LEONARD STONE: DIARIES, SCRIPTS & OTHER RECORDS

The collection consists of scripts, photographs and items connected with the building trade.

No publication without prior permission of depositor.

Open

Acc 1985/54

Date of deposit: October 1985 (D/F/STON/1-6), Sept 1986 (D/F/STON/7-9)

Deposited by: Ms Brenda Saunders

Leonard Stone (1914-85) came from a family whose association with the Hackney area went back at least two generations. He recalled that his grandfather, a small businessman in Shoreditch and of a stubborn disposition, was run over in the Hackney Road when he refused to stop for an on-coming vehicle. Len's family lived in one of the larger houses in Homerton. Prior to the war he had worked as a swimming pool attendant at the Clapton Baths. After war service in India and Burma, he returned to Hackney, and worked as plumber, builder, decorator, and also did some electrical work. His parents had moved to No 1 Southborough Road in 1939 and Len, who remained single, stayed in the house until his death. His close association with at least one Jewish firm gave him a smattering of Yiddish, helpful in some trade negotiations. Len became well known in South Hackney and did much of the building repair work in the area.

He was also a great collector of unconsidered trifles, and was a weekly visitor to the Waste Market on Kingsland Road. By the early 1980s his house was full of items that might come in useful. Some undoubtedly did: Len was also an inventor, and patented at least two devices, though the patent certificates have not survived. One invention, a special ladder, existed in prototype form for a number of years. Len also collaborated with Robert Bell, a local author who lived nearby in Sharon Gardens on a number of playscripts, none of which appear to have been published or produced.

Regretably the Department was unable to persuade him to put some of his memories on tape. He knew many of the old people of the area, recalling that one old lady, who died in the early 1980s aged about 100, had been born at the time the local oil shop at the corner of Lauriston Road (later to become Davis the ironmongers) had exploded, and that the doctor and family had left mother and child and rushed out on to the street to discover the source of the blast.

The extant papers are somewhat fragmentary. The diaries are mostly concerned with work, and compliment the later diaries. The play scripts are the only survivors of what would appear to have been a larger corpus of work, though after a number of refusals, Len ceased to write in the late 1960s and consequently the scripts were only recovered from a mass of papers at his death.