Shortlisted for the HWA Non-Fiction Crown 2018
Praise for Pie and Mash down the Roman Road
'Filled with hearty goodness and packed together with care, this book will go down a treat'
Evening Standard
'Her empathetic ability to inhabit vanished streets and catch authentic voices - at a point when you wonder how much longer they will be around - is rich and compelling'
Spectator
'A shop front onto the past'
Mail on Sunday
'An accomplished social history... lively and absorbing'
Who Do You Think You Are ? magazine
'An emotional encounter with Bow's very tumultuous history'
Roman Road LDN
What readers are saying about Pie and Mash down the Roman Road
Book of the Year contender! *****
An utter delight of a book *****
One of the best books Ive read period *****
A lip-smacking serving of East London life on a plate *****
Spellbinding *****
'Honest and colourful' *****
Real and human, full of stories of lives and loves and war and more *****
Full of surprises *****
Magnificent *****
A dreamy, evocative, concise yet elaborate, and rich and nuanced paean to, well, life! *****
'A fascinating read' *****
A vivid slice of East End social history and so enjoyable to read *****
Had me hooked from the first few pages *****
Comprehensive, fascinating and quite beautiful *****
One of the most beautiful, rewarding, warm works Ive experienced in a long time *****
An addictive read nigh-on impossible to put down *****
Absorbing... cant recommend enough *****
A story that will move you, stay with you, and you will recommend to everyone *****
In short: its brilliant *****
Also by Melanie McGrath
NON-FICTION
Silvertown
The Long Exile
Hopping
FICTION
Motel Nirvana
The Boy in the Snow
White Heat
The Bone Seeker
Give Me the Child
The Guilty Party
Pie and Mash Down the Roman Road
100 years of love and life in one East End market
Melanie McGrath
www.tworoadsbooks.com
First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Two Roads
An imprint of John Murray Press
An Hachette UK company
Copyright Melanie McGrath 2018
The right of Melanie McGrath to be identified as the Author of the
Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any
means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be
otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that
in which it is published and without a similar condition being
imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 473 64198 3
Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
www.tworoadsbooks.com
www.hodder.co.uk
With gratitude to everyone who shared their stories and in memory of Alfie Burns, 19452016, and Ted Lewis, 19292017, true cockney gentlemen.
Everything needs to change so
everything can stay the same
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard
Contents
Chapter 1
Ive had many a curry in a hurry,
Many a rabbit out of habit.
But the one thing that still makes me squeal
Is a pie, some mash and a jellied eel.
T. Rundall
A middle-aged man walks off a flight from Sydney, gets into a minicab and asks to be taken to Kellys eel, pie and mash shop on the Roman Road in Londons East End. Hes lived in Australia for thirty years and thinks of himself as an Aussie now, but ever since the plane left Sydney hes been dreaming of his first taste of eel jelly, which, in spite of everything, remains the flavour of home.
On the other side of London, where the city borders Essex, a pregnant woman makes her way on to the Central Line, heading for Mile End station. From there shell take the 339 bus to Ford Road then walk the couple of minutes down the Roman to Kellys, where she will order a two and two, two pies and two helpings of mash, with liquor. Though she seldom eats pie and mash these days (there arent many pie and mash shops in Essex), shes had cravings for a two and two throughout her pregnancy and thinks it might be something to do with wanting to connect the baby in her belly to a heritage she barely remembers but in some undefined way continues to live by.
A few miles to the south of the pregnant woman a man is released from Brixton prison in the clothes he was wearing when he came in ten years before, carrying a travel warrant and a 46 discharge grant. Hes not sure where hell spend the night but before he even thinks about that theres something else he must do. At Brixton Tube he gets on the Victoria Line, changes at Oxford Circus and heads east on the Central Line to Mile End station. From there its ten minutes walk to Kellys in Bow. In the decade hes been inside, the district has changed so much it is almost unrecognisable. Its market day on the Roman Road. Among the traders are a few familiar faces Rashid with the unpronounceable surname, Tracy and her mum but its mostly strangers from outside the area. The man recalls the time you could buy anything you could name here; meat, fruit, haberdashery, even eels. Now, its almost entirely clothes, mostly cabbage or overstock. On the Roman, where the old grocers used to be, a caf selling fancy coffee and overpriced toasties disguised as paninis is crowded with beardy young men and skinny girls. The old printers, Arber & Sons, has closed and the ironmongers has become a cycle shop. Opposite the library, which is now called an ideas store, theres a Tesco Metro. A new market has set up in the car park beside Ace cars, selling things the man cant imagine ever needing. Here the toasties are 6.50 a pop. For an additional fifty pence the man can get double pie, mash and liquor, though its not really about the price. The moment he enters Kellys eel, pie and mash shop the man is reminded of everything he has lost, of everything he has, and of the things that might one day make their way back to him. The cost of a plate of pie and mash matters less to him than its value, or rather, values . Its the values represented by pie and mash that have drawn him here.
For a hundred years the Kelly family has been serving beef pies and mashed potato and parsley liquor, and jellied and hot stewed eels to the people of Bow, Mile End and Bethnal Green (and further afield). And for more than a century generations of East Enders (from all parts of the world) have grown up on what has come to be known as the Londoners meal. As the fields east of the Old Gate (now Aldgate) were turned into market gardens and as huddled terraces divided by railway lines were built on those gardens and then sandwiched between factories; as the docks opened to the south and canals were dug and Victoria Park was carved from gravel pits and land too poor to grow on; as terraces crumbled or were bombed or slum-cleared and replaced by council estates and tower blocks; as the docks closed and tower blocks were pulled down and affordable flats built in their place and the factories converted into artists studios and some very unaffordable flats; as a velodrome and athletics track appeared alongside more unaffordable flats on the marshes, and houseboats collected on to the canals where once horses towed timber barges, and West Ham United Football Club moved its stadium to the old Olympic Park during all this time Kellys has continued to bake minced beef pies with rough puff pastry tops and a dough base and serve them with mashed potatoes and parsley liquor and with hot or jellied eels on the side.
