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George, Welcome to the group. I have not visited the site for a number of weeks so I missed your original comment.



I think the main qualification for joining the group is an interest in East London so you are most welcome.



I also saw your other comment about the West India Dock. On leaving school n 1959 I started my working life as a telegram boy at Poplar so I knew the docks well. By co-incidence I also finished my working life there when the Control Room for the London Fire Brigade was moved to the Millwall Dock. I did not recognise the area at first due to the amount of demolition and rebuilding that has taken place.

Not so much a reply to the comment but an observstion of the image. Concidering the number of ships in the dock there is very little cargo being handled. When I checked the period 1921 the world in general was in the grip of a great depression. This image sums it up as almost all the ships appear laid up. Those tied up to buoys off the quays for certain. This is only a small section of the enclosed docks and the number of men (dockers) out off work must have been enormous. Apart from them it must have been a hard time in general.

Alan, is your site the Cordy House one?

What a great pic.....I'd love to know what my great grandfather looked like but never will.

Excellent donkey too.

:-)

I have been trying to find which photograph you are referring to. I am assuming it's probably one of the Ilford aerial pictures with Manor Park in the background but I cannot determine which one it is.

Welcome to the board ChingDevil. 1952 is when I first family moved to Walthamstow with my family. Although I now live in Somerset, I normally visit Chingford Mount Cemetery about 3 or 4 times a year. I certainly remember the Old Crooked Billet Roundabout and although it was busy, I always felt safe on it. Now it seems to be traffic wizzing in all directions.



I also remember the North Circular Road, the part that goes towards Edmonton. It was the only road in Walthamstow, and the Woodford New Road I think that had no speed limit.



There was no upper speed limit before the 70mph was introduced and technically it was possible to legally drive at 150mph or more. However most vehicles at the time were incapable to reaching more than about 60mph if that.

The old Crooked Billet roundabout in all it's glory.

The website url to the above was too long to be displayed in the text box. The shortened version is below.



http://tinyurl.com/95fae2e

So many places I remember, so many places long gone...

Fantastic site...great find!

I loved it as I spent many years living in Walthamstow and Highams Park.

And here's the ads from the back of the programme.

All from 1915.

That’s a lovely programme cover Tony, with a vaguely art nouveau - Alphone Mucha look to it.

According to the theatretrust.org.uk website East Ham Palace was demolished in 1958 and replaced by a featureless brick box which appears to have lasted longer on the site than the Palace did.

I went to Shaftsbury school in Forest Gate and the Trebor factory in Kathrine road was next door.

Their chimney towered above our playground.

The lovely smells from there used to drive us kids insane all day.

Being born just after the war, I was one of that generation of children denied sweets due to sugar rationing that continued for some years. I was seven years old when my mother gave me a tube of "Refreshers" made by Trebor which I took to school unopened to proudly show to my classmate who sat next to me on a double bench type desk. My teacher saw me showing this unopened tube of Refreshers and promptly confiscated them. This left me fuming as it meant I still had never tasted a sweet in my life. I told my mother about this when I went home for dinner, (we call it lunch now), and during afternoon classes, the classroom door burst open as my mother unexpectedly marched in and demand my sweets back. My teacher who was normally something of a martinet meekly handed them over and my mother promptly left. I was expecting terrible retribution from my teacher but not another word was ever said, presumably because she was fearful of another visit from my mother.



Later in life when I first left school I became a telegram boy on a motorbike based at Telephone House in Forest Gate. When I first passed Trebors not knowing at the time it was located in Katherine Road, the memory of my tube of Refreshers and my teacher came flooding back.

Alternatively, just go to Flickr.com and put Davis Christie's name in the search box....I love his portfolio.

It does appear that the speed of change is accelerating. I recall this same site when it was the medical offices of West Ham Borough Council, then your photo which I think was nicknamed the pyramid and now a supermarket. Who knows what is next.



This site does appear to have difficulties in displaying long URL's, hence part of your Flickr URL has been lost. Although you probably know the answer, one way to overcome this problem is to visit a site like http://tinyurl.com/ By pasting a long URL into a box, it coverts it into a small URL which a site like this can then cope with.

This picture certainly brings back memories. As children our mother occasionally took us on a day trips to Southend which involved getting on a Green Line bus at the Bell Corner, Walthamstow. The route of the bus was along the Eastern Avenue but it detoured into Romford Market via North Street. On some occasions it was market day with stalls everywhere.



It may be hard to appreciate now but in the 1950's Romford was still considered a small country town. As London expanded it simply became engulfed by the expansion of Greater London in the same way the growth of East London engulfed smaller villages.



It's quite surprising but if one look on Google Earth, with the exception of a five mile gap between Upminster and Basildon, the blur on the map caused by buildings runs continuously between Slough and Shoebury. Along the line of the Thames there is no building gap at all. It does make one wonder if within a few years, Southend and Shoebury will not be considered the new East London.

Fantastic colour footage of Petticoat Lane there.

This link is absolutely wonderful for London nostalgia merchants like us by the way http://www.ltmcollection.org/films/index.html

What a great clip of Petticoat Lane, it almost makes one feel like your there.

The phrase "The slums of South Kensington" just doesn't sound right today does it!

You are right mate....I was shown that slider about a year ago and have had great fun with it.

Strange you should mention the prefabs at Wanstead Flats....I grew up in Manor Park and spent many happy hours on that estate in the prefabs of schoolmates who lived there. It was opposite the Golden Fleece pub and as you say, you see it clearly on Google Earth when you slide to 1945.

Let's see if we can upload some screenshots from it to this place.

:-)

This is an evocatively nostalgic picture with wet cobblestones and derelict shops coupled with a sense of forlorn decay. Even the wooden truss shoring up a building further along the road emphasises the abandonment of what was once a thriving thoroughfare. I did look this road up and Google maps to find many of the buildings are still there following refurbishment as well as new building replacing that which presumably cound not be saved. I personaly see no problems with non-aerial photographs as presumably the East End was one of the least desirable areas at the time to aerial photographers albeit rich in diverse communities and life.



I find this photograph tells a powerful visual story.

This is a wonderful photo, redolent of the dirt and delapidation that seemed to sum up much of London at that time.

Thanks for the heads up mate....I think you may be right.

Many thanks for this link, it’s an excellent find. I for one will have hours of fun trying to spot all the locations :-)

The most modern vehicle I could spot is what appears to be a Austin A60 Cambridge at 8’18’’ so that particular clip must be 1959-62.

At 48 seconds we are in Green Street Forest Gate with Henderson Road on the right and the junction with Romford Road around 120 yards ahead.

Knowing both Walthamstow and Newham very well, I recognise all the locations on that film. The list is too long to place here but if wishes to know a location I will do my best to advise. The best way to identify a particular clip of the film is to mention the time frame as Tony has already done.

At the start it pans across Bishopsgate goods yard and station, which were still in use at the time this was shot. It lay derelict for years until 2004 when most of it was demolished. I believe the ornamental gate however survives (the white structure on the left at 0:13), it was cetainly still there looking very sorry for itself a few years back.

I did watch this series and although as you say it did not cover the East End, two of the location, Deptford High Street and Camberwell Grove I know quite well and which I personally found of special interest. The series made great use of Booth's Poverty Map of London comparing his original colour/class classifications to how they are now. I have seen a copy of Booth's map for East London and although I cannot recall any particular street, there was a lot of what he deemed the Vivious or semi-criminal class.



One thing the programme did not directly mention but which was there as a clear undertrend, is how regeneration of an area does not normally benefit the poorer elements of society already living their. The process of regentrification be it by public of private money tends to attract the more affluent elements of society whom in turn displace the poorer elements. This has happened so many times, the Isle of Dogs, Islington to name but a few. It does appear to me that is exactly what is happening in Stratford now which as a result regeneration due to Olympics has clearly come under the spotlight. The newly incoming affluent or moderately affluent are pushing the less fortunate out.

I’ve recorded but yet to view it.



If people are not aware there is a whole London season of archive and new programmes on iPlayer:



http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/collections/p00synd3/london



I think ‘Georgia Brown: Who Are the Cockneys Now?’ will be of particular interest to us here.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00t3mkz



Georgia Brown looks back to the Jewish east end that no longer existed when the programme was made back in 1968. Fascinating footage of the crumbling east end of 1968 which now also a thing of the past. Even more interesting are Georgia’s comment and observations for the future of the area which are remarkably prescient when viewed from 2012.

Tony, I did watch this programme when it was screened about one week ago. Although I thought the content was very good, by focusing almost exclusively around the Whitechapel area, it did show the mind set of what the producers thought was the East End when the film was originally made.



As we all know, Whitechapel was the first building block of todays modern East End and following the mid 1800's, the East End rapidly spread to include the villages of Stepney and Bow, (mentioned in the Pickwick Papers), before exploding into what was then parts of Essex. Areas like Newham, Hackney and Waltham Forest are completely overlooked.



That should not distract from the quality of this programme but I have always had the feeling that even today, to non-East Enders, even those living in other parts of London, the East End of London is still something of an enigmatic mystery, something of the unknown, something to be feared.

I watched with great interest.I found that it wasn't on long enough and the great East End could of easily filled an hour long programme.Hope you are OK.Take care BP

Hi Roy,

I too went to Beal, actually I was part of the last grammar school stream before it went comprehensive. Beal is totally unrecognisable now, the original buildings being the core of a much larger school about 4 times the original size and 2,000+ pupils.

In my time they stopped swimming lessons in the late 70’s as a cost saving measure by which time they had moved to the baths at Fullwell Cross. However, when I attended Redbridge Junior’s we also used to go to the Victorian swimming baths on Ilford High Road (though it had a nasty modern entrance block covering the front). These were closed in 2008 after the building was condemned as unsafe as the council had failed to spend anything on maintenance for years. The council also failed to maintain the Valentines Lido and it was filled in a few years back as another cost saving measure and turned into tennis courts.

Matt

Tony, many thanks for that picture of the old Carlton cinema. Strangely enough, it looks in a better condition boarded up than it did when it was open. The Carlton was always on the lower flea bit end of the cinema scale and it was clear it was nearing it's end when the numbers of the few staff they had there gradually reduced. In the end, the man in the ticket box would also come out of the box to tear ones ticket in half instead of the customary usherette before you entered the cinema. It ended up showing adult films mainly of the titilation variety in an attempt to attract more custom, all to no avail. It then joined the long list of cinemas in Walthamstow and the surrounding districts killed off by television.

Fantastic footage!

Many thanks for the links to the Charlie Browns roundabout, they certainly brought back some nostalgic memories. Although like many others I was sad to see the tarmac jungle that replaced it, the film showing the large volumes of traffic was taken 40 years ago so clearly something needed to be done there. I hate to think what that roundabout would be like with todays traffic. The boarded up houses in Mayfield Road reminded me of a similar sight in West London before the A40 was improved. Good houses boarded up and left to decay for some years.

I know what you mean about not recognising parts of the old East End mate.....I used to live in Colebrook Road E.17, just off the High Street in a lovely little 2 up 2 down Victorian house. It was demolished and replaced by the Selborne Walk Shopping Centre .....Where our old place once stood is now a building society within the mall!..... Walthamstow market was once a wonderful place but now it's just not got the old magic.

I remember Charlie Browns roundabout with the carousel ontop of a pole outside the pub. The transport cafe also used to double as a motorbike hangout in the evenings. Living in Walthamstow close to the market I certainly knew Colebrook Road with the Carlton cinema on the corner. This eventually became a Tesco supermarket prior to demolition due to the new Selborne Walk Centre. I wrote a series of 'Memory' artiicles about Walthamstow on my website which can be found at http://micksmuses.com/2010/10/15/walthamstow-memories/ Links to the other Walthstow articles can be found in the left column of the screen.

You'll enjoy this old pic of the cafe at Charlie Brown's then

:-)

Now converted into apartments, the factory is one of the few surviving features in this photo, apart from the railway line into Liverpool Street. Those that survived the war didn't survive the urban planners. The area to the northeast was swept away by the Blackwall tunnel approach in the 1970s, the A12 extension in the 1990s and now the Olympic stadium complex. Even many of the 1930s industrial buildings constructed after this photo was taken are now long gone.

The house that I grew up in is one of the light streaks on the left of this photo. Not sure if this is of any assistance but the main feature in shot is ‘Eastern Avenue’ running roughly diagonal across the frame with ‘The Drive’ to Ilford being the road running roughly horizontal. Gants Hill is at one end just above the centre with northern part of Cranbrook Road leading off northwards to what will become Barkingside. At the other end of the photo, the site of what was to become Redbridge Roundabout would be just beyond where the Eastern Avenue runs out of frame on the left.

This picture was taken from near the present day Redbridge Station looking east. The road in the foreground running from left to right is The Drive with the large square being the Port of London Authority recreation ground. The road on the left of the picture is Redbridge Lane East.

Hello Historian.....were you based opposite the Princess Alice when you were on the motorbikes?