In any overbuilt, cramped urban environment, roofs play a special role: fresh air and light being at a premium at ground level in a Victorian slum, the roof gave easy access to both. And that is why late-Victorian municipal school buildings often feature a rooftop playground.

In the Old Nichol, two churchmen made full use of the rooftop as a meeting place, in decent weather. Above is an illustration of John Weylland, pastor with the London City Mission, preaching to one of his flock, from Weylland’s The Man With the Book (1877). Beyond them is the crazy skyline of Shoreditch chimneys, flues and smoke billows. All it needs is Dick van Dyke and his lucky sweeps.

Below is Reverend Arthur Osborne Jay, tucked in among the leg-of-mutton sleeves and voluminous skirts of his titled lady sponsors (he is trapped 2nd row from front, 3rd from right). The shot was taken in June 1895 on the roof of his Holy Trinity Church, Old Nichol Street, to mark the second of his annual prize-givings for geranium growing.

Four hundred geranium cuttings in pots were bought using funds supplied by the Society ladies and gentlemen in the photograph, and given to the boys and girls of the two large local Board Schools. The best specimens after three months won their growers prizes of books and workboxes. Jay reported that one little Nichol girl used to take her geranium out for a walk to get it some fresh air; another prize specimen bloomed in the room at 4 Old Nichol Street where the child’s father, James Muir, had murdered his common-law wife, Abigail Sullivan, in December 1891.

Jay had had his church and adjoining Model Lodging House designed with a usable roof and from its four-storey height the Crystal Palace could be seen to the south, Alexandra Palace to the north, as well as St Paul’s cathedral and the towers of Charrington’s brewery in Mile End.