East end London pictures

[cycleman]

I saw on the BBC news website some pictures of east London in the 60s 70s. I was struck by the almost carless streets. I am no good at doing links but I think it is worth a look to those of us who are interested   

[offcumden]

Thanks.  Brought back memories. I commuted by bike from Dagenham to the City and back for 5 years in the early 1960s.  I guess that riding that route nowadays would be a far more hostile experience!

Escaped to the north many years ago, but will be down in the smoke for a few days in January.  Might try and get along to the exhibition.

[Kim]

Here's the link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-43141667

On a related note, here are some from Birmingham:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-35712020

The wide residential road without a solid layer of cars on each side is particularly striking.

[robgul]

I lived in North-East London/Essex border from 1949 - 1973, with relatives that lived in Hackney too.    Our family is descended from the Huguenots.

The London pix in the link bring back memories .... Gardiner's Corner in one of them was a men's outfitters shop ... I can remember my primary school blazer coming from there in about 1956.

There's a website**, the name I can't recall, that has loads of stuff about the Stepney, Whitechapel, Bethnal Green, Spitalfields etc areas - lots of photographs and nostalgic stuff with a new item added every few days. Fascinating.

Rob

Edit: ** remembered it  -  http://spitalfieldslife.com 

[andytheflyer]

That BBC link shows sailing ships in the docks in 1971?  Surely not?  Must have been earlier?

[offcumden]

Thanks, Rob, that Spitalfields site is really interesting - to me, at least.

[Kim]

That BBC link shows sailing ships in the docks in 1971?  Surely not?  Must have been earlier?

Docks are the sort of place you'd expect to find a sailing ship, if there was one around.  And by 1971 it would surely be the sort of thing that'd be worth taking photographs of.  So possibly true, but exceptional?

[Zipperhead]

That BBC link shows sailing ships in the docks in 1971?  Surely not?  Must have been earlier?

I can't see enough of them, but they look like they could be the Sir Winston Churchill and the Malcolm Miller. That would be the right sort of timeframe.

[Clare]

To lose more hours than you knew existed try here.

[hellymedic]

And my shiny, newly-built abode is visible on https://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EPW046487.
Our erstwhile next-door neighbour has just moved into a care home.
He moved into there in 1932 when he was 8...

[Jaded]

Having lived in (near) central London in the early 1960s I can confirm there were very few cars indeed.

[Mr Larrington]

There's a whole bunch from my neighbourhood in 1947 but the only one in which Larrington Towers might appear is focussed on something else so I can't be sure.  LT was rebuilt in 1947 because Luftwaffe.

[essexian]

Here is the area I lived in as a kid.

https://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EAW035358

To the right (between 2 and 3 on a clock face) is St Andrews school; I attended there between 1966 and 68 when it was pulled down to be replaced by a large paper factory owned by Bowater Scotts.

To the left along the road (St Andrews Road) on the corner is the Prince of Wales pub. I worked there for a time when my sister and brother in law were landlord etc. I also had my 18th birthday party there!

I can see the house my family lived in between 1963 and 1986. Its just north west of the centre of the photo....fourth in from the gap in the street before the new built houses....well they were new back then!

The place has completely changed since there at least twice. Firstly, "they" built Hillyfields housing estate including Whitebeam Tower in 1967/68. That was pulled down in the early 1990's and has been replaced with mixed housing. Also what was factory units have gone to be replaced by flats.

[Mr Larrington]

St Andrews Road is now totally residential except for the Prince of Wales and the offie, the latter run by the brother of my neighbour on the Hamilton Road side.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I think it's easy to forget just how long ago the 1960s and 70s were. Because it's within a lot of people's lifetime, we tend to think it's just a while ago but if you compare it to major events in world history then 1970 is not much further on from the end of WWII than it is before the fall of the Berlin Wall. And a hell of a lot of things have changed since then.

If we think just about cars (leaded petrol, separate bumpers, no seat belts, radio an optional extra, no fog lights or high-level brake lights, etc etc), in the 1970s I grew up on a street with just 12 houses so it was quite easy to count all the cars. There were four of them (Mr Furley, the Barbarys, the Goodes and the people at the end with the big garden) and one was a Morris Minor with crank handle, split screen and trafficators. Car things change fast. Fast forward to 1998, I got off a coach in Poland (no Ryan Air out there then), most people didn't have cars and every third car was a Polski Fiat 126p (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_126) by 2007 the country was full of used imports (mostly from Holland and Belgium) and a 126p was already a rarity. 

[ElyDave]

My dad was born and raised in Bermondsey, so I might show him those pictures.  As with Robgul, their arrival was linked to the Hugenots, but also with the river/docks.  I'd have to look it up on the family tree my dad produces, but I think either his grandfather, or perhaps great grandfather was a ship's victualler. 

Acorn Walk was the address for my dad, now gentrified/yuppified to the degree he could never live there again.  Back in the early 90's he took me and my mum on a tour of various bits of London, including that area, pointing out one of the roads that used to be paved with wooden blocks, that all floated in the floods of the 50's.  It's definitely a "past is a foreign country" thing - there is a family story about my uncle in his nice shiny TR4A, being stopped by the local gangster "I'm going up West today, it's your turn to take me".

When we worry about air quality now, it's hard to think that in my dad's lifetime we had smogs where you couldn't see 3 feet in front of you and people were dying by the day.

 

[ian]

Having lived in (near) central London in the early 1960s I can confirm there were very few cars indeed.

We walked through the Becontree estate (the biggest – I think – of the post-WW1 LCC estates) before Christmas. These days it's pretty shoddy, and most notably, cars everywhere – the pavements, the gardens, the roads – along with spilt bins, fly-tipped rubbish, and astonishingly bad 'improvements'. I expect that's our legacy of social housing summed up but it really showed car culture at its worst. It was never built for cars, of course, it was built for people. I'd cheerfully disembowel the person who first thought the best use of a front garden was for parking their car. Then work through the rest.

[essexian]

Having lived in (near) central London in the early 1960s I can confirm there were very few cars indeed.

We walked through the Becontree estate (the biggest – I think – of the post-WW1 LCC estates) before Christmas. These days it's pretty shoddy, and most notably, cars everywhere – the pavements, the gardens, the roads – along with spilt bins, fly-tipped rubbish, and astonishingly bad 'improvements'.

My father lived on the Becontree estate between 1976 and 1984. It was crap back then also!

[Cudzoziemiec]

I'd cheerfully disembowel the person who first thought the best use of a front garden was for parking their car. Then work through the rest.

No need to disembowel them. Just bury them up their shoulders, dad-on-beach style, then tarmac. Job done.

[offcumden]

We walked through the Becontree estate (the biggest – I think – of the post-WW1 LCC estates) before Christmas. These days it's pretty shoddy, and most notably, cars everywhere – . . .  It was never built for cars, of course, it was built for people.

I was born on the Becontree estate in 1942, and lived there until 1949. Built mostly in the 20s, before cars, and before so many of the mod cons we now take for granted, it must have seemed pretty wonderful to most of the population re-housed from the East End. Bathrooms, front and rear gardens, local shops, good public transport etc.  Looking at Streetview `(pics taken Apr 2018 in the spring sunshine!), the scourge of ubiquitous car-ownership is quite clear, although I was pleasantly surprised to find that the wide central reservation down 'my' street (Valence Avenue) remains grassy and free of cars.

I see also that my alma mater survives, and on the barriers outside the school there is a sign 'The children of Valence Primary School say "Show you care, park elsewhere".'  None of those problems when I were a lad.

[Aunt Maud]

My father lived on the Becontree estate between 1976 and 1984. It was crap back then also!

Indeed, you never got off the tube at Becontree in my yoof.

[hatler]

That BBC link shows sailing ships in the docks in 1971?  Surely not?  Must have been earlier?

I can't see enough of them, but they look like they could be the Sir Winston Churchill and the Malcolm Miller. That would be the right sort of timeframe.

That was my thought immediately. I sailed on the Churchill a couple of times. They're clearly training ships, because the bow sprits have netting beneath them, working sailing ships wouldn't have bothered with such fripperies.

[Zipperhead]

That BBC link shows sailing ships in the docks in 1971?  Surely not?  Must have been earlier?

I can't see enough of them, but they look like they could be the Sir Winston Churchill and the Malcolm Miller. That would be the right sort of timeframe.

That was my thought immediately. I sailed on the Churchill a couple of times. They're clearly training ships, because the bow sprits have netting beneath them, working sailing ships wouldn't have bothered with such fripperies.

I sailed on the Churchill once (1975 iirc), we ended up sailing up the Thames into the pool of London.

[hatler]

My two runs were from Milford Haven to Southampton in (I think) '79 and then again Southampton to Hull in '80. I did spend a weekend on board in the London Docks with my father in the middle of Winter helping out with the off-season refit. Lunch and refreshments were taken in a nearby pub and, on the Sunday, what was doubtless traditional East End Sunday lunch time entertainment, we were treated to a strip show. I really hadn't expected my first strip joint experience to be with my Pop.

[hatler]

I sailed on the Churchill once (1975 iirc), we ended up sailing up the Thames into the pool of London.

That would have been superb I guess. Did you sail up the river ?