Front elevation of 76 High Street, Walthamstow. L. Manze, renowned eel, pie and mash shop. Grade II listed building, dating to 1929. The Manze chain of eel, pie and mash shops was established in the early 1900s by Michaele Manze, a native of Ravello in southern Italy whose parents had settled in Bermondsey in 1878. In 1897 he married Ada Poole, the daughter of his friend and mentor Robert Cooke, London's most successful pie-shop entrepreneur of the late nineteenth century. In 1902 the Manzes opened their own shop at 87 Tower Bridge Road, which survives and is the oldest of its kind still in operation. Further shops followed in Poplar and Peckham, and the involvement of Michaele's brothers Luigi and Pantaleone eventually brought the total number of Manze premises to fourteen. Number 76 Walthamstow High Street, formerly a refreshment room run by one Alberto Constantino, was acquired in 1929 by Luigi Manze, who employed the architect Herbert Wright to rebuild it in its present form. It continued to be run by the Manze family until 1970. It has been listed as a typical and attractive example of a highly distinctive London building type, with an exceptionally complete interior, illustrating a type of establishment, and a type of cuisine, that formed a staple of early twentieth-century working-class life.
