I wish my nanna was around still she would have loved to have seen this! She's an old East Ham girl, proper Eastender! R.i.p Rosetta Catherine Hayes of Godsell Road. Best lady there ever was! Xx
An amazing video. The music brought tears to my eyes. The music was around 1962, the year my mother died. The buildings and places look exactly as I remembered them. We had some great times through 1950'-1960's. I always wanted to get away from there and now when I look back, it might have looked grim, but the place was great. The Older I am getting the more I think of those days. Maybe it is a thing that comes with age. But looking at Living in Stepney, I think a lot of us are like that.
Thank you nostalgic moments. born & bread East Ham (1947), sadly left forever in '79 we were being overrun by the Indian sub continent, more of them less of us, sad but so very true.
My old mum was born in Whitechapel. My grandparents were from cable street. They moved to wales after the war . My gran was a great old east Londoner who was Jewish decent. When I was a kid she tell me all about east London . Great stuff.
Such great memories of the old East End. A culture and way of life now fragmented to suburban London, Essex and beyond. But always, always, my spiritual home.
i just had to come back for another stroll down memory lane, i grew up in the east end in the 50s and 60s, so nice to be able to see it the way it was ? things i had long since forgotten brought back to life again thank you so much for taking the time to put this all together it really is appreciated a lovely stroll thru my yesterdays, real heartwarming stuff, kindest regards dave
Bacon street at 2.06 is an absolute treasure of a photo. Never have I come across a photo of the record shop in it's full glory. I have always known it to be a run down gents shoe shop. Bacon street holds fantastic memories for me on a personnel note. Thanks for this wonderful clip.
sad and heart breaking, thank you for adding this trip down memory lane was so needed, I hate this era and what has happened to our country, canning town in the 60s was a highlight for me as a kid all going to see my Nan and Grandad in Plaistow
Wow, what a beautiful three minutes just spent stepping back in time. I was born in a pub (The Mariners Arms) in the early 60's; it was located in The Highway E1 - opposite Shadwell Park. To this end, the picture of Watney Street Market was particularly poignant. Many thanks for posting these wonderful memories.
elitept@ Don't be arrogant, London lost it's soul long ago & now it's identity is being seriously diluted We need educated, hard working rational headed immigrants but we didn't need mass immigration on the utterly ludicrous scale that we're seeing today it's gone beyond a sick joke.
Thank You for these memories! I grew up in Stratford until I was a young teenager.Viewing these photo's took me back to my childhood with Mum & Dad and a loving family! Once again Thank You!
my wife was born in the east end . her family go back to the 1600s in the same area . i married her 1976 . it was starting to change around then by the mid 80s the changes made it obvious no going back. sad . it was a great place back in the day . she moved to the north east after getting married to live around my family while i was in the navy . she fell in love with the area at once and here we still stay . she is still an east end girl at heart and still says the krays loved their mum and near hurt anyone who did not deserve it and all that crap !!! great people her family are all still mental !
here is my 2P worth , was born in Bethnal Green and was looked after as an infant by shopkeepers in Walthamstow , they used to sit me in front of a record player to keep me quiet and among other things played "stranger on the shore" , still remember clearly .
I directed traffic at Gardner's corners many a time ,as a young copper,when the traffic lights were out.Back in the early 60's it was still a great place and the people were the salt of the earth,but, it was changing fast.
Nice to see how East London was like back in the day. I was born in 1986 and grew up in the 90s. It would be great to go back in time To see how life was like back then. No iPhones no iPads no computers no internet no wifi and no sky tv no Facebook no twitter no Instagram.
Lord Red To be fair, without multiculturalism in East London, it would never have been such a successful, international place it is today with all the tourism and global stores/companies set up in places like Stratford. In the 60's, it was just Pie, mash and white people not much to celebrate
I love watching vids of the East End, born in MIle End and lived in Cable St and Wapping. My favourite places to play were all the debris littered around. The old venture playgrounds were good growing up... No parents would let their kids play there these days lol.
Its amazing to see something like this, I did not realise how much of East London I had experienced untill viewing this, you just took it for granted because thats the way it was, I can truthfully say I recognise every single place on this except perhaps the Empire Exhibition picture, thanks for posting.
These videos will always be a reminder to how good life were back then and now its shocking to see whats happened in the space of 50 odd years. you look at many a place now in england and just think yep yet another town or sector done.
I was born in Mile end my family lived in Eric st. My dads family came from Poplar. We lived at Forest Gate, Manor Park for a while and ended up in Leyton. Mum and Dad moved out to Romford with the rest of the family. We're related to the Wright family of TOWIE fame. Spent a lot of time at my nans in Poplar when I was a kid. Used to go to Crisp street and savaloy and pease pudding and my nan would take me to Andersons to get shoes for school. Last time I drove through the east end for my uncles funeral I didn't see a white face for miles.
+Td K I have mentioned Andersons on a few forums and asked if anyone remembered it - this is the first time I have seen someone else mention it. I remember getting shoes there in the 70s and paying weekly.
Jeez, pease pudding and a saveloy, and Chrisp street market. My mum used to take me up there on the trolly. Remember the pie & mash shop, they used to have live eels. If I was lucky I'd have a stewed eel for tea. At that time we lived in Repton house Caley street, right opposite Caley school. We moved there from Forester street, just off the Mile End road. I remember playing on the bomb sites around Stepney Green & Stepney Way, with my cousin Derek, he died young. I feel a little sad seeing what's happened to the East End.
I miss pie and mash. I had some in Romford recently... Better than nothing! When we lived in Leyton the pie and mash at Walthamstow was nice and they used to sell the eels outside in a big plastic bin and would lop their heads off on a blood covered wooden block.
Td K I live in Ireland, now have done for twenty years (no Irish connections at all). All my family are buried in Manor Park cemetery, my younger brothers ashes are just scattered there. \all the eels sold in London, come from Ireland, or Holland, can't buy a eel in Ireland at all, but we can get Dutch rollmops (pickled herrings). Ireland it's a bit like the East End, people help each other, and muck in. Peace and Love.
my husband's family comes from the East London born in The Sound of Bow Bells that is a true EastEnders I have pride dignity mat what is London the society that gives everything away and poos on their own culture the first and second world war should not have happened for it end up like this (the wife
My family moved to East London from India, dad lived outside Boleyn, east end has always been a place for change and diversity, wouldn’t live anywhere else COYI
Born and bred in East London, and still here. It has always been a melting pot. Full of the poor and impoverished, all foreigners, even from 200 years back. Before you start talking about how it has all changed now and how it’s all full of foreigners, just remember that that’s where the ones who lived there before were as well...They always send the foreigners to the shit holes.
Thank you for your interest, I can assure you there are a large number of park's and open spaces in East London but I did not include them in this video as parks tend to change very little and would not be a good subject to use for illustrating the dramatic transformation that has taken place in this part of London, also, as an aside to this, most of the pictures I used come largely from the 1950s and 60s, and at that time large areas of East London was still littered with bomb site's from WW2 and many children of that era (myself included) would be far more likely to play on those areas offering adventure and even danger than the relatively "sterile" environment of a conventional park, I hope this adequately answers your enquiry, I wish you well.
+Sue Elias When you talk about 'parks' in a discussion about London's East End, it's important to remember that we're talking about a patch of grass the size of a few football pitches with some tress and bushes if you were lucky. My friends and I would take our bikes and play on 'Beckton Dump' and take a walk along the 'Sewer Bank'. These were the early 70's and playing footie in the local park meant our ball would regularly go over the wall or fence into Brampton Junior School/The Jewish Cemetery or Lonsdale Avenue. Either way would require taking your life in your hands to retrieve it. I don't think I saw enough trees to obscure a road somewhere until I was about 13?
Mickey P. Is this because it is a "poor" side of town? Or would that be true everywhere in London? (Where I live, its not like that, trees are very important)! Was the air stale?
It was always the poor side of London. Greenery was never an important consideration in the East End but there were a few green areas, even small woods, if you looked hard enough but you could always hear the traffic. I never noticed the air quality being stale but heavy traffic definitely pumped out the carbon monoxide and, back then, lead. Before my time, London had 'pea-souper' fogs caused by excessive coal burning. Those 'smogs' killed a large number of people on a regular basis, even as late as the post WW11 era. I believe they stopped in the '50's when the Clean Air Act was passed and 'smokeless zones' were introduced.
I used to go to visit a friend in Whitechapel in the early 70s when I was in my mid-teens. Let me tell you that being around those streets at night was horrible. Dark, dismal, filthy and like something from a Jack the Ripper movie.
Well we can look at the past like that and think that there's continuity everywhere; or we can actually look at it more sensitively. Indeed, the squalor and poverty are forgettable, but the charm and character the communities created are powerful considering their circumstances. The gentrified banality of today's East End is far less characterful. You shouldn't assume others have been 'brainwashed' either, it's patronizing and with the name 'elitept' it further makes you sound sanctimonious.
I wish my nanna was around still she would have loved to have seen this! She's an old East Ham girl, proper Eastender! R.i.p Rosetta Catherine Hayes of Godsell Road. Best lady there ever was! Xx
An amazing video. The music brought tears to my eyes. The music was around 1962, the year my mother died. The buildings and places look exactly as I remembered them. We had some great times through 1950'-1960's. I always wanted to get away from there and now when I look back, it might have looked grim, but the place was great. The Older I am getting the more I think of those days. Maybe it is a thing that comes with age. But looking at Living in Stepney, I think a lot of us are like that.
Thank you nostalgic moments. born & bread East Ham (1947), sadly left forever in '79 we were being overrun by the Indian sub continent, more of them less of us, sad but so very true.
My old mum was born in Whitechapel. My grandparents were from cable street. They moved to wales after the war . My gran was a great old east Londoner who was Jewish decent. When I was a kid she tell me all about east London . Great stuff.
Such great memories of the old East End. A culture and way of life now fragmented to suburban London, Essex and beyond. But always, always, my spiritual home.
Lovely people so friendly and kind how I miss that now
i just had to come back for another stroll down memory lane, i grew up in the east end in the 50s and 60s, so nice to be able to see it the way it was ? things i had long since forgotten brought back to life again thank you so much for taking the time to put this all together it really is appreciated a lovely stroll thru my yesterdays, real heartwarming stuff, kindest regards dave
I loved the 60s. The best decade ever.
Yeah. and not a single Burka clad Ninja cartoon to be seen on the streets !!
Lovely in them days pity its got a load shit there now that's what the conservatives and Labour have done over the last 30 year's ruined this country
Born in the London hospital and raised in Bethnal Green. Makes me proud.
Bacon street at 2.06 is an absolute treasure of a photo. Never have I come across a photo of the record shop in it's full glory. I have always known it to be a run down gents shoe shop. Bacon street holds fantastic memories for me on a personnel note. Thanks for this wonderful clip.
sad and heart breaking, thank you for adding this trip down memory lane was so needed, I hate this era and what has happened to our country, canning town in the 60s was a highlight for me as a kid all going to see my Nan and Grandad in Plaistow
Wow, what a beautiful three minutes just spent stepping back in time. I was born in a pub (The Mariners Arms) in the early 60's; it was located in The Highway E1 - opposite Shadwell Park. To this end, the picture of Watney Street Market was particularly poignant. Many thanks for posting these wonderful memories.
+Barry Allen Thank you for your comments, I'm pleased you enjoyed the video, best of luck.
elitept@ Don't be arrogant, London lost it's soul long ago & now it's identity is being seriously diluted
We need educated, hard working rational headed immigrants but we didn't need mass immigration on the utterly ludicrous scale that we're seeing today
it's gone beyond a sick joke.
Go Trippy . . . . You're right and i like your style . . . .but the Thames is tidal and the changes will come in until it freezes again . . :) .
Beautiful video - and Acker's playing more than complements it.
Cheers, Les (born 1951 - E12 - and still in East Ham)
wonderful time looking back to a time when we it the really east-end .
thank you always
badboybaldy1 y
I was born and brought up in Leyton and remember these places from my childhood.
Photo's and warm memories.
Places and people gone but not forgotten.
Thank You for these memories! I grew up in Stratford until I was a young teenager.Viewing these photo's took me back to my childhood with Mum & Dad and a loving family! Once again Thank You!
Born in East Ham, these pictures certainly brought back good memories.
my wife was born in the east end . her family go back to the 1600s in the same area . i married her 1976 . it was starting to change around then by the mid 80s the changes made it obvious no going back. sad . it was a great place back in the day . she moved to the north east after getting married to live around my family while i was in the navy . she fell in love with the area at once and here we still stay . she is still an east end girl at heart and still says the krays loved their mum and near hurt anyone who did not deserve it and all that crap !!! great people her family are all still mental !
here is my 2P worth , was born in Bethnal Green and was looked after as an infant by shopkeepers in Walthamstow , they used to sit me in front of a record player to keep me quiet and among other things played "stranger on the shore" , still remember clearly .
I directed traffic at Gardner's corners many a time ,as a young copper,when the traffic lights were out.Back in the early 60's it was still a great place and the people were the salt of the earth,but, it was changing fast.
Nice to see how East London was like back in the day. I was born in 1986 and grew up in the 90s. It would be great to go back in time
To see how life was like back then. No iPhones no iPads no computers no internet no wifi and no sky tv no Facebook no twitter no Instagram.
.........and no multiculturalism.
Lord Red To be fair, without multiculturalism in East London, it would never have been such a successful, international place it is today with all the tourism and global stores/companies set up in places like Stratford. In the 60's, it was just Pie, mash and white people not much to celebrate
I love watching vids of the East End, born in MIle End and lived in Cable St and Wapping. My favourite places to play were all the debris littered around. The old venture playgrounds were good growing up... No parents would let their kids play there these days lol.
The 15 bus used to go all the way to Portobello Road in the Notting Hill area. They truncated the route only a few years ago.
The good old days long gone now 😢
Nice one I can still remember the good old days in the photos makes me cry , why did we sell our country !!!!!!??
Our East End gone but not forgotten !! X
Hi , Photos and memories , Thanks , all the Best Brian 🤗
Its amazing to see something like this, I did not realise how much of East London I had experienced untill viewing this, you just took it for granted because thats the way it was, I can truthfully say I recognise every single place on this except perhaps the Empire Exhibition picture, thanks for posting.
These videos will always be a reminder to how good life were back then and now its shocking to see whats happened in the space of 50 odd years. you look at many a place now in england and just think yep yet another town or sector done.
Thank you so much for putting this together. I love everything about it, even the fact that made me tear up with your last words.
many, many thanks for this great look thru my yesterdays really brought back some lovely memories, thanks for sharing this with us all regards
I was born in Mile end my family lived in Eric st. My dads family came from Poplar. We lived at Forest Gate, Manor Park for a while and ended up in Leyton. Mum and Dad moved out to Romford with the rest of the family. We're related to the Wright family of TOWIE fame. Spent a lot of time at my nans in Poplar when I was a kid. Used to go to Crisp street and savaloy and pease pudding and my nan would take me to Andersons to get shoes for school. Last time I drove through the east end for my uncles funeral I didn't see a white face for miles.
+Td K I have mentioned Andersons on a few forums and asked if anyone remembered it - this is the first time I have seen someone else mention it. I remember getting shoes there in the 70s and paying weekly.
Reckon that's what my nan was doing. She brought up four kids on her own as my gramps died young and she was used to making her money stretch.
Jeez, pease pudding and a saveloy, and Chrisp street market. My mum used to take me up there on the trolly. Remember the pie & mash shop, they used to have live eels. If I was lucky I'd have a stewed eel for tea. At that time we lived in Repton house Caley street, right opposite Caley school. We moved there from Forester street, just off the Mile End road. I remember playing on the bomb sites around Stepney Green & Stepney Way, with my cousin Derek, he died young. I feel a little sad seeing what's happened to the East End.
I miss pie and mash. I had some in Romford recently... Better than nothing! When we lived in Leyton the pie and mash at Walthamstow was nice and they used to sell the eels outside in a big plastic bin and would lop their heads off on a blood covered wooden block.
Td K I live in Ireland, now have done for twenty years (no Irish connections at all). All my family are buried in Manor Park cemetery, my younger brothers ashes are just scattered there.
\all the eels sold in London, come from Ireland, or Holland, can't buy a eel in Ireland at all, but we can get Dutch rollmops (pickled herrings). Ireland it's a bit like the East End, people help each other, and muck in. Peace and Love.
East London looks like India now
Thanks for this, born and brought up at the Boleyn and then Canning Town many moons ago. Very nostalgic.
wonderful memories, I still love the east end and its people old and new, would never move out of London.
hi mate . i'm from the east end stepney E.1 i agree with you words and video thank you .
my husband's family comes from the East London born in The Sound of Bow Bells that is a true EastEnders I have pride dignity mat what is London the society that gives everything away and poos on their own culture the first and second world war should not have happened for it end up like this (the wife
If you see a part of London like this again please send me a post card
Oh boy thats real England Top 👍
used to buy " yesterdays bake" cakes at 52 seconds into this post.....when we was at school!! cake shopnon right side!!
Love old Knacker Bilk`s tune.
Wow awesome pictures
Just like the first part - great vid and sweet audio. Cheers, Les (East Ham).
Very sad.
great pictures mate
My family moved to East London from India, dad lived outside Boleyn, east end has always been a place for change and diversity, wouldn’t live anywhere else COYI
I agree with you completely, mate!
I love White people.
Thank you
The enemy is always within and one of your own. Always remember that..... :(
Born and bred in East London, and still here. It has always been a melting pot. Full of the poor and impoverished, all foreigners, even from 200 years back. Before you start talking about how it has all changed now and how it’s all full of foreigners, just remember that that’s where the ones who lived there before were as well...They always send the foreigners to the shit holes.
Just memories.
Question from the USA: where are the parks and places for kids to play? thanks
Thank you for your interest, I can assure you there are a large number of park's and open spaces in East London but I did not include them in this video as parks tend to change very little and would not be a good subject to use for illustrating the dramatic transformation that has taken place in this part of London, also, as an aside to this, most of the pictures I used come largely from the 1950s and 60s, and at that time large areas of East London was still littered with bomb site's from WW2 and many children of that era (myself included) would be far more likely to play on those areas offering adventure and even danger than the relatively "sterile" environment of a conventional park, I hope this adequately answers your enquiry, I wish you well.
Thanks, spiritoveradversity...I bet you kids had fun looking over what had been bombed.
+Sue Elias When you talk about 'parks' in a discussion about London's East End, it's important to remember that we're talking about a patch of grass the size of a few football pitches with some tress and bushes if you were lucky.
My friends and I would take our bikes and play on 'Beckton Dump' and take a walk along the 'Sewer Bank'. These were the early 70's and playing footie in the local park meant our ball would regularly go over the wall or fence into Brampton Junior School/The Jewish Cemetery or Lonsdale Avenue. Either way would require taking your life in your hands to retrieve it.
I don't think I saw enough trees to obscure a road somewhere until I was about 13?
Mickey P. Is this because it is a "poor" side of town? Or would that be true everywhere in London? (Where I live, its not like that, trees are very important)!
Was the air stale?
It was always the poor side of London. Greenery was never an important consideration in the East End but there were a few green areas, even small woods, if you looked hard enough but you could always hear the traffic. I never noticed the air quality being stale but heavy traffic definitely pumped out the carbon monoxide and, back then, lead. Before my time, London had 'pea-souper' fogs caused by excessive coal burning. Those 'smogs' killed a large number of people on a regular basis, even as late as the post WW11 era. I believe they stopped in the '50's when the Clean Air Act was passed and 'smokeless zones' were introduced.
I used to go to visit a friend in Whitechapel in the early 70s when I was in my mid-teens. Let me tell you that being around those streets at night was horrible. Dark, dismal, filthy and like something from a Jack the Ripper movie.
I was born 30 years too late...
Where all the blacks ??
No mass immigration then do not many chavs and shanking around.
R I P Acker Bilk
excellent!
I'll give you a damned good bloody thrashing!!!
Well we can look at the past like that and think that there's continuity everywhere; or we can actually look at it more sensitively. Indeed, the squalor and poverty are forgettable, but the charm and character the communities created are powerful considering their circumstances. The gentrified banality of today's East End is far less characterful. You shouldn't assume others have been 'brainwashed' either, it's patronizing and with the name 'elitept' it further makes you sound sanctimonious.
☺
Be like this after Brexit, init?
Fack aff ya cant!!!!!!
Well, look on the positive side, at least you can get a decent curry on Brick Lane now, instead of that pie and mash crap.,