The street where you live (5): Earlham Grove

This is the fifth in an occasional series of articles by Forest Gate resident, Peter Williams, who specialises in Newham housing, maps and local history. In each he looks, in detail, at the history of particular streets in Forest Gate.

Peter has complemented his own knowledge by accessing the increasingly digitised national newspapers' collection - which can be found here- and has added extracts from this that refer specifically to Earlham Grove.

Earlham Grove is named after Earlham Hall, near Norwich, seat of the Gurney family; now part of the University of East Anglia. 

Gurneys' ancestral home - Earlham Hall, today

The Gurney family was a major landlord in Forest Gate in mid Victorian times and with other Quaker families, like the Frys (of chocolate  and prison reform fame) and Barclays, were merchants and bankers in the City of London.

As we have shown in previous posts, Samuel Gurney, perhaps the most famous of the family, owned up to half the land that constitutes Forest Gate. He lived in what is now West Ham Park, until his death in 1865.

1863 Ordnance Survey map, showing vacant
 land behind Pawnbrokers' Almshouses on
 Woodgrange Road, up to the railway line,
 where Earlham Grove would soon be built.
 The open spaces to the right of the
 almshouses is what later was to become
 the Woodgrange estate

The Great Eastern Railway was built in the 1830s opening the Forest Gate area up to development. Work on the Woodgrange estate started in the late 1860s. 

Earlham Grove started a little later. The houses are larger than the typical terraces developed by speculative builders for the army of clerks in the City of London in the later nineteenth century. They were more like what the Victorians and Edwardians called villas – for the better off middle classes; solicitors; business people.

Same area in 1895 Ordnance Survey map - now
heavily built over.  Orange arrow points to site of
modern Community Garden (see below) on Earlham Grove

On the map, above, the Almshouses have gone, and in this 30 year period between the publication of the two maps hundreds of houses were built, including Hamfrith, Atherton, Norwich, Sprowston, and Clova Roads, and Earlham Grove, which were part of the Gurney estate (c. 1870–90), on the north side of Romford Road. These houses, many of which survive, include detached, semi-detached, and terraced types.

Earlham Grove - 1911

Buildings of interest

16 Ex Jewish refugee hostel. With the rise of Hitler to power in the 1930's, many Germany Jews sought refuge elsewhere in Europe, mainly within existing Jewish communities.  Forest Gate played its part. A hostel was opened at 51a Romford Road, which accommodated 20 people.  This later moved to 16 Earlham Grove. It was supported financially by the Earlham Grove synagogue (see below). Other families within the local community took in refuges who could not be accommodated there.

16 Earlham Grove today - a refuge
 for Jews fleeing Nazi Germany in the 1930's

The article below, from 1933, suggests that Forest Gate may not have been the anti-semitic haven that those fleeing persecution from Nazi Germany many have hoped for. A magistrate, in 1933, telling a clearly Jewish immigrant from Earlham Grove that: "There's more trouble in this country through people like you than all the others put together. I wish we could throw you out neck and crop".

Chelmsford Chronicle 19 May 1933

93 - 95 Formerly West Ham Synagogue and Shul (1897 - 2004). See here for a post on the 20th century Jewish community of Forest Gate, whose focal point was this building.  It was the first synagogue in Essex and became the strongest in Newham. The foundation stone of the building in the photo was laid in 1910.

The synagogue, up for sale in 2004

The site is now a four-storey block of flats called Adler Court - named after a prominent rabbi at the former synagogue - owned by East Thames Housing Association.

Adler Court today - on the
 site of the former synagogue

128 Earlham Grove - A house, whose occupant, Francis John Fitzgerald, hosted a quite remarkable event in the struggle for Irish independence in 1921. We will outline some extraordinary Forest Gate connections with the birth of the Irish Free State in the next blog on this site. Watch this space!

128 today, Francis John
Fitzgerald's home in 1921

136 - Site of the Community Garden was occupied until a few years ago by a very large detached Victorian villa. Originally it had been a doctor’s surgery. It was converted to a hostel for homeless families, probably in the 1980s, and was known as Earlham Lodge. It was run by Newham Housing Department.

136 Earlham Grove, when it
was an LBN homeless hostel

136, when it was a homeless hostel,
 showing, behind, the former vicarage
Thanks to "Kevin" from Facebook
 for this photo and the one above

Community Garden hoarding, designed
 by local artist Jim Valentine and painted
 by upwards of 70 local volunteers

There was no resident warden, but a mobile member of staff looked after a number of Housing Department hostels. There were 9 rooms of different sizes and it was targeted at small families such as a single parent with a young baby.

Families typically stayed there for a few months before moving onto another form of homeless temporary accommodation. They were given a licence agreement, not a tenancy. Bathrooms were shared and each room had basic cooking facilities Following a review in the mid 2000's, the Housing Department decided to close its directly managed hostels.

The site is still owned by Newham Council who hope for a housing development on the site in the longer term, but meanwhile, have given the Community Garden a short-term lease, so that it can be used as a community facility rather than remain an unsightly piece of waste land. 

There continue to be a number of other large houses in the Earlham Grove that are used for some form of supported housing for vulnerable people including children’s homes, homeless hostels, cheap B&Bs and accommodation for people with learning disabilities.

175 Built as Earlham Hall in the 1870s, for full details, see here. Briefly, it was established in 1879 by John Curwen, the Congregational minister, for his Tonic-Sol-Fa College. The Metropolitan Academy of Music followed on from 1906 until World War II, and then London Co-operative offices preceded the arrival of the Cherubim and Seraphim congregation in the 1970s.

An 1890's sketch of Earlham Hall,
when it was in its prime

It is still occupied by the church. Now The Holy Order of the Cherubim and Seraphim Church has its UK headquarters there. Arriving in the 1970s it is one of the earliest African congregations to settle in Newham. As the first African instituted church, it was originally established among the Yoruba people in Western Nigeria in 1925.

African Church of Cherabim and Seraphim, today

The 'Aladura', or African indigenous tradition, combines teaching and practices learned from western missionaries with elements of traditional African traditions. In Forest Gate the church is led by Pastors and Apostles, worships in distinctive white robes and emphasises prayer-including night vigils.

The church's worshippers in full regalia

Behind the church you can see is an older building the Tonic Sol Fa college, where this system of musical notation was taught.

193 - The Jive Dive. Kenny Johnson, who went on to successfully manage the Lotus Club on Woodgrange Road for over 40 years, began life as an impresario here. In 1960 he took over what had previously been the Earlham Grove Dance Academy (next door but one to the Royal Mail sorting office) and turned it into a pop music venue. See here for further details.

193 - location of 1960's
Jive Dive, now an HMO

The Jive Dive originally opened as a coffee bar, but soon obtained an alcohol license.  The ground floor was converted into a bar, and the basement a dance hall. It was imaginatively decorated, for the time - with bamboo partitions, film and gig posters on the walls and with plants, real and artificial, adorning key areas.

Kenny Johnson, outside the Jive Dive, in the
sixties, proudly displaying his recently acquired Jag

Eddie Johnson, in his book Tales from the Two Puddings, says this of the place:

The Jive Dive seemed to fulfill a real need in young people; it was the time of the 'mod', and young East Enders were, in those days, the most fashion conscious in the world; rendezvousing in Forest Gate every weekend and going to our club, they would have a few drinks and then dance their socks off in the basement. There was no trouble and the customers were a lovely crowd.

The venue proved a great success, but the resultant crowds were understandably less popular with the residential neighbours, and so the brothers closed it as a venue and looked elsewhere for music promotional opportunities. They took on the floor space above what is now the Poundland and the Lotus Club, on Woodgrange Road was born.

Kenny (bearded) and Eddie Johnson, relaxing
 with a pint at the entrance to the Jive Dive

193 Earlham Grove is now a house in multiple occupation.

Durning Hall Christian community centre replaced an earlier Durning Hall, founded about 1885 at Limehouse (see here for fuller details). The premises in Woodgrange Road were registered for worship in 1953 (what is now the Aston Mansfield charity shop)  and in 1959 the main buildings of the centre were opened in Earlham Grove, containing a church, hall, offices, gymnasium, and chaplain's flat. A hostel, with shops below, was later completed on the Woodgrange Road frontage.

Durning Hall, which is non-denominational, is administered by the Aston Mansfield charities trust, founded in 1930 by Miss Theodora Durning-Lawrence. It caters for all age-groups. The church of the Holy Carpenter, designed by Shingler and Risden Associates, has a fine altar wall of stained glass.

Durning Hall today, featuring the stained
glass window referred to in the text

Odd ecclesiastical event 

In the 1890s there was a strange bit of church history when some people from Emmanuel parish church (corner of Romford Rd and Upton Lane) started a rival church in Earlham Grove called Christ Church, because they felt the services at Emmanuel were becoming 'too Roman'. A small (corrugated) iron building had been erected, seating about 200 and continued until at least 1903, see cutting, below.

Essex Newsman - 2 December 1893

Rivalry between the two places of worship ended up in a court case in 1903 (see cutting, below), where the parties promised to behave, or the police would be called!

The dispute between Emmanuel and
 Christ Church reaches the courts,
as this 1903 cutting shows

Significant deaths in Earlham Grove

Other press cuttings (below) show a slightly more tragic side of life for some Earlham Grove residents.

1. A suicide of an Earlham Grove resident, in 1907

Chelmsford Chronicle 22 March 1907

2. A life of a motorist fatally injured by a council tram, in 1906, just £250

Chelmsford Chronicle 29 March 1907

3. An air accident death for an Earlham Grove resident, and early member of the RAF. N.B. initials in article below: RFC = Royal Flying Corps (a fore-runner of RAF) and HAC = Honourable Artillery Company. 

Chelmsford Chronicle, 6 July 1917

4. Another suicide

Essex Newsman 21 February 1920

5. WW2 bombings

Two of the biggest bombing hits in Forest Gate during World War 2 fell on Earlham Grove.  See here for full details. Nineteen people were killed on 6 March 1945, by a Doodlebug when nos 56 - 62 were destroyed.  Ten people were killed just six months previously, when a bomb destroyed numbers 3 - 7. See link, above, for all the names of those reported killed by those bombings.

Doodlebug of the kind that inflicted
 damage on Earlham Grove during WW2

Kenny Johnson and the Lotus Club

We've featured a brief history of  Upper Cut club, on Woodgrange Road, on this site a number of times in recent months - including our recent chat with the club's big name "owner", Billy Walker (see here).

This week we feature a less famous local impresario, but one who, without doubt, had a much greater and longer lasting influence on the music scene in Forest Gate, East London and further afield - Kenny Johnson. We caught up with Kenny recently and chatted about his Forest Gate days and in particular his greatest local legacy, the Lotus Club.

Lotus club, above Courts on right of photo,
with Xmas decs -  1983

The Club was located  above what is now the 99p stores, and existed , in one form or another, under his control as a music venue for almost 40 years. The building was completed in 1938, as a classic Burton's men's outfitters, and, as was almost standard practice, the shop had a snooker hall on the upstairs floors.

During the Second World War the premises were used as a base and bar for the Home Guard and the place where children's rations were dispensed by the Ministry of Food.


Kenny Johnson keeping an eye on the Lotus cloakroom

The Lotus Ballroom was opened on the first floor of the building in about 1952, by ballroom dance impresarios Byron and Mons Woodmansee, as the dance craze swept the country. By the end of the 50's Burton's had pulled out and the rest of the block was occupied by Courts, the furniture company.  The ballroom, however, remained unaffected.

Undated ticket for a Lotus disco, for 12.5p!

Enter, Kenny Johnson. Kenny was brought up in Old Ford, and moved to Forest Gate's Earlham Grove in the late 1950's.  He soon started to work at the Ilford Palais as a bouncer, where he met future Upper Cut club owner, Billy Walker. Like Billy, he was an amateur boxer and had been a market porter, but at Spitalfields.

When the Palais closed for a year for refurbishment, around 1960, Kenny spotted a gap in the market and opened the Jive Dive, in a house in Earlham Grove (number 193), next to the Royal Mail sorting office, in 1960, in what had previously been the Earlham Grove Dance Academy.


Kenny outside the Jive Dive,
successful enough to allow a jag

The Jive Dive originally opened as a coffee bar, but soon obtained an alcohol license.  The ground floor was converted into a bar, and the basement a dance hall. It was imaginatively decorated, for the time - with bamboo partitions, film and gig posters on the walls and with plants, real and artificial, adorning key areas.

Kenny (with beard) on the door of the
Jive Dive, with friends and relatives

Eddie Johnson, in his book Tales from the Two Puddings, says this of the place:

The Jive Dive seemed to fulfil a real need in young people; it was the time of the 'mod', and young East Enders were, in those days, the most fashion conscious in the world; rendezvousing in Forest Gate every weekend and going to our club, they would have a few drinks and then dance their socks off in the basement. There was no trouble and the customers were a lovely crowd.

The venue proved a great success, but the resultant crowds were understandably less popular with the residential neighbours, and so the brothers closed it as a venue and looked elsewhere for music promotional opportunities.

Ever a man with an eye for a show business opportunity, Kenny spread his impresario wings wider, and put on regular and very successful gigs in the upstairs of Stratford's Two Puddings pub - later run by his brother Eddie - as the Big Beat Club.

He promoted events at other local venues, such as West Ham Town Hall, The old Eagle and Child pub on Woodgrange Road and the Spread Eagle, in Tottenham, West Ham Baths (where Jerry Lee Lewis was to play for him - see photos), Shoreditch Town Hall, Dagenham, Harlow and Croydon. And then very much further afield in the UK, in Liverpool and elsewhere, where his dad and uncle would help with the management of the events.


Jerry Lee Lewis gig, promoted by
Kenny Johnson, 1964

Jerry Lee Lewis, playing I'm on Fire,
recorded the night before his West Ham
Baths gig. The video can be found on
YouTube here:

Jerry Lee, with some of Kenny's friends
and family prior to the Romford Road gig

Kenny felt there was a gap in the market for a permanent pop music venue in the Forest Gate/West Ham area. As he was having difficulties at the Jive Dive he saw that the Lotus Ballroom's success was waning, as fashions moved on, and seized an opportunity with both hands.

He bought the lease of the ballroom, and reopened it, as the Lotus Club, in 1962. He brought to it one of Britain's earliest discotheques (the original having been pioneered at the Two Puddings), and began to attract some decent bands, to provide live gigs. It soon became the most popular haunt in North East London and Essex.


A night at the Lotus, with Tommy Bruce on mike

The line-ups were amazing, and over time, certainly rivalled those of the Upper Cut, for their significance. They included the Small Faces, as Kenny was friends with Ronnie "Plonk" Lane, founder member and bassist, and the band used to rehearse at the Two Puddings, when his brother, Eddie, ran it.



'You Really Got Me' - Kinks gig for £70
- the price of the band, not the ticket!

Kinks, dedicated followers of fashion

Small Faces: rehearsed in Two Puddings,
starred at the Lotus

Kenny remembers hosting Long John Baldry and His Hoochie Coochie Men, when the future Elton John, who then played the organ, and Rod Stewart were in the line up. In a considerable coup for the Club, Kenny booked a Kinks gig for £70 the week they topped the charts with You've Really Got Me - September 1964.
 

Lotus, Stratford Express advert 3 November 1967

Kenny was well connected in music circles, which accounted for the array of talent he was able to book, and the club's success rapidly grew.  He soon felt he needed a venue that could accommodate more than the 600 or so that the Lotus regularly attracted, and spotted an opportunity when the former roller rink, on the other side of Woodgrange Road became available.  It was in the hands of liquidators, NSA investments and he prepared to re-locate.

But, just as he was about to do so, the Walker Brothers nipped in, cut a deal with the liquidators' owner, Norman Aaronshon, and the Upper Cut opened, as local competition for the Lotus. Kenny stayed put.

He says he bore the brothers no malice, and his friendship with Billy, which had gone back to the time when they sparred with each other at West Ham Boxing club, in Plaistow's Black Lion pub, remained unaffected.

Other big names continued to appear at his club, including local boys David Essex and  Joe Brown, big name British groups, like The Hollies. Pretty Things Manfred Mann, the  Animals and Searchers, along with transatlantic stars like The Temptations, Little Eva and John Lee Hooker.

Kenny's most fondly remembered gigs featured Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, and Mary Wells (which attracted his biggest ever turnout).


Lotus advert for the Club's biggest
 gig, Stratford Express 17 April 1967;

600 adoring fans flock to Kenny's
favourite gig, to hear Mary Wells' My Guy

His connections in show business extended to television and he supplied bands to appear on Ready Steady Go, and was able to attract a TV crew to his staging of Screaming Lord Sutch, at the Lotus, when he was standing for Parliament.  A clip from the gig survives on YouTube (see below) and on the walls of the venue you can see adverts for the forthcoming Kinks gig.



Screaming Lord Sutch ; Jack the Ripper
- at the Lotus Club. Video can be found on YouTube here:

The Lotus was opened 6 nights a week and could count on big crowds, including the Swinging Sixties style "celebrities" and "personalities" like West Ham footballers Bobby Moore and Geoff Hurst, as well as local boxing heroes.
The Club, however,  was hit by changing licensing regulations from the late sixties, which affected admission criteria and imposed stricter health, safety and fire escape regulations (no more 600 crowds!).  These restriction gradually adversely impacted on the type of band the Club was able to attract, and thus, on its popularity.

Stratford Express
22 December 1967

So, Kenny Johnson extended his reach and featured gambling, bingo and a regular restaurant on the premises, to compensate.  These, too, suffered as a result of changing local authority regulations, which further inhibited business for the venue.


Kenny in the 70's, when
Lotus club in full steam

The Lotus Club continued, with dwindling crowds, until the mid 1990's when Kenny reached out to a new community and offered Sabura - a West African/Portuguese music tradition, which attracted considerable Angolan audiences, and regular live radio broadcasts to Lisbon and Luanda (capital of Angola!).


The Lotus Club, in its 70's manifestation as a casino

Courts the furnishers sold the building to the Peabody Trust, who wanted to redevelop it for social housing, in 2001 (their attempt failed), and the Lotus Club was evicted  - bringing down the curtain of 40 years of live music at the venue - a remarkable feat for a small, apparently sleepy suburb of East London.

Kenny now lives by the Essex coast, is a regular visitor to Forest Gate and maintains his fitness by weekly tennis sessions, a passion he embraced half a century ago.  Recently, together with brother Eddie, he has promoted a couple of Sixties revival nights at Stratford Town Hall, putting on bands of the time, to the great delights of attendees of the time!   We will happily promote any future events they promote!

Kenny today: "Anyone for tennis?"

Footnotes We would like to thank Kenny for his time and memories during the interview we had with him, his brother Eddie, whose book Tales from the Two Puddings will stir many a memory for older regulars of his former Stratford pub, but most of all to local historian Carol Price. She is Kenny's cousin, biggest promoter, interview fixer and, most of all, supplier of many of the fascinating photos featured in this blog.  All errors are, of course, ours.

We would be delighted to hear memories from any attendees at Lotus club events, or indeed anyone of the "scared" audience, featured in the clip from the Screaming Lord Sutch gig!