IN CONVERSATION WITH SIR RICHARD MACCORMAC ON BRICK LANE
Is it okay if I ask you a few questions... have you lived in Shoreditch a long time?
- yes many years
How long have you lived here?
- since 1980- worked here since 1980 and lived here since 1982
Has it always been this way, have things always been this way... have things changed a lot?
Is Shoreditch completely different now? In what sort of ways?
- it was one of the poorest and most run down, dangerous parts of London...
So would you say that immigration caused such a big change on Shoreditch?
- it has been an immigration area since the 16th Century!
Of course, I know this area has a very Bangladeshi culture....
- it's also very Jewish- from the 1860's onwards....
Would you say do you think, that it was the immigrants that caused the big change here- had a big impact?
- well, it was always immigrants...yes
So how did that work with the 'original' English people?
- there weren't any English- well it was just countryside!
It didn't become gentrified until the late 1980's you started getting all the artists moving in then, what was that like?
- Oh like Gilbert & George in the 1970's?
Did you know Gilbert & George?
- I did know them yes in the 70's!
I know it was a very working class area, extremely working class...
- well you need to first of all... do you know what the word 'Spitalfields' means?
The original meaning do you mean- no?
- 'hospital fields'- it was a monastery which you can see the remains of in the glass pavement in the market. It was a convent and a training hospital for women, then Henry VIII did away with it in the 1500's- he did his bad things (1539). Then it was an artillery craft for making guns and then it was mostly orchards and farmland until, I suppose the middle of the 19th Century but the area of course is East London and it is all about docks and international trade...
Well also if you're going quite east-central you get the whole financial area...
- that's a very new area though, very recent- it was docks...
What was your occupation?
- Well I'm an architect and have been since the 1970's. I did the first plans for the redevelopment of the market in Spitalfields in the 1970's. I made a film in Italy about the architecture in 1979 and then I got working on it.... so where are we now.... well um lets think, well the immigrants were originally people who came from the ships and the docks, so they were mostly down there and then um erm Spitalfields developed into a suburban village in the early 18th Century and it grew because at the end of the 17th Century, France repealed its tolerance laws on prostitutes; there was a repeal and thousands of prostitutes from France came to Britain and Ireland and their main settlement was the other side of Brick Lane. The French made some very beautiful houses which are now selling for £3,000,000!
- Richard Maccormac, a Sir Richard Maccormac!
