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Food

A Granny-Run Cafe Housed in a Former Public Toilet Has Been Forced to Close

A comfort food cafe staffed by “nanas” adrift from Clapton’s regenerated dining scene has closed after disagreements with a preservation trust and the council.
Phoebe Hurst
London, GB
Photo via Flickr user poppet with a camera

Three years ago Katie Harris moved to Clapton in east London. Like many of the capital's central neighbourhoods, Clapton encompasses a recent yuppie influx with reminders of past urban deprivation (before the gourmet sandwich shops, Clapton's main thoroughfare was known as "Murder Mile") in a sometimes uncomfortable embrace.

Property prices have risen, people wonder if Clapton is the next Dalston if Dalston is the old Stoke Newington, and William Hills stare down sourdough pizza joints. The Guardian's property section branded it "the frontline of inner London gentrification," while also noting its proximity to that nice Sunday market on Chatsworth Road and some very commendable primary schools.

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Harris decided to challenge this familiar picture of divided city living.

"Everyone is complaining about gentrification but you've got to do something positive and make things so people feel more included," she says.

READ MORE: A London Start-Up Is Fighting Childhood Obesity by Serving Kids Fried Chicken

The result was Nana, a "comfort food cafe" serving simple dishes like beans on toast and B.L.T. sandwiches, as well as bottomless mugs of builder's tea. It was to be hosted by the people usually overlooked by property developers and restaurant entrepreneurs: local, older women who may suffer from social isolation. These "nanas" would work on a set shift and take home a share of the cafe's profits.

"With new people moving to the area and setting up fancy restaurants, even if they [existing residents] didn't go there, the perception is that they're not welcome or that they'll be expensive," explains Harris. "There needs to be a middle ground between a 'caff' and a deli where everyone is welcome."

Nana-opening-The-Elderfield-Clapton

Katie Salter (third from left) and Nana cafe members at The Elderfield popup launch in 2012. Photo courtesy Nana.

Much like the food Nana served, the idea behind the community cafe was irresistibly simple. Create a space for all members of the community to feel welcome and serve the kind of stuff you wish you were eating when you've just spent eight quid on a superfood muffin.

"We can be so detached from the stuff that we take real comfort in," says Harris. "I'll wake up hungover on a Saturday and all I want is a dippy egg and soldiers. I think there's something to be said for good food cooked with love."

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After starting as a daytime popup cafe in The Elderfield pub in 2012, Nana's popularity grew. Local media attention, a feature on Woman's Hour, and invitations to host supper clubs followed, as did the Ageing Well Challenge Prize and £50,000 of Cabinet Office funding.

With her simple idea gaining momentum, Harris decided Nana needed a more permanent home. She settled on a disused Victorian public toilet on a street close to the pub. The former restroom was owned by Hackney Council and let to local preservation trust, Clapton Improvement Society (CIS).

In 2013, using the government funding and money raised through a Kickstarter fund backed by 518 donors, as well as a personal loan of £10,000, Harris and CIS agreed to work together to turn the derelict building into a usable cafe space.

This is when things stopped being so simple.

"We spent six months doing it up. It just got to the point where Clapton Improvement Society had done some work to the building and I'd done the rest. The stuff that they were meant to do or had done was breaking, it was actually dangerous," explains Harris. "It was ongoing for a year to get them to hold up to their side of the deal."

I'm not claiming to be some sort of martyr but I genuinely wanted to set something up in the community to do with food where everyone could come.

The toilet did end up being partially renovated and the new Nana cafe opened there in late 2013. But with an electrical fire, issues with water supply, and a leaking roof, the building was far from the permanent haven Harris had hoped for. Nearly a year after the grand opening, she called a meeting with Hackney Council and Lea Bridge Councillor Ian Rathbone to discuss the building problems.

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To Harris' surprise, she was informed by the council that Nana should never have opened in the first place, as the building was too dangerous. Worn down by the stress of managing both a Victorian toilet and social enterprise, in February this year, Harris asked CIS for a premium to cover the renovation work she had completed in the hopes of vacating the building and establishing the cafe elsewhere.

"I thought, if I get money, I can fund other people," explains Harris. "Basically, I was offered my £5000 for everything. I wouldn't accept that because the kitchen alone was £10,000. [CIS] changed the locks and said that I was in arrears for rent."

Last month, Harris announced the closure of Nana via a status update on the cafe's Facebook page. She claimed CIS "more than happily let us spend all our time, effort and money refurbishing a building, only to kick us out because I refused to pay rent until the building was SAFE." She says she was advised by Councillor Rathbone to withhold rent payments.

CIS member Jon Aldenton, who had been working with Harris on the renovation of the toilet, did not wish to be quoted for this article but denied accusations of "kicking out" cafe staff.

He also noted that as well as creating a cafe space, the renovation project between CIS and Nana aimed to make the public toilets within the building accessible for the community.

Elderfield-Pub-Nana-Clapton

Some cafe visitors have also questioned Nana's commitment to serving local residents. Commenting on Harris' Facebook status, Jane Clendon wrote: "The other point of the venture was to maintain the public toilets by the cafe , certainly of benefit to. The community [sic] […] The whole thing became a commercial capitalist venture which strayed very quickly away from its routes."

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However, Harris is keen not to dwell on these claims or the cafe's demise.

"I'm not claiming to be some sort of martyr but I genuinely wanted to set something up in the community to do with food," she says. "I think food is really important, it's a great way of getting people around the same table."

READ MORE: People Are Relying on Foodbanks in the UK More Than Ever

Harris has been selected by the London Sustainable Development Commission as a London Leader, and is also working with Cafedirect CEO John Steel to explore new ways of expanding the Nana cafe concept. For the nanas of Clapton though, the cafe's closure will surely be a loss.

"A lot of ladies were doing more than their three-hours-a-week or just coming into the cafe to be social," remembers Harris. "You don't realise how much you rely on work or family for a sense of purpose. You can see what it does when [older] people feel important and are back in the community, not just weirdly siloed in a day centre."

The tale of Nana seems to have exposed two of London's depressingly familiar struggles: the survival of community-based ventures in a city that seems intent on uprooting whichever neighbourhood stands in the way of the latest regeneration project and the tricky nature of letting and property law.

"I knew it was going to be hard but I thought it would be harder to convince ladies with anxiety that they wanted to come out and be part of something," says Harris. "That should have been the challenge."

If only it were that simple.