the back yard. They had a lot of fellas building them out of boxes at the start of the war. Except they was just putting them on the ground – when you was meant to dig down and put ‘em in the ground!
MR: Did you ever sleep in it?
AW: Yeah. In the end my father left the army, something was wrong with him so he came out and we all slept in the Anderson shelter. We preferred it in there because what happened is a lot of people got crushed in the tube shelters. They all rushed down there and got crushed to death.
MR: Did you ever go to one of the tube station shelters?
AW: A couple of times, yeah. We used to go to the Strand ‘cause it was a deep shelter. You had to walk down the stairs – 190 of them – then back up the stairs to get out. We all used to go, me and my brother and my mum, and then we had to walk up to Holborn to get the night bus home. In the end my mum got fed up with it and we didn’t bother, we just used the Anderson.
MR: A lot of young people left London during the war – did you?
AW: They didn’t leave by choice, they was evacuated. I was evacuated to Hemel Hempstead. They took me to the wrong place there... I’ll never forget it!
MR: You didn’t want to go?
AW: No! I remember, I’d just got in from school and they was knocking at the door. They give us a bar of chocolate and before we knew it we were in the country and they’re saying “Can you take these poor children, refugees from London?” I didn’t like it, I ran home.
MR: How long were you there?
AW: Three or four weeks. They caught me the first time I tried to leave, so I said to my father “I don’t like it here I’m coming home.” At first he said no, but in the end he went to come and get me. My mother said “Quick, get yourself upstairs and lock yourself in the front room. They’ll kill you if you don’t.” I was only about eleven or twelve.
MR: Did the war bring the community together?
AW: Oh yeah, we, people, were closer then than what we are today.
MR: Why do you think that’s changed?
AW: It’s a different generation, that’s all. There’s no comparison of Kingsland Road and Dalston now with that of thirty years ago, or even twenty years ago! It’s a continental city, It’s a mix, but in every city in the world you’ll find that today.
MR: Do you find that exciting?
AW: Well, it’s good for me ‘cause I’ve been serving people my whole life, and these are new customers! I was brought up this way, it’s my way of life. I’m 90 now and I’ll be 91 this year on Christmas day.
MR: And you still work every day?
AW: Yes!
MR: What hours do you keep?
AW: Believe it or not I’m up at half twelve and down here at one in the morning to get everything ready. My wife don’t join me till half five!
MR: Does she work here with you?
AW: She does, yeah.. To be honest this is an old-fashioned type of place. It might look modern inside but there’s no frozen stuff. I don’t do no frozen stuff at all – mine’s all fresh.
MR: Where do you get your produce from?
AW: I get me veg from the greengrocers, we peel our own potatoes – I do me own chips. Then we’ve got a bloke we use for meat. His place is very good – a little bit more expensive, but all their stuff is filleted there, maybe at four o'clock, and it’s here by six so we’re fresh every day.
MR: Do you take pride in that?
AW: Well, it’s my living innit? There’s no point doing something if you don’t have pride in it.
MR: What time do you open?
AW: Seven. I shut at three in the afternoon and start preparing for the next day. I’m always fairly busy, but what’s happened to all the shops along here is say you want to park up and come in for tea and two toast – then how much is it to put in the parking meter, a couple of quid? I used to be busy all the morning, but now I’m not. Nowadays if a café’s cheap or dear it makes no difference because by the time you’ve put your money in the meter to come in here it’s not worth your time. Traffic wardens! I had a young lad come in here the other day wanting to buy a sausage roll, and we had one ready, so I gave him the sausage roll and in a second... bang! they’d done him.
MR: Do you have many friends in the area?
AW: Oh yeah, a lot of my friends are still around. Let me see, my mate Terry, he’s got his whole family come in ‘ere, four generations. He’s got his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. They all know me – everybody knows me round here y’know – and over the years they’ve got to know my son and my grandson. I’ve had him here in the shop since he was little y’know, so they know him too now. He likes football so they talk with him about football.
MR: What’s his team?
AW: Arsenal. My grandson’s a good player, but I don’t like it at all. Matter of fact it drives me mad ‘cause all you get in ‘ere on Saturdays is “He should’ve done this, he should’ve done that” and they’re all arguing so I go up to them and I say “What is the weight of a football?” and one bloke’ll say so-and-so and the other bloke‘ll say so-and-so, and I’ll leave ‘em arguing. In the end they’ll say “What is it Arthur?” and I’ll say “I thought you were the bloody professionals, don’t suck my brains out!”
MR: It’s fair to say that a lot of people are just ‘passing through’ London. Is there still a sense of community?
AW: Absolutely. The thing is, for people like me who’ve grown up around here the value of their property’s gone up – a lot. The temptation is to sell up and leave. But the worst thing for old people to do is to sell up and move away, ‘cause if something happens to one of them it’s a different generation where they go to live. You’ll find a lot of my customers now, they live where property’s gone up in value, say, in Hackney or Kingsland road – especially Kingsland road ‘cause it’s near to the City. They’re selling their houses and getting a good price and giving their children the money, then buying a house say right out in the country somewhere. And after eighteen months they want to come back ‘cause they can’t get used to it – but they’re too old to move and haven’t got enough money left to buy a house back ‘ere with!
MR: So you don’t think you’ll ever sell up?
AW: No! This is what I’ll do till I die. Listen, an old Yiddish man used to say to me “Cor, Arthur, when you die you won’t half have a big funeral!” (laughs)
MR: You must have met a huge number of people over the years. Have you had any East end celebrities in here?
AW: Yeah. Terry, his son’s wife is in (TV programme) Birds of a Feather. Y’know, Linda Robson. And quite a few Eastenders actors, yeah... but I don’t know ‘em. My grandson, ‘e knows a couple of famous football players and boxers – Maurice Hope, who fought the world champion, Terry Spinks… and you know who else? Ronnie O’Sullivan – hell raiser! He used to come in here with his mum and dad. Actually, his dad used to go to school with my son. He used to come in here before Ronnie was born. Now and again if he’s in the area he’ll pop in just to say hello to me.
MR: What about the darker side of the East end? Do you remember gangland London?
AW: (Pauses) No. Now that’s one thing you shouldn’t say. You know who you know and you don’t know who you don’t. I mean, I used to go to school with Charlie (Kray), but if you start asking questions like that people will just stop talking.
MR: Okay. So without getting into specifics, do you think that era has been misremembered – or even romanticised?
AW: Well, don’t forget it was a different time. These gangsters after the war... it’s a different type of thing. You never heard of shooting. You might of heard about somebody having a fight and they’ve put the razor across someone’s face, but we never had nothing like what it is today.
MR: So it’s more violent now?
AW: It’s more violent today ‘cause everybody shoots each other! But it’s not my generation so it’s hard for me to say. Years ago when you got caught you was hanged. But now you do 15 years and you’re out – that’s a lot of difference. They used to have corporal punishment in this country too, they’d give you the birch. But they’ve stopped that now. People are nuttier these days. Back then you had a fight and that was it – now they shoot each other.
MR: Do you think your grandson will carry on the business?
AW: No. Maybe. I don’t know... it’s too hard. Youngsters don’t want to work like this any more, seven days a week. They want to be there for their families. Like the old Italians, they don’t want to work like that no more. Years ago when me and my brother used to be in the shop, they were long days. The shop’d be open at six in the morning ‘til late at night. There was an old saying in the East End – you always close before the pubs close. But say you was a regular customer they used to knock on the door after hours and my father used to serve them. They’d had a few drinks, but he was around to talk to them. Also, he was a big man.
MR: Was he as well known as you are now?
AW: Oh yeah, everybody knew ‘im, ‘cause originally we come from Bethnal green. That’s where I used to go to school, so everyone in the area knew us.
MR: Where do you live now?
AW: I live upstairs. If you could you always bought a shop with living accommodation. So if the shop was quiet it don’t matter so much ‘cause you’ve only got one rent to pay. But I own this place now.
MR: Finally, what’s the best selling item in the café?
AW: (Laughs) Tea, of course!
In memory of Arthur Woodham, 1926 – 2018