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The Secret History of Our Streets

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Soutra Tue 28-Apr-15 21:20:59

Is it really as long as that?! Time flies! I found it very sad how the "planners" turned social engineers and claimed to know best what people wanted. Some of those little terraced houses were immaculate, kept like palaces and those that have survived change hands for 6 figures, but just because they did not have indoor plumbing they were deemed to be "slums" and the way was opened for their demolition. Camberwell seems to have fared better than e.g.Bermondsey not least because there were some articulate, middle class residents who knew how to fight back.
I am not saying that genuine rat-infested slums or houses weakened by bomb damage should not have been improved but as you say, the "new" properties became the slums and many have been demolished while the original Georgian or Victorian terraces , once restored are sought after gems, (those that escaped Barry Bucknell, that is!) I know we had one and spent a lot of time and money "un modernising" our house!

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crun Tue 28-Apr-15 20:59:49

It's a repeat from three years ago, but I love it. They're picking a street for each episode and following it's fortunes up and down over a century or more, starting from Booth's social surveys from the nineteenth century. This week there were a couple of women in the house where they lived as kids. One of them looked out of the window and was surprised that the toilet had disappeared from the back garden. grin

Last week they showed a street that had been a slum clearance area in the 1960s. The council had sent surveyors round to condemn the houses, but they found that the houses were in good condition, so the surveys were covered up and the bulldozers were sent in anyway.

They showed some old film of residents who had been moved out to the New Towns, and were all depressed because of the loss of community, then they interviewed on of the councillors who was involved. "No, no" he said, "they weren't depressed, they were feeling guilty because they were so happy in their nice new homes".

The irony is that the new houses they built are now slums, whilst just around the corner there are some houses that really had been slums but escaped the bulldozers by a fluke, and they're now selling for £750,000.

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