On The Inky Shoulders Of Giants

An introduction from Bell House historian Sharon O’Connor:

“I know Simon and Tania won’t blow their own trumpet about the amazing event last Sunday so I am going to! 

As part of London Open House, the Stationers’ Company opened their building to the public on Sunday 22 September and in what we believe is a historic first, our volunteers Simon and Tania were actually printing in the livery hall! They spent a hectic day printing the ingenious matchbook almanacs, designed by Tania, and talking nonstop about Bell House. 

They also had a lovely display about what goes on at the house. I joined them late in the day but early enough to see that many more people now know about Bell House. 

The Stationers were of course blown away by the matchbox almanacs and by the attention Simon and Tania got - Simon has reiterated our standing invitation for them to visit Bell House. 

Bell House has a strong connection to the Stationers as the man who built the house, Thomas Wright, was a Master of the Stationers’ Livery Company and printer of almanacs himself. More on him here: https://www.bellhouse.co.uk/wright-family. 

We have two miniature almanacs from Thomas Wright’s day which can be viewed on request and at our monthly open days.”

Simon Trewin tells us more…

Bell House’s Print Room & Bindery went to The Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers on Sunday September 21st to take part in an exhibition of fine books & hand bookbinding held as part of a city-wide initiative called Open House London. We were honoured to be with the Royal Bookbindery and to make friends (and swap tips!) with them during the day and to meet the team from the charity Bounds By Veterans and to hear more about the incredible work they do teaching heritage crafts to former servicemen and women suffering from PTSD.

For our part - the brilliant Tania Hurt-Newton, my partner in print at our Bell House Print Room & Bindery, designed a beautiful miniature Matchbox Almanack containing a potted history of the Stationers’ Company relationship to this wonderful part of publishing history. We printed various pages of our Alamanack in the 17th century Great Hall itself (on top of a 300 year olf table!) and made up little kits for many of the 650 visitors to take home to assemble themselves.

We also brought along some precious Almanacks from our archive and some magnifying glasses to get people to wonder at the  highly legible typesetting of tiny metal type. People were almost disbelieving at how advanced precision engineering was 350 years and were also fascinated at the thought that Bell House was built for the  Master of the Stationers’ Company in 1777. All that connective tissue made of ink, history and ritual was awe-inspiring for us all.

It was also astonishing ‘back to the future’ moment to think that Thomas Wright had very probably stood on exactly the same spot, on the SAME FLOORBOARDS no less, where I set up our stall with Tania and where we inked up our presses.  I even wondered out loud to the current Master - Paul Wilson, as we presented him with a copy of our Matchbox Almanac, as to whether we might have been the only people ever to have been allowed to print in the Great Hall. We are all going to do some research on that front and will report back...

AND COURSE we couldn’t resist being photographed in front of the stained-glass window that shows William Caxton with his press and his assistant Wynkyn De Worde. We liked the thought of WC and WdW looking down jealously on our humble but brilliant Adana 8x5 SELF-INKING press.

A great day out and the beginning, I hope, of a deeper relationship between my Livery company and a rather special Georgian mansion in Dulwich Village… 

Bell House Autumn 2024 Newsletter

Welcome to our second Autumn seasonal newsletter. In this edition you’ll find out what’s been going on in the Gardens, the Pottery Studio and the Print Room and Bindery. The volunteers have worked hard to create the success stories you will read below. We thought you’d enjoy hearing about the detail of how it’s all been achieved and celebrate the wonder and magic that is Bell House.

---

Bell House Garden - such busy bees….

We started 2024 with ambitious plans for the year and the pace of development has been pleasingly rapid. Our growing number of volunteers have all bought into our vision of sustainability and habitat variety and are instrumental in making it all happen.

The biggest visible change is the new, nectar rich, mixed flower border. Roughly sixty square metres of turf was lifted, much of it being relayed elsewhere in the garden. We received a grant from the London Beekeepers' Association and used it to buy many young plug plants. These were grown-on in the polytunnel and have planted up the new pollinator bed. Recently the association came to visit and were very pleased with what we’d achieved! 

The polytunnel is now full of tomatoes and chillies and will prove very useful for overwintering young and more tender plants.

We have built a compost and pot store for potting up stock plants grown from seed and cuttings. Our revamped composting system, of more carefully shredding woody material and layering in grass and clippings, as well as torn cardboard is working well. With judicious watering and turning in situ it’s getting much hotter and breaking down far quicker. We hope to buy-in far less compost going forward.

Our open days have been well attended, adding income and attracting new volunteers. We have also sold a few plants, all proceeds helping to improve the garden.

Jarek has been working hard on our new gardener’s pavillion in the Pickwick garden. We hope this will be fully usable by the autumn, giving us a base to meet and plan, as well as shelter from the rain.  A gardeners' reference library will be a useful additional asset. Our beautiful new tool and potting shed is up and just needs a little bit more fitting out before coming fulling operational.

Recently, a new round terrace has been completed near the bottom of the main garden. Pleasantly, it catches the evening sun and will be planted up soon. We have plans to landscape the main entrance by the pottery. This will tidy up the area and give us an opportunity to plant attractive drought resistant perennials and herbs. The south facing bed of the walled garden will be sorted out and permanently planted and the meadow areas improved. The current tabled potting area will be removed and more fruit trees planted. There are many areas of the garden that still need our attention and plenty of work for our growing clan of committed and enthusiastic volunteers.  There is so very much to look forward to. 

The gardens are opened every first Saturday of the month - do visit, wander at your leisure, talk to our volunteers about the work undertaken or find out about opportunities to get involved if you’re interested.

Author: Martin Cook
Photo: Sara Lloyd

---

Bell House Pottery - what an amazing success…

We have completed our first full year of operation. It’s been an amazing year. Since September 2023, we have run 129 courses attended by 870 students who have made several thousands of pots which are now (mostly) sitting proudly on the shelf at home or doing good service in the kitchen or dining room. 

Student feedback has been so positive. Students say they love the calm environment of the studio, the view of the garden and the clear teaching. Many students have returned for several courses – building their skills term by term.

Our main offerings have been our 2-hour taster sessions and our 6-week courses, which have nearly all been sold out.  We have also experimented with weekend workshops on Portrait Modelling, Throwing Big, Christmas Tea Lights and one Saturday and Sunday weekend workshop led by visiting teacher Claire Spindler on Throwing Bottles.

We have also extended Bell House reach into the community providing free ‘Let’s Clay Together’ events for the St Barnabas Ukrainian Youth Group, Kingswood Arts, Crawford School and for Southwark GP receptionists.  One participant commented: ‘That was the best two hours I’ve spent in years.’

Looking forward, we are intending to repeat similar courses for the coming year. The first half term is almost fully booked. However we are also introducing two brand new courses: 

i. A 4-week Throwing on the Wheel course for teenagers (13-17). This takes place on Saturday mornings from 21st September to 12th October

ii. A 2-day Life Sculpture workshop 19th to 20th October which follows on from Ben Swift’s Portrait Modelling course last year. 

During the year we also hope to see the completion of the patio area behind the studio. The garage store was removed last term which opened up the view of the garden and once funding has been secured, the re-landscaping of the area behind the pottery is going to transform our view through the studio picture window and also improve disabled access to the studio. So much to look forward to. 

While we employ professional paid teachers and technicians, it’s a core group of volunteers who have looked after everything else: marketing, finance, administration and much more.  If you would like to join us (and be eligible for discounted places on our courses!) get in touch with [email protected].  

Author: Jim Belben
Photo: Nicki Dowey

---

Uncovering the Secret History….

Whilst we’ve been applying the final touches to the new-build Pottery Studio in the Lodge, we’ve also been busy down in the basement of Bell House. This latest project has involved lorries delivering strange heavy lumps of metal to be lowered down the concrete stairs by teams of skilled men using chains and ropes.

Bell House is thrilled to announce an exciting new addition that is sure to captivate enthusiasts of traditional craftsmanship and vintage printing techniques. Two of the rooms in the basement are being transformed into what is being named the ‘Bell House Print Room & Bindery’. A home to a treasure trove of vintage letterpress equipment and book-binding machinery, including an exquisite 1860s Albion printing press, donated by the Type Archive in Stockwell and a whole suite of book-binding equipment from Dulwich College.

Individually these elements are things of wonder but put together they will lift what we can do. The joys of setting up the Bell House Print Room and Bindery are numerous. 

Firstly it has enabled us to spend more time with the wonderful archivist Sharon O’Connor and to feed off her infectious enthusiasm for BH’s history. Secondly it has brought us joy at the sight of people’s eyes lighting up when they first see the newly-assembled Aladdin’s cave of inky delights. Thirdly the warmth of creativity that erupts during our bookbinding and printing workshops is utterly heart-warming and, finally it has enabled us to become a custodian not only for the heritage crafts we are helping to keep alive, but also custodians of the printing equipment itself.

When one enters through the Bindery and admires the panoply of bookbinding equipment generously donated by Dulwich College and then one turns a corner - and then everyone STOPS at this point - usually causing an instant bottleneck in the narrow doorway. It isn’t the sight of the 1930’s Adana handpresses or the 1950’s Showcards presses, impressive as they are, BUT they do not have the impact and ‘wow factor’ of our centrepiece, the jewel in our crown - our 1860’s Hopkinson Cope Albion printing press. 

Our press, still unnamed, came to us when the Type Archive in Stockwell was sadly closing its doors. We were told it had gone to Stockwell from a printing firm called Clowes in the 1990’s but little more than that. There were at least a hundred years of missing history and no end of internet searches brought anything more to the surface – especially as there appeared to be no serial number anywhere on the vast metal beast that might help us.

But then some magic happened – Sharon spotted a partially obscured name on a sticker on the oar-shaped ‘rounce’ handle and I could see from the gleam in her eyes that THE HUNT WAS ON! Within a few short weeks she had tracked down almost the complete history of the press from when it was bought new to where it stands today. Apparently our vintage press had not only survived being in a bombed-out factory, lived through a terrible fire and possibly even flooding at one point. There is, no doubt, much more still to come to light and Sharon, Tania and are excited by what tales there are still to be told.

So while we continue our research do come and see us and meet the press on the first Saturday of every month when the gardens are open or, even better, book onto one of our courses and actually get to use it….but when pulling your first print do think of the thousands of hands before you that have added to its history…

Author and Photo: Simon Trewin and Tania Hurt-Newton

---

Bell House News from the USA…

Dating back to 1767, Bell House has a long and fascinating history with a surprisingly long reach! 

Recently, an American professor contacted us. He is a historian of capitalism in the American Civil War and had come across our website because he is researching Charles Gowan who grew up in Dulwich and moved to Bell House in 1873, living here for more than 20 years with his wife, five children and a large retinue of staff.

Charles Gowan’s firm, Gowan & Marx, played a crucial role in financing American infrastructure such as railways and even had an important railway engine named after them. 

American states were ideologically averse to taxation so they borrowed money to fund the building of these transport links, hoping to then benefit from the economic growth that would follow. 

State indebtedness to firms like Gowan & Marx grew to huge proportions and then came crashing down as the states could not make their interest payments. 

Professor Thomson told us that while many states tried to improve their financial positions, some doubled down on their borrowing much to the horror of international owners of the debt, like Charles Gowan. 

Professor Thomson was hoping we might have some Gowan family’ papers which would help shed light on this era. While we do not, our historian Sharon O’Connor was able to tell him that Gowan banked with Smith, Payne, Smith, now owned by NatWest, so the NatWest archive might be able to help him. 

She also put him in touch with a direct descendant of Charles Gowan who is checking family attics for relevant papers. We Have invited him to visit Bell House the next time he is in England which he said he would love to do.

Author and Photo: Sharon O’Connor

Bell House Pottery - The First Year - A Volunteer’s View

It’s August. The first year of the pottery’s life is completed, and it is closed and quiet for a month whilst tutors have a well-earned rest.  

I say ‘quiet’ but I doubt it has been quiet at all. There is always something going on at the pottery - work never seems to stop. I’m sure tutors are, in fact, getting ready for September, and I see that a lovely new forecourt has been installed since classes stopped for the summer.

I started as a volunteer before the building of the studio was even completed so I have seen it transformed from a roofless structure to the beautiful, airy space it has become. There are further developments to look forward to all the time, such as new garden planting nearby and outdoor seating to enjoy in the future months.

My role, which I fell into almost by accident, has turned out to be interesting and rewarding. Becoming part of the Bell House Pottery Committee has meant working with a talented and committed group which believes in the importance and value of individual creativity, and in providing opportunities for people to be involved in a practical and personal way. Through the bursary places and the ‘Let’s clay together’ programme there are free or low-cost courses available to people in the community who could not otherwise afford it. I have found the effort and commitment of those who envisaged the project and are now leading it, very impressive.

The tasks I have helped with might sound mundane in some ways: taking minutes at the monthly planning meetings; putting forward a volunteer’s point of view; being an extra adult helper at some classes; helping in practical ways or at open events. However the volunteer role has given me the opportunity to think about things new to me, and to meet an entirely new set of people. I’ve even enjoyed mopping the floors after a few particularly messy courses, thanks to the friendly conversations with tutors and participants while clearing up is going on.  As a former teacher, I’ve particularly liked seeing young people having great fun while trying a new skill which is not available in every school. 

Highlights of the year for me have been the opening of the pottery studio itself, the enthusiasm of people for the place and the courses, the hundreds of visitors during Dulwich Open House, and the Christmas events and party. 

I’ve also sampled some of the courses myself. First a two hour taster session, which many people reading this will have tried. I went along with two friends. There was much laughter at the time and even more when we collected our pots - they were tiny - but at least they looked as if they were intended to be pots!

Then I tried two evening sessions involving using slip and decoration techniques. I managed to make some small but passable pots. I began to think that some of my mother’s genes had been passed down to me. Pottery was her hobby and consequently I never thought to try it out. Encouraged by my first ‘magnificent’ pieces, I booked taster sessions for my family as a Christmas present. However they wanted me to come too. We all know the expression “Pride comes before a fall”.  My nephew seemed naturally talented and threw several successful pieces first time. I could not produce a single pot that day! They would all have gone into Brymer Jones’ reject bucket, so I saved him the trouble and threw them in myself. But it was a great Christmas present for us all to enjoy together.

After such dismal failure will I go back again?

Even as a beginner, there is something absorbing, fascinating and even therapeutic in the process of handling clay. Sometimes the pots seem to want to build themselves, it feels natural, but that day the clay seemed to resist my efforts to create anything at all recognisable, except a mess.

I have to go back to face the challenge.

I want two vaguely similar soup bowls by the end of this year.

Jacqui Pick, Aug 2024

Bell House is sponsoring a football coach at Peckham Town FC

Gustavo Oliveira, our sponsored coach at Peckham Town FC.

Through a generous donation, Bell House is able to sponsor a football coach at Peckham Town Football Club, an entirely volunteer-run football club just around the corner from Bell House.

Peckham was founded in 1982 by Bryan Hall, and now has 28 teams from junior to senior. The men’s first team coach is ex-England and Arsenal footballer Mary Phillip, who is the highest ranked female coach of a men’s team in the country!

There are a lot of exciting things going on at the club. They have a partnership with the Rio Ferdinand Foundation to create opportunities for young people in Peckham to enhance their skills in loads of different areas, from coaching to managing social media channels, club finances and events.

Peckham Town does a huge amount of work in the community and run great campaigns around Black Lives Matter and Black History Month; check them out @peckhamtownfc on Twitter and Instagram.

 Over lockdown, Peckham Town was unfortunately the victim of vandalism of the pitch and clubhouse facilities, with people breaking in at night starting fires, leaving huge amounts of rubbish and mess. Peckham Town put out a call to help on social media, and volunteers arrived in swarms to get the pitch back to match-ready condition and make the facilities safe for all the teams to train on.

This sense of community runs all the way through Peckham Town, just like Bell House and the club is committed to developing opportunities for everyone to play, watch and enjoy the many aspects of football.

 Bell House is sponsoring Gustavo Oliveira (@coachgusoliveira on Instagram), assistant coach for the Peckham men's first team. This is a great collaboration for Bell House given our whole ethos is championing creative education and lifelong learning for all – that is certainly what Gustavo is doing up on Dulwich Common. Gustavo will be combining his role at Peckham with his full-time job at Arsenal Academy so he is going to be busy.

Bell House is proud to sponsor Gustavo and is looking forward to supporting Peckham Town FC this season!

https://linktr.ee/peckhamtownfc

Bell House Summer 2024 Newsletter

Welcome to our Summer newsletter - ‘our call out to help out’ edition!

---

A Call Out to Newsletter Readers….

This is a Call Out to Help Out to all our Newsletter Readers.

On June 8th, Bell House will be running The Big Help Out Open Day. The aim of the open day is to welcome more visitors to Bell House on the day itself, and to encourage visitors to become regular supporters. And of course, we want to spread the word about all the wonderful things that go on at the house.

In particular, we'd love to reach more local people who sadly don't know very much about everything that goes on at the house or how they can participate, get involved and generally lend their support.

We’re holding this rather special Big Help Out Open Day at Bell House on Saturday June 8th from 10am to 1.00pm with Free Entry for all visitors.

Our open day coincides with the second King’s Big Help Out Weekend. Countrywide, more than seven million took part in this last year.

As King Charles III says:"Whoever and wherever you are, each of us will have a chance to play a small part in helping transform our communities for the benefit of all".

As a newsletter recipient, could we please ask you to bring along a local friend or neighbour to visit Bell House, maybe for the first time?  Our volunteers will show visitors around the house and garden, explaining our history and our aims and what is on offer. There is no need to book and no entry charge.

With your help, we'd love to double 2023’s visitor numbers on this, our second Big Help Out Open Day.

In addition to encouraging more visitors and newsletter readers, we also need more helpers. Bell House is dependent on its volunteers to run everything that goes on here for its community. (Our Big Help Out day is being run totally by volunteers.)

Volunteer roles are varied and can suit most people’s interests and available free time - just one hour can make a big difference. Some areas in which we'd love more support include: help with general marketing; social media; distributing posters/flyers; running an event; gardening; photography; catering for Open House/Garden events and so much more.

Interestingly, a recent poll found that nearly one in two 18-24 year olds want to volunteer. So if you have a child or grandchild in that age group, maybe you could tempt them to come with you - there will be refreshments available! But everyone of any age is most welcome.

Bell House is proud of the role it plays in the local community - it’s thriving but we can always do more. We’d love more people to sign up for our newsletter so they know what’s going on and can plan a future visit - to enjoy an event, learn a new skill, join a class - maybe even run a new class or sign up as a volunteer, but always to feel a part of our community.

We appreciate it is a bit short notice, but if you can spare a little time to bring a neighbour or South East London friend on Saturday, June 8th 10.00am to 1.00pm, our volunteers would be so very pleased to welcome you. 

If you can't make the date, you can still help out by asking a friend to sign up to the Bell House newsletter.

Signing off with a ‘BIG THANK YOU FOR HELPING OUT’.

---

An interview with Bell House Artist-in Residence, Atalanta Xanthe - her first 6 months

1. You’ve been living in and working in Bell House for 6 months - what are your 3 most inspiring moments so far? 

Walking in the garden on the first sunny day, and seeing how many hundreds of leaf shapes there were - it was like opening a thesaurus and realising the word you wanted to replace has thousands of synonyms, each of them brilliant. 

It's not an individual moment, but in general, watching people express their own style while working in my art class is so exciting. Everyone starts out with the same instructions, but ends up with this beautiful chimera of the prompt I've given them, and the artistic tendencies they have inside them. 

Also, during Dulwich Festival/Artists Open House I met a local composer, and we had such a great and energising conversation about theatre and art - we are now in the early stages of planning an installation together! 

2. What impact do you think Bell House and its community has had on the way you approached and created your new series? 

I think it's made me feel more empowered to make the work I want to make, and not to worry about the art world so much. Partly because Bell House feels so much like its own independent world - the galleries of Chelsea and Fitzrovia feel (and are) quite far away. 

It's also been special watching different people, especially children, come into the studio and look at the work. One of my favourite interactions has been watching a kid come over and try and figure out the story behind each painting I'm making and ask me questions about the pictures - I didn't realise before how important it was for me to think of myself as a storyteller. 

Being in such a big and old house creates this special kind of concentration and calmness when I'm in the studio, especially late at night when it's silent. I've been so much more productive than I was this time last year. 

3. Every fortnight you run a Saturday morning creative workshop. Everyone who is lucky enough to get a ticket loves what you do. What do you think is the secret to your success?

Everyone makes art as a child and I think every adult still wants to - even if that interest has been crushed by a fear of not being good enough, or not knowing where to start. I try to make my classes really encouraging and approachable, but also packed with teaching.

And for those who haven't been able to get a ticket, my class usually has one or two no-shows, so you are welcome to show up on the day and we can probably squeeze you in! 

4. What are you planning for the second 6 months of your residency?

So many things! I have a solo exhibition I'm preparing for in October with my gallery Alice Black. I want to run some plein-air painting workshops in the garden in July or August. 

There's still so much for me to do in terms of widening the outreach for the classes I'm running; I've been talking with two local women's refuges about doing partnerships with them, so I'd love to get that up and running. 

I'm really excited about this collaboration I've started with local composer Pete Wyer - we are hoping to do a small presentation of my paintings and the soundscapes inspired by them in late August, so it will be nose to the grindstone.  

5. Rumour has it that you had an unusual morning routine when you lived in the States. What was it and have you been able to carry on here in Dulwich? 

I used to start the day with an hour or two of wrestling, at a Brazilian jiu-jitsu gym - I loved it so much! Nothing wakes you up like trying to escape a sweaty headlock. 

Now, I go for a morning walk in Dulwich parks most days. Dulwich is so beautiful and calming. When I lived in Brooklyn, I used to wake up in my bedroom (a large sofa cushion on the living room floor) and then cycle through heavy traffic to my gym then studio, counting how many dead rats I passed.  

Now, alas, I descend from my beautiful bedroom to have tea in the garden and watch foxes, crows and magpies gambol around the roses - not a headlock in sight.

One must suffer for one's art.

---

A Call Out to Instagram Users….

Are you on Instagram? Please support our Call Out to Help Out by promoting Bell House's Instagram account @bellhousedulwich to help us increase our followers.

Instagram reaches 2.4 billion people, and this number is growing daily. To put this into context, 24,000 users represents just 0.0001% and Bell House currently has a following of just over 2,800 - about 0.000012% of all users. With your help, we'd love to be able to double that number.

However many followers you have ... every little helps ... as Tesco has been telling us for years. 

How can you help? Whenever you see a Bell House post online, please ‘like’, ‘comment’, follow’ and ‘share’ the post with your Instagram followers to help spread the word about Bell House and to increase local awareness of everything that goes on here.

It really is as simple as that.

And you’d become a social media volunteer for Bell House at the same time!

Thank you.

---

Residents in Residence  -  the Bell House Podcast

Image: Original deeds showing plan of Bell House courtesy of Dulwich College Archive

Bell House has been home to many wealthy individuals and their families over the centuries - immigrants, self-made entrepreneurs, reformers and philanthropists among them. The lives of Bell House's residents chart the country’s social and economic changes through time.

In the Podcast The Residents of Bell House, local historian Sharon O’Connor tells their often surprising stories.  Discover which future Lord Mayor of London, and son of a pastry cook, built the house in 1767 and which resident was responsible for the first ever department store (and no, it wasn’t Mr Selfridge).

You’ll also hear about wanton drunkenness, teenage high jinx, blended families, patriotic grief and theosophy (we had to look this up!) and the strange tale of the man who kept his coffin behind his chair in order to be forever reminded of the inevitability of death.  

Visit our website to listen to the Podcast and you can also view the History section to find out more about the many families that have taken up residence in Bell House.

Just one to whet your appetite. Sydney Fordham was a butcher in Rye Lane, Peckham. Born in Islington in June 1885, he went on to work as a Smithfield meat market clerk and in 1909 married Ella Gertrude Parsons. 

Sydney and Ella set up house together in Elmwood Road before moving to 58 Chestnut Road in Norwood. They moved into Bell House with their two children, Leslie Sydney Victor and Eileen Ella in 1924, with an annual rent of £225.

Whilst living in Bell House, they rented the Lodge to the families of two of their servants: the Wells in the top flat and the Riches in the lower flat, for 15 shillings a week each, as well as letting a bungalow in the garden to the son of the gardener at Dulwich Picture Gallery.

Sydney had a butcher shop at 228 Rye Lane where Leslie later joined him. However, the Fordhams didn’t stay at Bell House for long, as they left in 1925, moving on to Beckenham.