I was recently fortunate enough to secure a bijou tour of No.4 Princelet Street, which many (after seeing the above photograph) may be aware of. It is truly a fascinating environment and its owner, Robert Shackleton, was a fascinating guy to talk to.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the house, you may well have seen it on TV. Only last week, it appeared on the talent show 'I'll Do Anything' when the contestants trying for the part of Nancy in a new version of Oliver! spent a night there. It was also part of a massive wind-up on a Friday Night show with David Tennant. Funnily enough, this entertaining piece was filmed the night before my arrival.
When I got there, Robert could only give me 30 minutes of his time as he was about to have a meeting and there was a guy from the BBC taking measurements. It is a successful media concern, hosting TV and movie filming as well as fashion shoots. It is an incredibly atmospheric place and I don't believe there is a single perpendicular angle in the entire house. It is all warped and creaking, void of furniture, save for the odd table and scruffy sofa - however, once the TV crews get there, anything extant is swiftly put into storage so that props can be added. It is in effect a blank canvas.
It was built in the early 1700's and is where the brewer Ben Truman was born. When Robert bought it in 1987 (with a business partner), it had been owned by two Jewish brothers since the 1930s and they had only lived in two rooms. It was pretty let go and apart from complete rewiring, the house has not been restored like other properties nearby.
Robert was very candid about his feelings on the area and how it had changed since the 1980s. It has always had an edge, he declared, but now that edge is derived from City slickers and clubbers pissing up against the doors on a friday night. The clubs and the drugs. He doesn't actually live there these days, but he had fond memories of some of the old Jewish characters that had survived in the area, including Mr Katz on Brick Lane, the old man who sold string and who only stopped operating in the 1990s. Rachel Lichtenstein's book 'On Brick Lane' has fascinating recollections of Mr Katz (she knew him after all).*
4 Princelet Street appears in BBC period dramas such as Bleak House and was even featured in Basic Instinct 2 (Ooh er). It is truly a fascinating house and I was so grateful to Mr Shackleton for giving up his time.
*The Museum in Docklands exhibition 'Jack the Ripper and the East End' features a talk on June 22nd with Lichtenstein, Iain Sinclair and Bill Fishman. I'll have to say something about that!
