This is my street, and I'm never gonna leave it,

[callmemadam]

Is anyone else watching the BBC2 series The Secret History of our Streets? I’m finding it fascinating. Yesterday’s episode was about Reverdy Road, Bermondsey, an attractive, tree-lined street of late-Victorian terraced houses. Here’s an example of the houses there. Look at the price! That’s very significant.

Reverdy Road was built by the West estate, which owned the land. When Charles Booth visited it as part of his mammoth project to map poverty in London ( Maps Descriptive of London Poverty), he coloured it pink, meaning that it was a comfortable street for people with reliable earnings, i.e. the respectable working class. It’s rare these days to find people who have spent the whole of their lives living on the same street but we met one or two yesterday. When the houses were first built, they were all rented. They were bought by Southwark council in 1960 (?) and after the Housing Act of 1980, could be bought by tenants. That’s what led to the current situation of Reverdy Road. As older people die, property developers buy up the houses and sell them at prices the children of the inhabitants can’t possibly afford. This is the way old-established communities get broken up, and isn’t it a shame?

I never cease to be amazed at the way Ray Davies, as a very young man, was writing songs which were already nostalgic for a vanishing past. These lines from Autumn Almanac seem to me to sum up the feelings of the inhabitants of Reverdy Road.

And I'm always gonna stay here
If I live to be ninety-nine,
'Cause all the people I meet
Seem to come from my street
And I can't get away,
Because it's calling me, (come on home)
Hear it calling me, (come on home)

Comments

[aellia.livejournal.com]

I'm really enjoying the series. Notting Hill was a good one!

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Yes!

[gwendraith.livejournal.com]

I particularly liked the Bermondsey one because my family lived in the area from the early 1700s (if not before) until at least WW2 and I probably still have some distant family there. My x3, 4 and 5 great grandparents lived closer to the river and when I was researching I looked at Booth's poverty maps and the roads their descendants lived and they were of mixed fortunes. The earlier family lived in cottages by the river, mainly the slums of Dickens' time and earlier, all demolished and very expensive dwellings are now there. I love the area, it has a lot of character.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Fascinating stuff! I seem to have heard a lot lately about Thames watermen. Didn't you say that was how some of your ancestors worked?
I find the ups and downs of these areas very interesting. I looked up the place my parents lived when they were first married, which they always described as 'rough'. It's obviously gone up in the world since then.

[gwendraith.livejournal.com]

Yes, my x2,x3, x4 and x5 great grandfathers were all watermen and did the 7 year apprenticeship usually bound to their father or an uncle. There are probably earlier ones but I haven't been able to identify them yet in the watermen records at the Guildhall library in London like the others. My x3 great grandfather Samuel Lowden Evans (B. 1797) was bound to his father (also Samuel b. 1756) as was his brother John Alexander Evans (B. 1785). John won the coveted Doggett's coat and badge race in 1807. It began in 1715 and is an event each year for apprentices at the end of their apprenticeships and which still continues today although it doesn't have the prestige of the 18th and 19th centuries. My family must have been so proud and it will have brought them extra work.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

You could write a book on it!

[(Anonymous)]

Ray has something important and meaningful to say about every thing in life. We call it 'Ray for the day,' as we frequently quote him. A true genius who doesn't get the credit due him, though those who love him are the strongest fans anywhere, methinks.:<)

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

He's wonderful!