The Secret Life of Streets (BBC Two)

[Anna]

It's only just sinking in that have I connections with and memories of half the streets featured in the series. A grandmother whose early years were lived in one of Booth's blackest streets near King Cross. One Aunt, who as a young child, was living in Alma Road (now Grove) Bermondsey at the time of the Great War, it's the next street to Reverdy Road. P.S. I exaggerated. Reading the Booth online archive again, the area my grandmother lived in was coloured purple. Nearby it was black. None the less a very hard life on the bottom rung of society. This period of her life was from 1889 to around 1905.

Alma Grove, Bermondsey, (from a quick bit of research) is now a very desirable address and looking at google street view a very pretty road with prices up to £400,000+. The only road covered by the programme which my family had connections with, and it's a shortlived one, will be Caledonian Road. Grandfather's family lived off there, an area bordered by Bingfield Street (birthplace of Kenneth Williams), Randell's Road and Rufford Street, which is coloured on Booths map as very poor/chronic want/vicious criminals. They lived in Beaconsfield Buildings, which Booth approved of, being built in 1879 as Model Dwellings for the Working Class. Grandpa's family were there around 1911 until 1919, what state they were in then I don't know but they were eventually demolished in 1969 as being the worst slum in London (and known as The Crumbles) From photos I've found online taken in the early 1960s they should have been condemned years before that. The site where they were is Bingfield Park. Does anyone know that part of Islington?

[MrGongGong]

This blog is worth looking at if you are interested in these things !

There's a huge archive and he posts a new page every day ...... the book is also good

http://spitalfieldslife.com/

[Lateralthinking1]

Blimey, this has become an exciting thread. I too hadn't noted the new series so thanks from me as well, Anna. So far I have only dipped in but already a lot of bells are ringing. While I don't know Deptford, the clip of the man talking about the fruit and veg market could be straight out of Walworth. To think that one barrow was enough to support three families. I wonder if it would support one person now. As for the way that they gutted the streets, that road is almost identical to the old Villa Street in SE17.

For obvious reasons, the Camberwell Grove one is the really must see programme for me although all look interesting. In the clip of the women visiting their old house, there is huge familiarity and, perhaps a bit weird to say this at my age, feelings of reassurance in their accents. In my childhood, there was always a welcome in those sounds. The inside of the house is not at all unlike the one that my Nan lived in with my aunt and uncle except that theirs was a bit less grand and there was a rented shop at the front.

Is my slightly cosy internet semi-anonymity disappearing here? When pegleg mentions Alma Grove, Bermondsey and gurnemantz mentions Chaldon Way and the Tudor Rose in my current part of Greater London, it suddenly seems a very small country. I have been here on and off since 1962. The 403 went up to Sanderstead from Croydon, certainly going back to the 1970s and probably before. It might still do so now. Not sure. We had the 409 and 411 but now it is the 466. What was the 190 is now the 60. This gives the details of the 709 from decades back which we used to pick up very near the Tudor - http://www.eplates.info/709s.html.

[Anna]

Blimey, this has become an exciting thread. I too hadn't noted the new series so thanks from me as well, Anna. So far I have only dipped in but already a lot of bells are ringing. While I don't know Deptford, the clip of the man talking about the fruit and veg market could be straight out of Walworth. To think that one barrow was enough to support three families. I wonder if it would support one person now. As for the way that they gutted the streets, that road is almost identical to the old Villa Street in SE17.

And I also have family that lived in Walworth/Southwark Lat!! Not fruit and veg though - Drapers! Mainly married and baptised at St. Saviours, but in Victorian times. I imagine a lot of us here could find that our relatives lived just around the corner from each other! At one stage my great grandpa came back from Wales and lived in Bethnal Green and worked as a tram conductor for a while. I'd like to see them do a programme on the East End.

[Lateralthinking1]

St. Saviours

Yep. St Saviours is on a lot of the certificates in this house too. We're neighbours!

I visit this website occasionally. I don't claim to fully understand it but it is fascinating and can bring out the full range of emotions. The person who runs it seems, what shall I say, amazingly committed. It is one of my "how are the politicians doing?" yardsticks. Generally their score is about E minus.

http://southwarknotes.wordpress.com/

[Pegleg]

Alma Grove, Bermondsey, (from a quick bit of research) is now a very desirable address and looking at google street view a very pretty road with prices up to £400,000+. The only road covered by the programme which my family had connections with, and it's a shortlived one, will be Caledonian Road. Grandfather's family lived off there, an area bordered by Bingfield Street (birthplace of Kenneth Williams), Rendell's Road and Rufford Street, which is coloured on Booths map as very poor/chronic want/vicious criminals. They lived in Beaconsfield Buildings, which Booth approved of, being built in 1879 as Model Dwellings for the Working Class. Grandpa's family were there around 1911 until 1919, what state they were in then I don't know but they were eventually demolished in 1969 as being the worst slum in London (and known as The Crumbles) From photos I've found online taken in the early 1960s they should have been condemned years before that. The site where they were is Bingfield Park. Does anyone know that part of Islington?

This doesn't sound too unlike the part of Somers Town my nan lived in circa 1900, Bingfield Park is only a liitle north of what was Somers Town. But I really don't know the area well, even though I worked in offices above Euston Station for a couple of years.

But £400,000+ ? It's just ridiculous. Carlwell street Tooting was my first home. A world with a single lit coal fire, tin bath and outside lavatory. My dear departed mother's Monday wash day was toiling over a boiling copper and mangle, with some things sent to the Sunlight Laundry. And yes. my Dad, a keen gardener, collected any horse's apples when the coal was delivered. The small terraced house was built around 1880. Just as well it wasn't Deptford or some s*d might have wanted to pull it down.

A quick check of property pages today left me reeling. A house three doors from my old home was up for £350,000 . Another so-called 4 bed house was being offered to rent at £2,200 pcm.

[Serial_Apologist]

Alma Grove, Bermondsey, (from a quick bit of research) is now a very desirable address and looking at google street view a very pretty road with prices up to £400,000+. The only road covered by the programme which my family had connections with, and it's a shortlived one, will be Caledonian Road. Grandfather's family lived off there, an area bordered by Bingfield Street (birthplace of Kenneth Williams), Rendell's Road and Rufford Street, which is coloured on Booths map as very poor/chronic want/vicious criminals. They lived in Beaconsfield Buildings, which Booth approved of, being built in 1879 as Model Dwellings for the Working Class. Grandpa's family were there around 1911 until 1919, what state they were in then I don't know but they were eventually demolished in 1969 as being the worst slum in London (and known as The Crumbles) From photos I've found online taken in the early 1960s they should have been condemned years before that. The site where they were is Bingfield Park. Does anyone know that part of Islington?

Can't say I know it well, Anna, but (assuming you have a map of that part of London handy), just down the York Way, on the east side, between the Copenhagen Street turn off and where the Regent's Canal goes under, is a very bohemian pub called the Cross Kings, which hosted leftfield jazz gigs 2 or 3 nights a week in 2006/7. Red lit, standard lamps in the shape of naked dancers, lots of posters for Gay Pride and against constructing the Eurotunnel link to St Pancras just down the road, a great atmosphere of a place in a very seedy district. I would always hide my bike in among the ill-kempt shrubs in a nearby park - not Bingfield Park - there were always dodgy types and drunks hanging around.

It's Randell's Road, btw.

[Pegleg]

Is my slightly cosy internet semi-anonymity disappearing here? When pegleg mentions Alma Grove, Bermondsey and gurnemantz mentions Chaldon Way and the Tudor Rose in my current part of Greater London, it suddenly seems a very small country. I have been here on and off since 1962. The 403 went up to Sanderstead from Croydon, certainly going back to the 1970s and probably before. It might still do so now. Not sure. We had the 409 and 411 but now it is the 466. What was the 190 is now the 60. This gives the details of the 709 from decades back which we used to pick up very near the Tudor - http://www.eplates.info/709s.html.

The 403 ... a London Country RT. Many thanks, you have an excellent memory. Found the route now at http://www.eplates.info/400s.html

There was always a scrabble for the downstairs next to the driver front seat. Even in what must have been the lowest gear it was a bit of a strain to get up Sanderstead Hill. Just as well we were never on that bus in the winter months.

I sill cannot identify what greenlines ran through Tooting.

[Serial_Apologist]

The 403 ... a London Country RT. Many thanks, you have an excellent memory. Found the route now at http://www.eplates.info/400s.html

There was always a scrabble for the downstairs next to the driver front seat. Even in what must have been the lowest gear it was a bit of a strain to get up Sanderstead Hill. Just as well we were never on that bus in the winter months.

I sill cannot identify what greenlines ran through Tooting.

Coicidences, or what??

See second main paragraph, Pegleg:

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?5415-Scenes-of-childhood-B-amp-W-Photography-of-the-UK&p=165274#post165274

We could have travelled on the very same bus!

[french frank]

[Have split the thread, as requested, from the original. I think it's a bit untidy because the posts were intertwined with more than one topic. Hope this works.]

[Anna]

Thanks frenchie. The first programme has generated a lot of interest and as there are 5 more to come, and so many people on the MB have London - however distant in the past - connections (not to say bus connections!) it does seem logical.

Lat's told me of some of his Walworth place connections and on looking at the first one I find "substantial Victorian houses, very well constructed" followed by "demolished for development" and it really makes you think, that apart from the dreadful genuine slums that there were which deserved to be demolished, the GLC and over zealous planners in the 60s did more damage to the landscape of working class London than the Luftwaffe in many cases.

[VodkaDilc]

I posted this elsewhere earlier today. Now I know there's a more appropriate thread I'll repeat it here:

I've just watched this and agree that it's excellent. However I was struck by the insensitive use of subtitles. Every person interviewed who was from any sort of non-white/British background had their words subtitled, even those who were obviously well-educated and were completely comprehensible. Every white South Londoner was deemed to be understandable without subtitles (I have lived in South London, so have no problems with the accent, but many others might.)

In a multi-cultural society, isn't there a better way? Subtitle all or none, perhaps. I am surprised that the BBC allowed the programme to be broadcast like this.

[Pegleg]

Coicidences, or what??

See second main paragraph, Pegleg:

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?5415-Scenes-of-childhood-B-amp-W-Photography-of-the-UK&p=165274#post165274

We could have travelled on the very same bus!

It's a small world, or should that be forum? I've just read your earlier thread and you have some great memories SA. If your Mr. Clapp was born around 1840 just think what sights and sounds he must have witnessed during his long life. The trams may been gone by the 1950s but as you say there were plenty of sections of line left in the roads to catch the unwary. The road between Tooting Bec and Balham past Du Cane Court comes to mind. Can't let a mention of Balham pass without this:

PETER SELLERS - 'Balham - Gateway To The South' - 1958 http://youtu.be/8RTWk9QIKS0

[Pegleg]

Lat's told me of some of his Walworth place connections and on looking at the first one I find "substantial Victorian houses, very well constructed" followed by "demolished for development" and it really makes you think, that apart from the dreadful genuine slums that there were which deserved to be demolished, the GLC and over zealous planners in the 60s did more damage to the landscape of working class London than the Luftwaffe in many cases.

Planners v. the Blitz, it does make you wonder. But did you study this back in 2010?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/sep/06/london-blitz-bomb-map-september-7-1940#data

And I've just started to watch this to get a better prespective:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p008qcdh/After_the_Battle_London_Ed_Murrow_Reports/

First transmitted in 1959, American reporter Ed Murrow returns to London where, during the war years, he had broadcast vivid descriptions of Britain during her “finest and darkest hours, trying to report the suffering, the sacrifice and the steadiness of her people” to a listening world. This film features dramatic reports of the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, which gave rise to his celebrated closing phrase “Good night and good luck.” Murrow returned to London to examine “what Britain has done with her years of victory.” He reports from London’s East End which still bears the scars of the wartime raids, the London docks where dockers claim that taxing them for working on Sundays is “the greatest liberty that’s been took by a worker in his life”, and asks London’s younger generation what kind of world they would like to live in. Surveying London on the brink of the 1960s, Murrow argues that post-war hopes for better health, better education, better housing and full employment are falling short of expectations.

[Lateralthinking1]

Lat's told me of some of his Walworth place connections and on looking at the first one I find "substantial Victorian houses, very well constructed" followed by "demolished for development" and it really makes you think, that apart from the dreadful genuine slums that there were which deserved to be demolished, the GLC and over zealous planners in the 60s did more damage to the landscape of working class London than the Luftwaffe in many cases.

Sorry to be thick but which website is that on Anna? The houses were substantial but had the misfortune to be in a wider area of tenements. My grandmother was born in slums next to the River Thames in 1890. Her accent was working class London through and through. She had very minimal reading and writing abilities even in 1981 and little idea in respect of arithmetic. When my parents married in 1956, they like many also had very little and were in one of the last flats that still had gaslight in the Elephant and Castle. The family was not atypical of the wider community. However, the 66 years weren't as static as this summary suggests.

Very early on, my Nan, her parents and eight siblings had managed to move to Walworth. It was a step upwards from what in the mid 1800s had been described in the press as a no go neighbourhood. Quite how they got out I don't know. But long before 1910, they with hardly any money could already feel sorry for people like Chaplin for his comparative poverty. They had shoes on their feet. Being just a couple of miles from the City, they were hardly living in the countryside but they would regularly see animals being walked to the markets from the surrounding London farms. It seems incredible now. They felt they had more space.

My grandmother ultimately married a man who was bright and well-presented if unqualified and of very meagre background. Such was the growing meritocracy before the war - don't believe all you read about the 1960s changing everything - he secured a white collar position with a tea merchant and very quickly became a tea taster. People need a science degree to do that nowadays. Money wasn't then in short supply but it didn't accumulate because he had been raised with conservative sharing values. His immediate family were provided with what was sufficient for their needs. The rest of what he earned, such as it was, went to the wider family still in poverty. He wasn't all saintly - he had an aggressive streak - which emerged when he was given the opportunity of a post in Ceylon. My grandmother said no - to her it was like another planet - and then he died very suddenly aged 50.

It was all really unexpected. He left virtually no savings and my Nan, aged 49, had a nine year old child. Her youngest but of course there was nothing much in the way of benefit in those days. A rented shop with home became available. It sold vegetables on the edge of one of the most famous vegetable markets in London. The prospects therefore weren't good but she took it, spending the only money she had on the first month's rent. War commenced the same month and then rationing so it must have been really tough, bearing in mind her very low literacy, no experience of trading or accounts, and the need to walk into Central London at 4am each day to purchase provisions from a depot populated with cut throat men. But there she stayed working until the late 1960s when at around 80, politicians told her that the place would be pulled down. She was then thrown into a council tower block.

Even when new, the lifts never worked. I will always resent the way she had to walk up six flights of stairs every day aged 91. The architecture was brutal, there were no carpets on the landings, there was no sound insulation and the walls were generally decorated with urine and graffiti. She was exceptionally warm, trustworthy to the point of miraculous, great fun and the best education I was ever given. She died with no more money than she had either in 1939 or 1909 and was very happy to the end.