Thomas à Becket
Boxing Clever is an outsidedge group exhibition. The rich provenance of the Thomas à Becket pub which houses the exhibition space for Boxing Clever provides a starting point or foil to the work installed by members of the collective.
The Thomas à Becket located on the corner of the Old Kent Road and Albany Road is a monument to blood and martyrdom. The site could well have existed as an inn since Roman Times, the Old Kent Road having been thought to follow the course of Watling Street, the original London to Dover Roman Road.
Thomas à Becket once Henry II ‘s trusted Chancellor was butchered in 1170, by knights loyal to the King at Canterbury Cathedral, where he had been strategically installed as Archbishop. Put to the sword he became a revered martyr in the battle between church and state. Becket’s shine at Canterbury was the most popular Middle Ages destination for pilgrims many of whom would have travel from London to the Cathedral along the Old Kent Road. Vials of Becket’s blood proved to be popular souvenirs sold to the pilgrims by enterprising monks.
The Thomas à Becket’s tradition of playing homage to blood and martyrdom was manifest in 1888 when a suspect in the Jack the Ripper Murders was arrested after 'leaving a shiny black bag at the Thomas a Becket public house' containing 'a very sharp dagger, a clasp knife, two pairs of very long and very curious looking scissors, and two preservers.
Peter Schulze 'Beware of the Nuts', 2005-2007
A more recent gory association comes from its relationship with boxing, The first floor gym above the pub was used for pre-fight training by Henry Cooper and was visited by Mohammed Ali. James Fox worked out in the Gym in preparation for his role as Chas in Performance. The pop if not the gangland connections were continued, when David Bowie rehearsed in preparation for the manifestation of Ziggy and the Spiders from Mars.
The remaining and livid scar tissue is the brutal re-configuration of the urban environment that surrounds the former pub. The 1960’s decimation of redbrick Victorian housing to give way to the Le Corbusier inspired Aylesbury Estate designed to stretch from the Elephant and Castle to Peckham as Southwark’s answer to inadequate housing!! The Old Kent Road still retains fragments of its Victorian façade but a once vibrant market stall lined highway, is dominated by the kind of ugly superstores usually sited in the outer suburbs. East Street Market, birthplace of Charlie Chaplin runs north of the Thomas à Becket and survives thanks to the rejuvenating input of Afro-Caribbean, Asian and Eastern European Londoners.
