Being as I am completely indifferent to the Olympics the only good thing about it coming to my home town has been the programmes about London that BBC2 & BBC4 broadcast in recent weeks. In particular The Secret History of Our Streets, a 6 part series using Charles Booth’s 19th century social maps (Charles Booth Online Archive) as a starting point to chart the ever-changing character of London streets and its residents.
Starting with Deptford High Street SE8, once described as ‘the Oxford Street of south London’; a sorry tale of decline, a community broken up and officious local authority figures deciding the fate of residents with little regard to what people wanted. This was typical of many experiences of ordinary people particularly in the post-World War II years of ‘scum clearance’.
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Staying south of the river the up and down fate of Camberwell Grove SE5 was a tale of property development and well-meaning folk wanting to preserve fine old buildings. Here developers built fine houses for the well-to-do who wanted to escape the rapidly growing city in what was then a semi-rural area. However the city soon caught up with Camberwell Grove and as the well-off moved on landlords rented out the houses to families who occupied rooms rather than the whole houses and the properties began to fall into disrepair. In the 1960s things begun to change as young middle-class people bought up these run down houses. And now the street is up-market again.
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For the Caledonian Road N1 there was never such grandeur. A road leading up from King’s Cross with its railway station, the area was and is still considered ‘rough’. But here too residents fought to preserve what there was when British Rail threatened to destroy the community. And since the programme was aired there has been much controversy regarding the local landlord featured who boasted about his disregard for planning and building regulations. ‘No milk left in the Cally’
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Property speculation in west London’s Portland Road W11 told a very different tale. Built with the well-off in mind Portland Road however soon was notorious as a slum. Again it was not until the 1960s that the street saw a turnaround in fortune; and what a turnaround. Now a banker’s enclave, the street has some of the most expensive property in London – with a council estate at one end.
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Returning south of the river Reverdy Road SE1 was perhaps the least changed of the street featured, although here as everywhere changes were happening. Home to the ‘respectable’ working class in the 19th century this was a story of Bermondsey’s local politicians and for want of a better description, their Christian / Socialist sense of duty to the local people. When the now defunct Bermondsey Council bought up Reverdy Road and the rest of the West Estate properties they modernised them and ensure local people had priority in renting the houses, keeping the community together. Now however with the changes to housing policy and the ‘right to buy’ local people are not so dominate as they once were.
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Finally the first council estate opened in 1896 in east London. Built by the long gone London County Council, the Boundary Estate around Arnold Circus E2 was to replace the overcrowded slums in the area. By today’s standards the flats would seems substandard with only some having indoor toilets and none having hot water, but in comparison to the buildings they replaced the flats were palaces. Trouble was at 10 shillings a week the people who had lived in the slums demolished to make way for the estate could not afford the rent them. Those that could afford it soon built up a sense of community; a mixed community with a large number of residents being Jewish. However in the post war years people wanted more than these neglected flats could offer and the community began to dissolve as they moved away to more modern homes. In the 1970s a very different movement to those seeking to preserve changed the fortunes of the declining Boundary Estate – squatting. This area of the east end was now home to many Bangladeshi families who were living in squalid and overcrowded conditions. Encourage to squat in empty properties belonging to the LLC’s successor, the now also defunct Greater London Council, the GLC ended up rehousing the families in the area. Of course now while the estate remains a council property (Tower Hamlets) many flats are now privately owned and overpriced.
This series was on the whole very good; with no ‘experts’ just commentary and interviews with former and current residents it gave a fairly rounded view of the social history of these streets. My only criticism would be that the role of poor and / or exploitative landlords, whether they be private or local authority, in the creation of slums was not given enough attention (though Peter Rachman was briefly mentioned) and it was implied that rent control (something desperately needed) was to blame for the fact that landlords let their properties decay as was the often asserted assumption that all council estates are poorly designed slums full of the ‘undeserving poor’.
