Dear Readers,
Your Capital Letter is back with you, just in time for the warm, warm weekend ahead. This is our 10th mailout of tips, reviews, guides and gems, proffering the very best and lesser-known in modern London. If your weekend is clear right now, it won’t be by the time you finish reading.
A reminder, as ever, to enjoy this free read while you can. Capital Letter is going to plummet ‘neath the paywall very, very, very soon – it has already started, in fact, with the old editions. Our beautiful Google map, which features every single recommendation we make, is also staying behind that paywall, so if you didn’t save it already, you’ll have to pay to take a look.
That said, we are still feeling plenty generous this week. For your fortnightly delectation, we have Rotherhithe reliquaries, playhouses above pubs and gothic follies in the dirty south-east. But first, we return to London’s most embarrassing gallery.
Saatchi Isn’t Working
We hate to say we told you so, almost as much as we hate to kick a dog when it’s down – so it brings us no pleasure to recap the muddled and deeply cringeworthy first fortnight of Saatchi Yates gallery’s exhibition ‘Once Upon a Time in London’. Since we named it London’s most embarrassing gallery, our words have been vindicated by a chorus of critics.
The show’s opening reception saw punters queue for six hours, presumably mistaking St. James’s for Soho and a below-average group exhibition for a streetwear launch. (Perhaps they had simply got their dates muddled; the gallery did ‘drop’ a tea towel the following week.) Incessant TikTok-style documentation reveals a mostly teenage audience, one member of which declared that Van Gogh ‘matches my energy’.
Also in attendance was the viral turntablist DJ AG (in what we can only imagine was a paid appearance) and Oli Epp; a talented artist and lovely man who would, by all accounts, attend the opening of a gate. The only attendee seeming to display a healthy level of cynicism was Olaolu Slawn, the gallery’s own 24-year-old, spray-painting golden goose. When asked who the world’s most overrated artist is, he didn’t miss a beat: ‘Me.’
The show is hung in a chaotic and incoherent salon arrangement that looks less like an exhibition than it does the storage facility of a clout-chasing art collector. Much of what’s worth seeing here is hung so high that it’s impossible to see. Much of what’s at eye level is, sadly, crap. The good news is that, should you wish to travel far from St. James’s and see some good art, you are only half a Bakerloo Line away.
Though it has always repped NW10, Harlesden High Street was once based in Fitzrovia. Now, its local-celebrity proprietor Jonny Tanna (recognisable for his sturdy, flat-brimmed baseball cap and sizable vape) operates the gallery out of a shoebox-sized space on the road that named it. The American conceptual artists Emmanuel Massillon and Allen-Golder Carpenter have outfitted it to resemble a prison cell, where the latter spent 72 uninterrupted hours for a durational performance last month. Now it stands as a bleak reminder of the physical reality of incarceration. TV studio reproductions and braggadocious rap lyrics don’t do justice to prison life. This almost-empty room seems to get much closer, and its poignancy is felt within the body. Two identical telephones hang on one wall, both off the hook, mirroring Félix González-Torres’ sculpture Untitled (Perfect Lovers). It is equally spartan and, in this context, equally harrowing.
Brooksmaxxing
Peter Brook is easily one of the most important stage directors to have lived. One of his greatest creations was a performance of the legendary Sanskrit epic, The Mahabharata.
Brook's work began on stage as a nine-hour epic production over three nights, before Brook and others adapted it into this film. Having fallen out of circulation, it has now been restored by Peter’s son Simon. This was a feat in its own right, as he had to pore over 2,713 reels of 35mm film to save the masterpiece from being consigned to the ignominy of its only surviving form – a low-quality 1989 TV transfer. You can see it in full 8K glory at the BFI IMAX for one screening only on 20 July.
Milliner’s Crossing
Pentameters is a theatre squirrelled away above The Three Horseshoes in Hampstead with a patchy attitude to programming and only one regular fixture – a weekly open-mic called Moon At Night with a £5 entry fee, cash only.
When you summit rickety stairs you will encounter Leonie Scott Williams: founder, artistic director, one-woman box office. She will ask for your name and your email address because, as she reminds every single person who comes to the door, ‘we’re not a theatre, we’re a private club, so I have to take your email. If we were a theatre, they’d shut us down!’ It’s not quite clear what she means by this, though a cursory look inside the theatre suggests it might be that the fire safety boys might not be too keen on the set up. The whole front row is composed of old armchairs and settees, the stage festooned with ephemera that could only loosely be termed ‘props’. In fact, the stage contains a strangely jagged back wall, jutting into its otherwise conventional rectangular shape – I am told it is a hastily built extension so that even more items can be kept bolted into the wall rather than thrown away.
Gradually, the stalls fill up and Leonie takes to the stage to welcome everyone in a voice that booms out of her small but remarkably energetic frame. What follows is an eclectic program of music and spoken word, offering up a litany of very strange lines, some part of the pieces on show, others ad-libbed between them. One muso takes a moment to reel off his remarkably authoritative thoughts on Mr Dylan – ‘Bob wasn’t incapable of love, he just didn’t have time’. A later spoken word poet poses mindbenders of questions on the existential problems of today, ‘For Sapi-ens, and happy end?’
A particular star of the open-mic on this occasion was Billy Two Hats. He comes with a book of spoken word poems, from which he selects two by asking an audience member to call out a random number. The choice of 27 gives us a performance of 'Desire' and soon the man is earning his moniker. The stylish bowler hat that has been matching his oversized suit jacket, vast beard and long hair, is whipped off. Underneath is a red felt fez, tassel and all. There are yet further hat-based surprises in his two-song set but I will leave that to your discovery, as to be clear, you absolutely must set a Sunday night aside and make a pilgrimage. This is an evening full of the slightly mad, to the point where Pentameters’ existence suggests that Newton’s third law might apply to culture too, a natural reaction to the carefully maintained walkways that make up Hampstead.
This is not a place to bring your cynical critic's eye, but that’s rather the point: leaving it behind is quite refreshing. As one performer puts it, Pentameters is ‘just a place where everyone is able to express themselves so easily, a leftover from the hippy days of the 60s and 70s.’ Later on someone puts the value of the night even more neatly: ‘It's good for you, it's good for us.’ This could almost be the Pentameters’ motto, probably one of the very few theatres in London where the only thing that matters is open creativity, and the words money, budget and overhead don’t get through the door.
This is not without cost. Pentameters is hardly a streamlined profit-making machine and it has on occasion been a serious struggle to keep the rent paid. During COVID, they only survived due to a hugely successful fundraiser – raising nearly £10,000 – supported by names such as Bill Nighy, David Hare and Victoria Coren Mitchell (who did her first and last stand-up set there). Talking to a pair who put on a double bill there a few years ago, the theatre’s continued survival also owes quite a lot to the work of powerful Hampstead locals, including the violinist Nigel Kennedy and a hard-to-track-down group of pro bono Hampstead lawyers.
These are useful allies. And yet a similarly loved local venue, the New End Theatre, was not so lucky, despite hosting names such as Stephen Fry, Judi Dench, Steven Berkoff, Mike Leigh, Jerry Hall, Helen Lederer and Joe McGann. It closed in 2011. Pentameters has its own considerable history – Pinter played the Dumb Waiter there – but this is no guarantee, so it is good to soak in the madness while it is still raging proudly.
Of all of those to grace the stage, it is Leonie’s husband, who is actually called Godfrey Old, who is the ultimate attraction. When the lights are on and the band is counted off, it is his arena. His weapon of choice? The harmonica, with the reverb turned up. And he can really fucking play the thing. The only challenge comes in between songs, when the key changes, and Godfrey needs to rifle through a box of harmonicas, all vaguely labelled, peering at them through a pair of glasses he wears apparently solely for this purpose. 'Is it in E or B Minor?' he asks.
'It's in B minor.'
'...I've got B-flat minor?'
The job gets done.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnivM1z4Fno
Eltham Got Shooters
Shooters’ Hill feels like nowhere else in London. This is, by no means, an original observation: Alan Moore made it at much greater length, and in customarily esoteric detail, in his groundbreaking essay, Unearthing, where he traces the neighbourhood of his (unrelated) mentor, Steve Moore. You can do the Moore walk around Shooters’ Hill in an afternoon; in fact, the locals have seen enough amateur psychogeographers knocking about that they blame ‘the wizard’ for sending them so far south-east. But as you do so, you’ll soon acquire a sense for what makes this vaulted corner of the capital so profoundly strange.
Begin at the Grade II-listed Shrewsbury House, a 20th-century redbrick mansion built on the grounds of an older, grander villa once owned by the Prince Regent. During the war, the House became the centre of air raid control for London, coordinating warning sirens, emergency services and communications for the south-east approaches. Its strategic elevation placed it on the London Stop-Line Central – the last fortified ring planned to resist a German invasion – making the house a key node in the capital’s defensive network. Just a short walk up from the House is a marker of civic history from three millennia prior: the Shrewsbury Tumulus, the last remaining Bronze Age burial mound extant in the capital.
Descending from the Tumulus, you’ll meet the obsidian frontage of The Bull, a pub on Shooters’ Hill which has known infamy for centuries. In the time before modern London’s incorporation, the hill was one of the primary routes into the city; phalanxed by woodland and benefiting from privileged access, it soon became a den of highwaymen eager to intercept travelling carriages. As such, The Bull became the archetypal dodgy pub of Georgian England, and remained as such until very recently, when it was undone by that great scourge, renovation. Now it’s just a pleasant boozer with a huge - and, thankfully, bandit-denuded - beer garden.
Cross the road, and venture into Oxleas Woods, an ancient forest which hides the marvellously senseless Severndroog Castle, which is neither a castle nor named for a place that exists. ‘Severndroog’ was the English rendering of Suvarnadurg, a fort between Mumbai and Goa. The clearly clued-up volunteers are quick to tell you that, while the signs on the wall suggest that the folly was named for the ‘Battle of Severndroog’, this was in fact a building in honour of an East India Company director, and the battle closer to a conquest. That said, from the viewing platform, you can see the seven surrounding counties. For the £5.50 entry fee, this equates to 76p per county which, we’re sure you’ll agree, is pretty good going.
Going, Going, Gone
Tooting on a Tuesday is thriving, with a buffet of shopping options for the discerning consommateur. There’s the market, with its butcher, hair product shops and, if you’re lucky, sightings of two cats, Chicken and Bex. Scanito Jeans is a destination for football casual classics, like Sergio Tacchini and Gabicci, while twee birthday cards can be purchased at Lark. Mixed Blessings Jamaican Bakery is also a must-stop for delectable patties (try the callaloo).
And then there’s Greasby’s. The auction house has – as its website states – ‘proudly served South London as a renowned public auctioneer’ since 1919. Despite its redoubtable vintage, this is not another Sotheby’s or Christie’s. At Greasby’s, the Birkin bags, Constables and 1985 Dom Perignon are in short supply.
Nor is the auction house the easiest to find. It is sited down a narrow lane, with vans parked along it, at the back of a yard of bikes (all for sale), some timber and a bin full of those scooters that kids park all over primary school playgrounds. Inside feels like a long-forgotten storeroom filled with all the ephemera of modern life; shelves piled high with suitcases, bags of clothes, toiletries. Cabinets are filled with old laptops and AirPods, and everywhere are unemptied vacuum cleaners and tangled ethernet cables in sore need of a tidy. There are also the curiosities that might come from a house clearance – dusty armchairs, really-quite-nice sixties paintings and enough jewellery to get you barred from the PDC darts world championship. And there’s brand-new-with-tags fashion items, like box-fresh Puma trainers, and last season’s Arsenal away kit.
Tuesdays are often viewing days for a fortnightly Wednesday auction. A mid-morning in June is quiet, with three customers and Heart FM humming sultrily in the background. A man stares intently at a perfume cabinet, a woman peruses a clothing rail as if she’s in the local charity shop. Both clutch a photocopied sheet of A4. In place of the gavel-wielding motormouths found in other auction houses, bids at Greasby’s are taken in writing. Any hopeful writes down the lot number of their desired item(s) on a bidding form with a maximum bid (anything over a minimum of £8), and brings the form up some stairs packed with boxes, to a booth, where bids are processed. If you’re successful, you come back to Greasby’s to pick up your items at any point until the end of Thursday, paying for your item plus a 26% buyers’ premium. Woe betide any forgetfulness, mind. Various signs on the wall warn – in caps-locked text – that a failure to collect means you lose said item, as well as your £100 deposit.
The lots come from various clients – from store liquidations to police evidence – but also TfL and airports. That explains the suitcases and the toiletries: this is where lost and unclaimed luggage ends up, half-used bottles of hand sanitiser and all. The laptops, meanwhile, are often the ones left behind by attention-deficient Londoners on the Tube, although we are told, not the ones yoinked from backpacks. If you need a new one, but don’t have a spare grand to go to the Apple Store, they’re markedly cheaper than CeX.
Greasby’s no doubt serves regulars who use it as a way to get necessities, and oddities, at knock-down prices. The bags of toiletries are particularly popular, because you can get a bathroom-load for £9 or £10 – far cheaper than a trip to Boots. A visit to Greasby’s is elite-level rummaging, up there with any other shopping option you’d care to find on a Tuesday.
There’s Something About St Mary’s
London is supposedly a city of hidden gems. On closer inspection most of them prove to be fool’s gold. We make an exception to this rule of general cynicism for Rotherhithe.
It is one of the few places where you can still get a real feel for London as a port city. It’s sometimes easy to forget that maritime trade was London’s primary reason for existence, from the Romans to Mrs Thatcher (and ending right about there). Not so at St Mary’s, the ancient church that stands in the middle of an unusually lovely square at Rotherhithe’s centre. The very stones seem to be bound together with salt water.
This is a very old part of London indeed. St Mary’s is usually open, but if you can get entry to the crypt you should start there. There are Roman and medieval bricks in the foundation which are testament to the river’s ability to churn and wash up parts of London’s past.
The river was historically St Mary’s enemy. A medieval foundation, it suffered much from flooding. By the time of the Reformation it was often submerged by the Thames. It took until the reign of Good Queen Anne for a new church to be built with more robust foundations. Hence the rather handsome 18th-century edifice we see today. It is similar in architectural vibe to a number of City of London churches but, unlike them, in the midst of a real community. The combination of the two is pleasing.
While it is a living church, it is history which should draw you to Rotherhithe’s overground station. The Mayflower sailed from near here and its captain is buried in the churchyard. Its links to the river continue. There is a communion table and two chairs made of timbers from The ‘Fighting’ Temeraire, made famous in Turner’s painting.
Despite its Puritan history, the church is now Anglo-Catholic. Yet it does so in a sort of dignified and reserved way, without the campery and bitchiness, unlike some churches previously mentioned in this column. The congregation are friendly and almost entirely local. Go on a Sunday morning and you’ll see what we mean.
After you’ve had a poke about, nearby are a brace of excellent pubs which reflect the area’s maritime past almost as well as the church: the Mayflower and the Ship. Drink an India Pale Ale as you look out over the Thames and you can almost imagine yourself in a better time when the people mudlarking in the sludge beneath were desperate Victorian urchins rather than middle-class fuckwits.
On your way back to the station you can get another, very different bonus church. London’s Finnish Church’s presence in this funny outpost of the city’s south-east is testament again to the role of sailors in its history.
Baltic seamen, missing home, set up a community here in Victorian times. Now the unmistakably Scandi building hosts Lutheran services, provides rye bread and herring in its cafe, and has the only sauna situated in a church in London. Open Wednesday to Sunday and only £12 entry.
A warning, however, for the more prudish among you: nudity is not optional.
That’s plenty for this edition. Too much? We’ll never tell. All of the above is free for the time being, but if you’re enjoying it so much that you want to become a paid subscriber, we are legally incapable of stopping you. In fact, we applaud all such endeavours. Go forth and enjoy our recommendations, and tell us if they measure up – nothing gives us more joy. Have fun, share freely and we’ll see you next time.
All the best,
TF