The Secret Life of Streets (BBC Two)

[Lateralthinking1]

There is so much fascinating stuff there. Pegleg - I was interested to see the "before" pictures of Ash Street at the Elephant and Castle as that was where my parents had their first flat on becoming married in 1956. That road would have had to have come down - the homes were damp and as I have said before still had gas light. The poverty was extraordinary. At that time, my Mum and Dad were the only English people, pretty unusual in those days, and very possibly the only couple there in full time work. A Cypriot woman used to be catching pigeons to cook and eat when they came home each evening. It seems incredible now.

Yes, there was a lot of irony about architects on the programme. Now I come to think of it, I believe that another aunt and uncle were on the Luscome Estate in the mid-1980s. According to the programme, that was close to the Grove. By that time I was at university and on the one or two occasions I visited, I must have approached it from the main road. It didn't feel leafy. While comparatively low rise, it was far from the way presented. Problems with anti-social behaviour and drugs were rife. My aunt nearly had a breakdown and they moved heaven and earth to get out. But the designs of the Aylesbury, the Heygate and the Ferrier Estates were like little else. Le Corbusier-style, streamlined liners for the remote; a muggers' paradise for everyone else.

I guess we could call those who actually owned more modest houses in the area lower middle class. That is how we became but was not as we were then. In my more irritable moments, I count up the money that has been stolen from me by policy makers. Leaving work on an average salary ten years earlier than expected, that is getting on for £300,000. Pension losses if I live to say 75. That could be another £50,000. The change of legislation to reduce redundancy payments just ahead of the cuts - another £100,000. Money lost through permitted misleading selling of a mortgage endowment - say £50,000. My Nan had four children but only two grandchildren. Had she actually owned her house, what would she have been pushed out of? Now about £800,000?

I'm grateful that she was my Nan - she was worth far more than any money - but in the event that she had been the owner and the house had been kept in the family, policy makers would have effectively thieved from me another £400,000. That's nearly one million pounds in total and all before the age of 50. How efficient they can be when they want to be. God knows what comes next. The main point here isn't me. My position isn't too bad or so I tell myself. At least in the short term. However, losing significant sums of relatively newly acquired property value must have happened to thousands upon thousands of ordinary families. It is one of the stories the media never tell and arguably many people just don't realise. I find it hard not to see there as having been a concerted effort to turn as many people as possible back towards poverty and to contain them as if they were caged animals.

[Anna]

I am grateful for the fact that she was my Nan - she was worth far more than any money - but had she owned that house and it had been kept in the family, policy makers would have effectively thieved from me nearly one million pounds in total. That's all before the age of 50.

And, if my Mum had kept the family home, which she sold in 1972 as she could not afford the upkeep, and was last sold for £775,000 in 2002 by the new owners I'd be an heiress!

[Lateralthinking1]

And, if my Mum had kept the family home, which she sold in 1972 as she could not afford the upkeep, and was last sold for £775,000 in 2002 by the new owners I'd be an heiress!

Yes, Anna, I do fully accept that the world is full of ifs. It wasn't as if my family did own that property so in my case the maximum theft by elected representatives to date is £500,000. (Zero loss incidentally from people who are identified as criminals, touch wood). But what I am saying - or is it asking? - is what compensation did those who owned the houses get? They were forced out. If that were Russia or North Korea, the Guardian and the Telegraph, Jonathan Ross and Stephen Fry, even Miliband and Cameron would be howling. We'd never hear the end of it. As it was here, there's just a shrug of the shoulders. It was horrendous.

[Pegleg]

Just two programmes into this series and it's stirred a lot of memories and emotions. Lat, for reasons I wont bore you with, I can chime with some of what you said about financial loss. I know it's easier said than done, but don't let the bar stewards grind you done.

I do feel deeply for your nan, and others of her generation who were propelled into an alien environment after the life they knew was ground to dust. The relatives I talked of were more than ten years older than my mum and closer to your nan in age. They could so easily have ended up in Lambeth's Angell Town Estate. I am so glad they escaped the civic concrete to end their days in relative comfort far from all that.

It may not be very fashionable to say so, but whatever else life had thrown at our grandparents generation, I don't think we should forget they had been through two world wars. When we watched the “Deptford” programme and my wife reminded me of her own grandparents fate, I asked about their siblings and drew a partial blank. Of course she knew her grandfather was a veteran of the Great War, but a few days digging I'd uncovered seven great uncles who had all fought in that war. Half and been wounded, and sadly her grandmother had lost a brother on the Somme late in 1916. So we had another name to add to the list of family lost on foreign fields.

I guess you never know what might lead from watching a TV programme.

[Lateralthinking1]

Just two programmes into this series and it's stirred a lot of memories and emotions. Lat, for reasons I wont bore you with, I can chime with some of what you said about financial loss. I know it's easier said than done, but don't let the bar stewards grind you done.

I do feel deeply for your nan, and others of her generation who were propelled into an alien environment after the life they knew was ground to dust. The relatives I talked of were more than ten years older than my mum and closer to your nan in age. They could so easily have ended up in Lambeth's Angell Town Estate. I am so glad they escaped the civic concrete to end their days in relative comfort far from all that.

It may not be very fashionable to say so, but whatever else life had thrown at our grandparents generation, I don't think we should forget they had been through two world wars. When we watched the “Deptford” programme and my wife reminded me of her own grandparents fate, I asked about their siblings and drew a partial blank. Of course she knew her grandfather was a veteran of the Great War, but a few days digging I'd uncovered seven great uncles who had all fought in that war. Half and been wounded, and sadly her grandmother had lost a brother on the Somme late in 1916. So we had another name to add to the list of family lost on foreign fields.

I guess you never know what might lead from watching a TV programme.

Excellent post if I might say so Pegleg. The point about the wars is very well made. People were grateful to have come through them and then often to have lived to unprecedented ages. Britain is flimsier and given to fantasy nowadays but there is still stoicism to varying degrees in all ages, classes and races here. Backbone - you see it in responses to terrorism and the economic crisis - has been inherited or acquired by example and it has its origins in those years.

My Nan never had a TV and only a fridge in later years and it was my aunt who had the washing machine. Obviously she never had a car or a foreign holiday either. But she had a childlike thrill about small things that had made lives easier, she adapted to new people and new situations very openly and with a good heart and she was always cheerful. That “mustn’t grumble” attitude was accompanied by being “ever so grateful” at having the basic state pension. She thought that it was a wonderful miracle that for some reason she didn’t deserve, even though she had worked to around the age of 80.

At 19, I looked at her and at those who are born to decide our fate. I was in close proximity to both. There was a chasm which I thought in the 1980s we would close. It isn't a problem with Eton. It is an Eton that has never been through a war where people of all backgrounds work together for survival. The rising classes are also a big part of the problem, abandoning their pasts as they go.

[Serial_Apologist]

By coincidence I was down Grove Park yesterday evening. There's a pub in Grove Lane, (which runs parallel to the west of Grove Park), which was called Le Parisienne when I moved into the district in 2004; it then changed hands and is now The Crooked Well - a chic though not too ostentatious eatery. A chap who used to run a regular Friday night jazz gig for several years in the Crypt, round the corner at a well-known church in Camberwell Church Street, now organises Sunday evening jazz sessions at The Crooked Well. He is himself a competent jazz guitar player in the Wes Montgomery vein. Having seen the programme on Camberwell Grove, where he now has a flat, he told me of his memories, as recently as the late 1980s, when the Grove was still largely run down, with several of the stuccoed houses at the top (southern) end (where we saw anarchist Dave, whom he knew) still then squatted. He remembered the parties that were thrown as being considerably wilder than how they were portrayed in the programme! I asked him when he had bought his flat, and he told me 1992 - he had paid £50 grand for it. From what I could gather, the squatted premises had still been officially council properties that had been allowed to deteriorate, though structurally they had originally been built to survive; rents were often not even bothered to be collected, but by the time of the sell-offs Southwark had made use of the licensing system that allowed these properties to be occupied as long as the squatters maintained their state to some standard of liveability. It was the initial flog-off of the properties that this fellow had taken advantage of in getting his flat so cheap; unlike him, many made a quick killing, and those who took over the leases were caught up in the house price spiral of the late 1990s/early 2000s.

[Anna]

I cannot comment, from a personal family perspective, on the demolition/rehousing/gentrification debate. As mentioned aboved, by around 1918 the immediate ancestors in London had moved out (upwardly mobile?) and by the 1920s direct ancestors had died. Leaving sundry sons and daughters living in outlying East Ham, Plumstead, Grays Essex etc. (All streets of neat Victorian and Edwardian terraces still existing)

Also, I'm tracking family from late 1700s onwards, Charles Booth's maps are interesting but looking at them, how does a street in 1850 compare to his survey in 1889, it may be pink then but 45 years before, who knows? Could have been fairly rural, could have been dire.

However, one thing really strikes home. Having compiled at the weekend the streets where they lived it's amazing how the family kept together, one moved, the whole lot moved; brothers, sisters, in-laws, cousins. Case in point: Family North of river (Poplar) Francis (now head of family since father had died) slowly progressed up the ladder at The Docks from age of 14 to finally become Foreman. Off they go to East Ham in the late 1890s plus in-laws and his Aged Ma. By 1901 Francis's sisters and their families have joined them, in the same road, few doors apart. Same in Wales, the whole family moving and then living in the same street, and in Abergwynfi, three generations crammed into one house. All miners, probably one shift on, one shift off, same bed. My great-great grandfather was one of the last Ostlers in mining (he looked after the pit ponies) As to house ownership, I don't think any of the family owned their own house until around the late 1950s, early 60s and even then it was very few of them, renting was the norm. I do, however, have some posh ancestors!!

[vinteuil]

... Wednesday 27 June: Portland Road W11.

Very much looking forward to this - I cross Portland Road several times a week on my morning constitutionals. Multi-millionaires at the south end, seriously impoverished communities in social housing at the north end...

[Serial_Apologist]

... Wednesday 27 June: Portland Road W11.

Very much looking forward to this - I cross Portland Road several times a week on my morning constitutionals. Multi-millionaires at the south end, seriously impoverished communities in social housing at the north end...

I know Portland Road quite well! I had a school mate who lived in nearby Clarendon Road - top flat in a 1930s block - communal gardens at the rear. Portland Rd is effectively in two halves - the southern half was the club site of the first series of Minder () made in the early 1980s, and shown from time to time on ITV4 evenings.

[Lateralthinking1]

Interesting posts all. It is true what you say Anna about families living together closely. When my parents decided to try to buy a home fifteen miles away, the reaction of some was quite bitter. Quote - "It will be a noose around your necks".

On gentrification, there was in the programme a brief reference to Southwark Council. It was said that working class Councillors saw conservationists as middle class Nimbys. I have tried to discover the extent to which decisions were taken by the Council, the LCC and the Government. It is hazy. What I do see though is the way that people were pawns in a war of dogma. While Southwark was always Labour controlled, there were both Labour and Conservative administrations nationally and in the LCC during the period so grand plans were pursued whatever it was that was said. I find it hard to believe that many Labour councillors were working class - they rarely are - and attacking Nimbyism looks like a political defence of what was undertaken. Furthermore, the so-called complimentary road schemes, starting with the Westway, were not local matters. We are told that Thatcherites subsequently talked up the disastrous consequences to boost council house sales. That to me seems slightly contradictory. Blair danced into the Aylesbury in 1997 promising change. Johnson does much the same as Mayor now. But what exactly is the role of these people?

It appears that the main architect of the Aylesbury was Hans Peter Trenton. Ironically, this enthusiast of brutalist architecture was an Austrian who came to London before the war as a jewish refugee from Nazi Germany. Little else is known about him. I wonder why! The architect of the nearby Heygate was Tim Tinker, now 76, who returned to the almost abandoned estate in 2011 after a ten year absence: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/why-p...t-6575907.html. As an old man, he is shockingly unrepentant.

Quote - "I don't think it was in any sense a failed estate…..what we provided in concrete and brick was relatively OK…There weren't any problems until relatively recently, but the council eyed it as an opportunity. Councils always go for big-bang, new-build solutions, as opposed to looking after what they've got.”...... "You.....ask why people were enamoured with modern architecture, and I would suggest it was to do with light, sunlight. At that time these inner-city areas were extremely nasty, smoky, dirty places. The Elephant was still pretty bad, with tanneries and God knows what else."

No, they were not "extremely nasty" then, nor were they "these inner-city areas". They were peoples' homes. Our strange outsider, who was just 30-something when let loose, describes the flats he designed as having been light and airy. The despised walkways were "created to keep people away from cars" which were becoming "ubiquitous". Even now, according to Tinker, it feels as a visitor like a clean, "dreamlike" place where you see trees and only a few people. Why, he asks, pull down "a perfectly good estate?". Blimey, I don't know which part of Surbiton or Virginia Water he might live in but clearly he has always been mainly in la-la land. Near the end of the Heygate era, none of the central heating worked and crime was notorious. Even in the early 1980s, there was serious crime on all of the area's estates, the lifts didn't function and in the case of the block I knew, I read one of the most cruel letters. Having been shoved into those boxes, residents were advised that they were no longer permitted onto their tiny balconies as they were crumbling away dangerously and might not ever be able to be repaired. Those who were responsible for the wonderful design, with all of its psychotic overtones, should have been forced to stand on them 24/7 until they were.

[Serial_Apologist]

Interesting posts all. It is true what you say Anna about families living together closely. When my parents decided to try to buy a home fifteen miles away, the reaction of some was quite bitter. Quote - "It will be a noose around your necks".

On gentrification, there was in the programme a brief reference to Southwark Council. It was said that working class Councillors saw conservationists as middle class Nimbys. I have tried to discover the extent to which decisions were taken by the Council, the LCC and the Government. It is hazy. What I do see though is the way that people were pawns in a war of dogma. While Southwark was always Labour controlled, there were both Labour and Conservative administrations nationally and in the LCC during the period so grand plans were pursued whatever it was that was said. I find it hard to believe that many Labour councillors were working class - they rarely are - and attacking Nimbyism looks like a political defence of what was undertaken. Furthermore, the so-called complimentary road schemes, starting with the Westway, were not local matters. We are told that Thatcherites subsequently talked up the disastrous consequences to boost council house sales. That to me seems slightly contradictory. Blair danced into the Aylesbury in 1997 promising change. Johnson does much the same as Mayor now. But what exactly is the role of these people?

It appears that the main architect of the Aylesbury was Hans Peter Trenton. Ironically, this enthusiast of brutalist architecture was an Austrian who came to London before the war as a jewish refugee from Nazi Germany. Little else is known about him. I wonder why! The architect of the nearby Heygate was Tim Tinker, now 76, who returned to the almost abandoned estate in 2011 after a ten year absence: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/why-p...t-6575907.html. As an old man, he is shockingly unrepentant.

Quote - "I don't think it was in any sense a failed estate…..what we provided in concrete and brick was relatively OK…There weren't any problems until relatively recently, but the council eyed it as an opportunity. Councils always go for big-bang, new-build solutions, as opposed to looking after what they've got.”...... "You.....ask why people were enamoured with modern architecture, and I would suggest it was to do with light, sunlight. At that time these inner-city areas were extremely nasty, smoky, dirty places. The Elephant was still pretty bad, with tanneries and God knows what else."

No, they were not "extremely nasty" then, nor were they "these inner-city areas". They were peoples' homes. Our strange outsider, who was just 30-something when let loose, describes the flats he designed as having been light and airy. The despised walkways were "created to keep people away from cars" which were becoming "ubiquitous". Even now, according to Tinker, it feels as a visitor like a clean, "dreamlike" place where you see trees and only a few people. Why, he asks, pull down "a perfectly good estate?". Blimey, I don't know which part of Surbiton or Virginia Water he might live in but clearly he has always been mainly in la-la land. Near the end of the Heygate era, none of the central heating worked and crime was notorious. Even in the early 1980s, there was serious crime on all of the area's estates, the lifts didn't function and in the case of the block I knew, I read one of the most cruel letters. Having been shoved into those boxes, residents were advised that they were no longer permitted onto their tiny balconies as they were crumbling away dangerously and might not ever be able to be repaired. Those who were responsible for the wonderful design, with all of its psychotic overtones, should have been forced to stand on them 24/7 until they were.

Now that I come to think of it, I believe you are right, Lat, inasmuch that apologists for 1960s/70s planning blight falsely attributed inverted snobbery to non-existent working class councillors, after the fact, for decisions made higher up the chain. The Deptford programme was revealing in this respect when we saw one of the councillors who oversaw the dismemberment of the high street district returning to the scene of the crime and sheepishly trying to justify what he had signed away.

Another aspect of all this, touched on in your reference to crumbling balconies, was not only basic design flaws and shortcomings but shoddy workmanship, even given the prefabricated unit construction methods - with which nothing was intrinsically wrong per se: Le Corbusier has been accused of less - for so-called time-saving economies, construction workers were frequently given the nod and wink to skimp on bolting-on procedures (2 bolts made to suffice when 5 were stipulated on the plan, as an example) and use cheaper, but deficient non-galvanized bolts.

[Pegleg]

Something to wet the appetite before tonight's "Caledonia Road" programme from 2010:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/interactive/2010/apr/26/caledonian-road-sound-map

"Award winning broadcaster and oral historian Alan Dein walks us down the Caledonian Road, telling the story of the north London street through the voices of the people who live and work on it."

[Pegleg]

Also, I'm tracking family from late 1700s onwards, Charles Booth's maps are interesting but looking at them, how does a street in 1850 compare to his survey in 1889, it may be pink then but 45 years before, who knows? Could have been fairly rural, could have been dire.

Location and census data give you a good clue. The series makes reference to the updates Booth ( or was it others?) made to his "poverty map" but so far I've only found the 1889-1903 set at LSE which doesn't show this.

However, one thing really strikes home. Having compiled at the weekend the streets where they lived it's amazing how the family kept together, one moved, the whole lot moved; brothers, sisters, in-laws, cousins.

Is this the architypal extended family? In an era of no benefits or pension, the strong might look out for the weak. Between 1830s and 1880s my main parental mob drifted south from Bermondsey, via Camberwell and Peckham to Tooting. They were a family of painters and decorators who could have been characters from the "Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists". In their case they followed the money as London expanded, moving from the worst over-crowding and bad conditions to what Booth marked as pink. They established a small builder's business which survived for three generations but not much beyond the end of WW2.

[Pegleg]

... people were pawns in a war of dogma.

Wasn't it always thus? In the years of slum clearance before the last war and the re-building after, the likes of Herbert Morrison was supposed to have said “We'll build the Tories out of London”. While there's no proof that he ever did say it, and whatever laudable aims the LCC had, it's hard to imagine that the thought that they were also creating a Labour fiefdom never crossed their minds.

But those typical red-brick LCC estates did endure and were never instant slums.

It appears that the main architect of the Aylesbury was Hans Peter Trenton. Ironically, this enthusiast of brutalist architecture was an Austrian who came to London before the war as a jewish refugee from Nazi Germany. Little else is known about him. I wonder why! The architect of the nearby Heygate was Tim Tinker, now 76, who returned to the almost abandoned estate in 2011 after a ten year absence: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/why-p...t-6575907.html. As an old man, he is shockingly unrepentant.

Quote - "I don't think it was in any sense a failed estate…..what we provided in concrete and brick was relatively OK…There weren't any problems until relatively recently, but the council eyed it as an opportunity. Councils always go for big-bang, new-build solutions, as opposed to looking after what they've got.”...... "You.....ask why people were enamoured with modern architecture, and I would suggest it was to do with light, sunlight. At that time these inner-city areas were extremely nasty, smoky, dirty places. The Elephant was still pretty bad, with tanneries and God knows what else."
.

Smoky and dirty? Quelle surprise. I can remember some pretty unpleasant smogs before we had the clean air acts, smokeless fuels and finally people turned away from burning coal. The “God knows what else” was how the people had earnt a living. The story of the E&C and how it's development was influenced not so much be Le Corbusier but the post-war the “ Abercrombie Plan” is well told here:

http://thecarandtheelephant.com/chapter/introduction

This BBC clip of the Abercrombie vision scares the hell out of me:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/britainfromabove/stories/buildingbritain/visionoflondon.shtml

I wonder if Hans Peter Trenton came from Vienna and if he had been influenced by the ideas of socialist housing that went on there before the last war. My maternal grandmother had finally escaped the deprivation of SomersTown to the sunny uplands of Wandsworth by the time the Ossulton Estate and others were built by the LCC on the site of the old slums. It's ironic the Ossulton is now a listed building and it's design is said to be strongly influenced by pre-war Viennese modernist public building such as Karl Marx-Hof. There's a fascinating video about this period in Vienna at http://vimeo.com/35278999:

Compared to Trenton's vision of the Aylesbury Estate, this is paradise. Personally I think he should have been wrapped in a concrete overcoat.

[Pegleg]

Now that I come to think of it, I believe you are right, Lat, inasmuch that apologists for 1960s/70s planning blight falsely attributed inverted snobbery to non-existent working class councillors, after the fact, for decisions made higher up the chain. The Deptford programme was revealing in this respect when we saw one of the councillors who oversaw the dismemberment of the high street district returning to the scene of the crime and sheepishly trying to justify what he had signed away.

It was only yesterday that I thought to look for reaction to these programmes elsewhere on the web. This and the debate in the many comments is worth a read:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/18/sentimentality-two-up-two-downs

The programmer makers come in for some criticism here:

http://deptfordmisc.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/secret-history-or-fishermans-tale.html

http://crossfields.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/not-so-secret-history-turning-tide.html?utm_source=BP_recent

http://deptforddame.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/bbc2s-secret-history-of-our-streets.html

It would seem the councillor Nicholas Taylor was the subject of a hatchet job, as was a lot of other interviews and history that was left on the cutting floor.

I have a friend who has had personal experience of this sort of manipluation at the hands of TV makers in a completely different context.