Here's the presenter talking about it (in case you think I'm biased!)
A House Through Time BBC2
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Originally posted by Brassbandmaestro View PostThis was a really interesting programme. a take about a house through time. Thoroughly recommendable.
If you find his 2015 films on Slavery please flag them up....bong ching
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David Olusoga has been a companiable guide and excellent communicator on the social history of 62 Falkner Street, sketching the very diverse lives of its residents from 1840 until the present. It’s amazing how the gist of an individual life can be deduced from a few dry documents.
In this last programme we were told how a housing inspector, walking the poverty-stricken streets of Liverpool 8, recognised the architectural value of Falkner Street and recommended it for Listed Building status, thus saving it from demolition. Its value dropped to £400 around the time of the Toxteth riots, but since renovation back to a single dwelling from being three flats, it has now returned full circle to its initial middle-class status.
An engrossing series which encourages one to continue to pay the TV licence.
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Originally posted by Keraulophone View PostDavid Olusoga has been a companiable guide and excellent communicator on the social history of 62 Falkner Street, sketching the very diverse lives of its residents from 1840 until the present. It’s amazing how the gist of an individual life can be deduced from a few dry documents.
In this last programme we were told how a housing inspector, walking the poverty-stricken streets of Liverpool 8, recognised the architectural value of Falkner Street and recommended it for Listed Building status, thus saving it from demolition. Its value dropped to £400 around the time of the Toxteth riots, but since renovation back to a single dwelling from being three flats, it has now returned full circle to its initial middle-class status.
An engrossing series which encourages one to continue to pay the TV licence.
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It was the Secret History of our Streets - and unfortunately you missed the 2016 re-broadcasts on BBC4 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04bzppg/episodes/guide
They didn't broadcast the Caledonian Road episode (I wonder if there is something that offends the sensibilities of 2016 audiences?). And looking at the programme website, I see there were three episodes in a further series set in Scotland. As we have Scottish forbears (Mrs CS much more than I) that series would have been of interest but I missed it (2014, BBC2).
Perhaps they will re-run some of these yet again - or they might join the "archive" material on the iPlayer at some point.
We watched the first episode of a House through time and will need to catch up with the rest - very worthwhile. And yes, its programmes like this that help one to justify support of the BBC (and outliers on radio 3 such as Composer of the Week).
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I can only concur - thoroughly enjoyable and it's something I have often wondered about in my own humble dwelling. The time to ferret out the details just never presents itself!
Great TV - and I am attempting to 'savour' it by not gorging on all my downloaded episodes, but rationing myself to one a week!"Let me have my own way in exactly everything, and a sunnier and more pleasant creature does not exist." Thomas Carlyle
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It's been wonderful - and I haven't even seen the last episode yet!
A cross between Secret History of our Streets and Who do you think you are, as many have said. It's such a brilliant idea I don't know why no-one has thought of it before.
And what a great choice of place, as few cities have undergone such changing fortunes as Liverpool, reflected most clearly in this part of the city. The photography was excellent I did keep hoping that they would move the camera just a little to the right though, to take in the building where I went to school:
When it was first opened as a girls' school, it consisted only of the right wing that you see here, a merchant's house built in 1788, with an elegant staircase and glass dome inside. The rest is obviously much later. But as the school opened in 1844 it would have been possible for any girls who'd lived at no 62 since it was built to have attended it. It was founded by George Holt of the Holt Shipping Line, who were (we were always assured) abolitionists. Apparently, we looked like this. Observe the local urchins playing in the street outside the protected enclave! Looking in this direction, you can see the shops at the bottom of Falkner Street - I can't remember anything much being there when I was at school in the 50s, but now they're part of the vibrant café culture we have in Liverpool 8. You saw David Olusoga sitting talking to people on the pavement outside.
It's curious perhaps that with his particular interest in black people in Britain, the choice of this house didn't give him much of a chance to explore any individuals from Liverpool's very particular black community, which we are on the fringes of here - though in the episode I haven't seen yet, he must deal with the riots (aka uprising) of 1981.
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