Shop owner Gill Jones outside The Allotment. Pic: Gill Jones

New Cross residents have a new place to shop for fruit and vegetables as The Allotment, a greengrocers and deli, opens this Monday.

The Allotment, 318 New Cross Road, will open its doors to the public at 10am on October 24 after months of preparation and planning by owner Gill Jones, 42, from Lewisham Way.

Jones decided to create The Allotment after receiving inspiration from a TV news story about greengrocers shown a year ago.

Jones, who worked previously as a gardener, said: “I felt there was no decent place to buy fruit and veg in the immediate area and after much research into existing markets and shops decided there was still a gap in the market for something like this.”

She found the vacant shop on New Cross Road shortly after and decided to take the plunge with the support of her partner Paul.

The Allotment will be stocking a range of products with the main emphasis on fresh fruit and vegetables sourced from Covent Garden market.

There will also be a selection of bread, juices, fresh eggs, biscuits, flowers, cheeses, cooked and cured meats and, what Jones described as, ‘really yummy‘ ice-cream.

Jones explained that the key to The Allotment is being able to respond directly to customer demand: “We want to provide a proper service for people, to interact with them and give them what they really want…We want to create something that’s accessible and affordable for everybody.”

And Jones has been really pleased with the response to the shop so far: “The feedback has been so encouraging, people stop and look through the shop window every few minutes. It’s really exciting!”

“With the London Particular opening and the New Cross House being refurbished it feels like New Cross is changing and it’s just nice to be part of that change,” she added.

Opening times for The Allotment (subject to change):

Monday-Friday 10am-7pm

Saturday 10am-5pm

Sunday 10am- 3am

Visit their facebook or twitter pages for more information.

http://twitter.com/#!/The_AllotmentNC

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Allotment/252763211426997

Laura Henson and Vicky Flores

44 Frocks is to open a pop-up shop in Wapping at the end of the month. Managing director Laura Henson, is teaming up with a new business partner, Vicky Flores, who she met on Twitter, to open up a pop up boutique for a limited period of time at 29 Thomas More Street next to St Katherine’s docks.

Henson started her trade by organising frock parties at east end locations such as Tower Hill and Broadway market. Women can request an invite to a 44 frock party and a guest list of 30 people are served tea and cakes while the 44 dresses are presented.

Alternatively customers can host private parties in their own homes with the same concept of a group of friends, 44 dresses and drinks and snacks.

The idea is that guests can relax, try on and buy, original designer dresses such as Marc Jacobs and Nicole Farhi at much lower prices, giving the working fashionista the chance to treat herself and socialise- without emptying out her bank account.

Henson said that “most of the dresses are brand new, with a few vintage choices.”

The new boutique, which has been organised by Henson and business partner Vicky Flores, will keep the  basic idea of 44 Frocks.

The plan is : “to have an apartment feel, with nibbles still being available,” says Henson. This will give a relaxing atmosphere and will also open the business to more people wanting to get their hands on classic dresses at lower prices.

The difference between the new shop and the original 44 Frocks is that the shop will be open all day and to many more customers. More than 44 dresses are going to be up for grabs as well as jewellery and accessories. For the first time boys will also be welcome. Laura is also hoping to take her exclusive pop up boutique to Notting Hill in July.

Seema Hakim

Coffee shop manager Stephen Heppell at Gallery Cafe. Photo: Rhiannon Bury

In a quiet back street in Bethnal Green lies the Gallery Café, a small, friendly
establishment that doubles as a unique art space. Manager Stephen Heppell has been in charge for a year, and works alongside the team from St Margaret’s House Settlement, a charity that provided practical initiatives, projects and activities to serve and enable the local community.

He explains: “All the food is vegan or vegetarian, and all the profit goes to charity. We have a real variety of people coming in, with a young trendy crowd at weekends.

“We want to be a space for the community, not just a café. We’ve got some great things going on: a free knitting club, poetry nights, and the art on the walls changes every month. Wednesday and Friday nights are music nights.

The café is also part of Time Out’s First Thursdays, when it opens its doors to people to view art out of hours. Almost all of the activities that it facilitates are free.

“It’s a really friendly place to come, we have lots of regulars and there’s always a nice community atmosphere. It opened originally ten years ago and its always been a really friendly place to come: it’s not about making loads of money, it’s about bringing people together.”

Sarah Schulman, a student who is a regular at the café said: “It’s good food, there’s free internet and it’s a lovely light room. I usually end up staying all afternoon.”

The Gallery Café is open seven days a week, until late when there is something on.

www.stmargaretshouse.org.uk/gallery-cafe/gallery-cafe

020 8980 2092

Photo: Marita Svartdal

Flowers are not the only things to meet the eye when walking into vibrant Deptford flower shop Fanny Ford of London.

A statue of Buddha, home-made jewelry and gifts are placed among the plants, and owner Gillian Ford’s dog Ellie welcomes the customers as they enter. “Most people come here for flowers, but some add jewellery or gifts to their purchase when coming into the shop,” Ford explains.

Fanny Ford of London provides services for weddings, funerals, birthdays and all kinds of occasions. The shop also has contracts with pubs and an array of different businesses.

“Most of my customers are returning customers. Being a florist very much depends on word of mouth,” Ford says, adding that over the seven years of running Fanny Ford she has received no more than two complaints.

Fanny Ford is located in Tanners Hill, a recently renovated street. It is part of one of the oldest buildings in the area, with a small garden in the back yard where Ford grows her flowers.

When walking down New Cross Road, the little flower shop looks very appealing to the eye with its colourful appearance. “In fact, several local tour guides take tourists over to see this place!” she says.

When designing flower creations, Ford finds inspiration in nature. “Flowers are such a joy to work with,” she says, explaining that she enjoys the natural aspect of her work. Ford says she is quite a spiritual person. “Sometimes when I have spent time creating something I suddenly think – how did this happen? It sort of feels like I got help along the way.”

Having previously worked with drink and drug addicts, Ford eventually became tired of the job’s depressing atmosphere. She decided to make a complete change of career and opened her own flower and gift shop in 2003. “It was draining working with the addicts. I wanted to do something creative instead,” she says.

Ford now works as a volunteer three nights a week helping friends and families of alcohol and drug addicts to deal with their situation. As for Fanny Ford of London, she hopes to continue running the flower shop in the future even though she considers herself ‘probably the worst businesswoman in the world.’ “But I don’t really care – I’m happy,” she says with a smile.

A Gold. Photo: Ewan-M @ flickr

Philip Cundall is a man who is very proud of his heritage – at least when it comes to traditional British food.

He likes it so much that when he got the chance to run A Gold, a charming little delicatessen in Spitalfields, full of old-fashioned British delicacies, he did not need to think twice.

Standing in front of the shop at 42 Brushfield Street gives one a feeling of nostalgia. A provisions store in the Victorian mould, it is full of old-fashioned sweeties, cakes, pickles and soda.

Through the small windows you can see an array of delicious offerings, and a handwritten sign inviting you in.

The façade looks as if it hasn’t changed in a hundred years, and its traditional style gives the atmosphere Mr  Cundall wants. His motto is to be ‘a village shop in the City’ – a piece of old England in the heart of London.

“At my shop, people can buy exceptional traditional food of Britain – food you usually don’t find in supermarkets,” he says. “Our food is from local farmers and small suppliers around this island.”

Despite his firmly nostalgic outlook, Mr Cundall has made some concessions to changing tastes. “Our store has changed a little, as people are more interested in takeaway now than they were before,” he notes. So they now offer different sandwiches to take away every day of the week.

The sandwiches are freshly made every day, from their own oven. “People love them: we have a lot of regular customers coming here in their lunch break,” he says.

At weekends there are a lot of tourists visiting the area, and many of them simply cannot resist dropping by this charming store. “I like it when tourists visit. They are usually very interested in our products, and ask a lot of questions. And that is something I like the most about this job, the direct contact with customers.”

“This place originally opened in 2000, but I took it over a few years ago,” Mr Cundall says. “I really hope that there will continue to be a market for traditional British food in the future, so I can run the shop many years from now.”

“I’m really proud of this shop. We get a lot of good responses about our food, and the shop in general – people like our one-of-a-kind store,” he explains with a smile.

A Gold, 42 Brushfield Street, Spitalfields, E1 6AG. Phone: 020 7247 2487

Blackheath's bookshop was used for Spooks filming. Photo: Anna Haswell

Blackheath’s antiquarian bookshop is a bastion of English tradition, but has been known to lead an exciting double life.

As its name suggests, the shop nestles in a prime location at the edge of the eponymous heath, tempting bibliophiles and casual browsers alike with its idiosyncratic window displays.

Maps and vintage children’s books sit alongside posters from the golden age of Hollywood, and in summer a cluster of small shelves adorns the pavement outside.

Enter, and you’re likely to be greeted by owner Richard Platt, who has run the shop for the past seven years. Though, as he will tell you, the establishment has a distinguished history. “It’s been here in its guise as a second-hand bookshop for sixty years,” he says.

If the shop’s charming interior seems oddly familiar, you’re probably not imagining things.

It was recently featured in an episode of the BBC’s spy drama Spooks. As Platt recalls: “The whole day was taken over with filming, so it was a lot of fun.”

What could spies be doing in a bookshop? “The plot was centred around a second-hand bookseller who was a double agent. He used to work for MI5, and was unmasked as a Russian spy.”

While Platt himself might not live the life of an international man of mystery, it’s clear that he is passionate about his work. When asked what part of the job he likes the most, he replies decisively: “Working for myself.”

“I’ve always been interested in old books, and in buying and selling. Even ever since I was a student I’ve been interested in this aspect of retail, and here we are: I’m living out the dream.”

The Bookshop on the Heath, 74 Tranquil Vale, Blackheath, SE3 0BW

For further information, visit www.bookshopontheheath.co.uk

Beyond Retro Shoreditch By Viviana Miliaresi

East London Loves Vintage will  help you locate all your favourite stores.

Today’s top designers seek inspiration from past eras in their quest to give us something new to wear. They freely borrow (or even plunder) designs and styles that seem long forgotten.

In addition, the hype now surrounding eco friendly textiles makes vintage shopping trendier than ever. Whether you are recycling, up-cycling or just environmentally conscious, the world of vintage has everything to offer.

The rise of burlesque and cabaret night clubs has meant that 1920s to 1980s frocks and jewellery have become much coveted.  The mastery and effort that goes into dressing up for such events is fascinating in itself.

From the north east’s  achingly trendy Dalston, to arty south-east London, there is an abundance of vintage shops along the line. The crowds are tempted by unique spaces hidden away in vibrant, creative London East. Even if you aren’t a fashionista per se, it is exciting to simply browse around these quaint places.

Some shops are well-known and their international, loyal clientele is willing to go a long way to get there. Others are annoyingly discreet and sometimes so remote and old fashioned, they don’t even keep strict opening times.

So, using our interactive map (below) get set and off you go, rummaging through rails covered by mighty knights bright suits of armour, witchy grand ladies’ glorious costumes, gypsy minstrels and Venetian jugglers, rockabilly leathers and old skool sport shoes, filthy pirates’ boots and prangsters’ flamboyant outfits. Antique clothes never lose their fascination.

After all, you know what they say: London is the city even the dead never want to leave.

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Rowan Parkhouse and Gemma Lewis from Choki at Greenwich Market. Photo: Cat Wiener.

Wander through Greenwich Market on a Friday, past the stalls selling fair-trade jewellery, nesting boxes for mason bees, candles in antique cups, and hand-knitted jumpers and there you will find, nestled behind a stall selling vegetarian Ethiopian food, the stall of Choki of Brockley.

It is elegant with black and white print and red roses and, most importantly, resplendent with piles of glistening hand-made truffles, jars of drinking chocolate shards, and vast piles of rainbow-wrapped bars of chocolate.

Young entrepreneurs Rowan Parkhouse, 21, and Gemma Lewis, 23, met working for a chocolatier in 2009. Their shared passion for making gorgeous chocolate developed into, in their words:

“big plans for their own handmade chocolate empire.”

Out of that, Choki of Brockley was born. Feast your eyes as Gemma describes some of Choki of Brockley’s wares.

The chocolates are all handmade from ethically-sourced, organic chocolate beans by Rowan and Gemma in their Brockley workshop, where they work to develop combinations like their trademark honey, lemon and thyme truffles, or dark chocolate and sea salt bars. Both admit that there have been a few less serendipitous experiments on the way – Rowan recalls, with a shudder, a particularly vile raspberry and chilli disaster.

They hit on the idea of asking friends, family, and art students to design the chocolate bar wrappers so that each, including one of red tulips designed by Rowan’s grandmother, is a minor work of art, with a limited print-run of 100. Gemma suggests that the wrappers could one day become collectors’ items.

Inevitably, the combination of artisanal chocolate and artistic wrappers does not come cheap: the chocolate bars sell at three for £12 on the market.

This has not stopped demand for Choki of Brockley chocolate from growing exponentially, with Brockley’s The Shop on the Hill and other delicatessens throughout southeast London increasingly interested in stocking their wares. The last few months have been hard; with Rowan in his second year as an anthropology student at Goldsmiths College, Gemma has often had to work both the kitchen and the market by herself.

But over the next two months Gemma and Rowan are planning to open their own shop in Brockley, where you will actually be able to watch the chocolates being made – the first step, perhaps, to that dreamt-of ‘chocolate empire’.

To hear Gemma and Rowan describe their chocolate enterprise, their hopes for the future and the origins of their name, click here:

Arber's printing works gets a new coat of paint. Photo: Kieron Yates

The historic Arber’s printing works in Bow’s Roman Road is having a makeover this week.

In a bid to smarten up the area before the Olympics, Tower Hamlets council has decided the business is in need of a fresh lick of paint. Arber’s has been in the  same building for over a hundred years, and some will miss the ‘lost world’ charm of the old storefront.

For many years the sun-bleached and peeling green paint and window bay filled with a faded miscellany of paper pads, staplers and Sellotape left the shop looking out of use and abandoned.

A wooden panel  visible through the glass of the door bears the thin patina of an exuberant white serif-fed script: ‘Est 1897. WF Arber and Co Advance Press.’  At the bottom of the board is a telephone number disconnected decades ago: ‘ADVance 2067.’

Most days, a small printed sign is the sole clue that the business is trading: ‘Open. Please Ring. As I could be working in another part of the building it may take a moment or two to answer.’ Ring and wait, and when the door  opens, you will be met by Gary Arber, an amiable chap with a tale or two to tell about the family business he has been running for nearly sixty years.

Last of the line, Roman Road printer Gary Arber. Photo: Kieron Yates

In its heyday at the turn of the twentieth century,  Arber’s took on pro-bono work for Sylvia Pankhurst and her radical faction of East End suffragettes. Printing for the cause of universal suffrage was not a charitable act on the part of Gary’s grandfather but, rather, a job he could not avoid: Gary’s grandmother, a close friend of Sylvia’s, was not one to be argued with.

Although Gary has moved with the times and now works with a digital press, the company is one of the few places in London that still uses a traditional letterpress. Down in the cellar a few old machines are kept in action, most notably the Heidelberg press that arrived from Germany in 1939  just as the Second World War broke out.  Gary still gets asked to use the letterpress to print business cards and letterheads. He explains:

“People say they like the embossed feel of work printed on a letterpress, but they’ve got it all wrong. Good letterpress printing should be as smooth as a baby’s bottom. To get that feel, because you can’t buy new type sets these days, you have to apply too much pressure to the machine.”

Gary, 78,  still works five days a week and will see the business to its end … which will coincide with his own.

A visit to Wilton’s Café, new home to London Fields Radio.

Romantic rebels bring floral baskets to Broadway Market.

Snap it up: polaroid art shop at Broadway Market.

The Shop on The Hill. Photo: Shade Lapite

Across the road from Brockley station, around the corner from the main Brockley Cross thoroughfare and nestled between a cafe and a restaurant sits The Shop On The Hill.

Former journalist Nicola Davidson opened the wholefoods and mini pharmacy two years ago. Having lived in Brockley for 14 years Davidson had long harboured dreams of owning a business in the area: “I think Brockley’s a great area for this kind of business. It’s a very green, fairly mixed – a lot of students, mums, old people, a good cultural mix. I just saw a gap in the market.”

The shop, ironically located at the bottom of a hill, focuses on organic and fairly traded items and scrupulously avoids any animal products. “I try to be as ethical as possible,” Davidson says: “I offer eco-friendly cleaning products that you can refill, food refills whereby I buy items like rice, nuts, seeds etc in bulk and the customer can come in with a bag and get a bit of a discount. I also carry things like vitamins, fairly traded teas, grain, organic and local seasonal produce and all my beauty products are lauryl sulphate and paraffin free.”

The Shop weathered the recent recession confidently but Davidson admits the downturn forced her to put expansion plans on hold for a while: “I just think it’s best to consolidate what you already have before making any plans to go bigger and double your overheads, but in the future I’d like to have a café, a clothes recycling unit and treatment rooms attached to my business.”

If you’re a student flash your student card and get a 10% discount when you spend over £20.

The Shop On The Hill is open Mon – Fri 10am – 8pm, Sat – Sun 9am – 6pm
No. 7 Harefield Road, Brockley