‘EDF Substation’: the term brings to mind brick structures, on the side of a rail track or a sullen piece of derelict land; something belonging to the same category as the hatches we walk over on the pavement – things we don’t really notice or think about as we go about our business. “Secure structures into which high voltage electricity is distributed”.
Recently, a large box clad in glass appeared in Old Spitalfields Market. By day it is white, but sometimes at night it glows in changing colours, attracting the cameras of passers by with its deep purples and majestic blues.
(From dyntr’s flickrstream)
Each side of the box carries a giant passage of writing, a voice from the past, a perspective on one or more of the many identities that this area has held…
“Have you any distinct idea of Spitalfields, dear reader?” asks Charles Dickens of the market hall before going on to describe the area’s “sallow, unshorn weavers”. Through the centre of the box runs a thin dark line which, on closer inspection, tells the story of this ancient “stronghold of Noncomformity” – from Roman cemeteries, through secretive societies, to the current day.
Seb & Fiona worked with design agency Imagist and architects Jestico + Whiles on this project, which (we hope) saved an EDF Substation from becoming a utilitarian eyesore and turned it into an artefact that holds pieces of the area’s history. We curated the text, selecting passages by Samuel Pepys, Charles Dickens and Peter Ackroyd and commissioning a new one by Jeanette Winterson; and we wrote the timeline, so visitors can learn the intriguing and often poverty-stricken stories that have made Spitalfields such a muse to London’s psychogeography.
Also from these stories we found inspiration for the market’s eight new gate names (replacing the previous “gate 1″, “gate 2″ etc)…
This is Punchinello Gate, so named after the gun that Pepys saw fired in the Old Artillery Ground (towards which this gate would have faced).
The other gate names, in clockwise order, are Sherrin (after the building’s architect), Montagu (after the 19th Century Jewish philanthropist), Wollstonecraft (after the early feminist and philosopher), Mulberry (after the fruit from which silk is made), Huguenot (after the first of Spitalfields’ many waves of immigration), John Balch (after the market’s founder) and Spitfire Mk. Vb W3311 (after the fighter plane purchased by traders in 1942 in aid of the war effort).
The gates are soon to be joined by signs which will hold some stunning old photographs we unearthed – and more information for those curious about the stories that led to the naming.
