DISTRICT CHANGE

Camden Town

As a drama student Bruce Robinson shared a home in Camden's Albert Street with David Dundas, Michael Feast, and Richard Morant (1945-2011). The household was profoundly shambolic and proved to be one of the inspirations for the movie Withnail and I (1987), which Robinson both wrote and directed. However, unlike the flat in the film, the real household was also renowned for its riotous parties and excellent food.

Location: 127 Albert Street, NW1 7NB (purple, turquoise)

Chelsea's Axis

Until the early 19^thC Danvers Street was Chelsea's principal street. For centuries the Thames had been the region's principal highway. Its tidal flow enabled regular sure passage both upstream and down in a way that road transportation could not rival. Danvers Street's north-south orientation fed people towards the river.

The building of the Church of St Luke's (1824) - in conjunction with The King's Road becoming a public highway - changed Chelsea's focus away from the river. The south-westerly running King's Road, which parallels the watercourse, superseded Danvers Street as the township's principal avenue. The principal north-south roads are now Beaufort Street (which feeds road traffic to Battersea Bridge) and Oakley Street (to Albert Bridge).

Location: 291 The King's Road, SW3 5EP (orange, turquoise)

See Also: ROADS The King's Road; THE THAMES

1960s

Alavro Maccioni's decision to open his Tuscan-style trattoria in Chelsea in 1966 reflected the district's growing fashionability. The layout and decoration was overseen by Enrico Apicella. Two years later he opened the Club dell Aretusa nightclub.

City Merchants

In the 16^thC London's merchants bought raw materials and sold the finished goods. They wished to acquire the best central positions. Therefore, land prices rose in the settlement's care and craftsmen had to move to the periphery of the City. Therefore, the centre of London became increasingly oriented towards the large merchants.

The Barbican developed into one of the wealthier sections of the City during the 16^thC and 17^thC because it lay on the City's western side. This meant that most of the time the air that it received came from the country. In addition, it was away from the large-scale commercial activities that were pursued next to the Thames.

In the late 17^thC and early 18^thC merchant princes such as Sir Robert Clayton (d.1707) still maintained great townhouses within the City; the knight's was in Old Jewry. Later on in the 18^thC the great merchants began to move their residences out of the City leaving its centre to shops and offices.¹

Location: St Helen s Bishopgate, Great St Helen s, EC3A 6AT (purple, brown)

Old Jewry, EC2R 8DQ (red, brown)

¹. During the course of the 18^thC control of the City of London's daily government shifted from the more select Court of Aldermen to the more open Court of Common Council. It is possible that by the later 18^thC very wealthy individuals may have felt uncomfortable with this democratising development.

The City of London

The growth of shopping in the City led to the development of One New Change (2010) shopping centre. This not only stood on the corner of Cheapside, the City's historic shopping centre, it was able to tap into tourists visiting St Paul's Cathedral, to its west, and the Tate Modern, to the Cathedral's south.

Clerkenwell

In the early 1980s the painters Bridget Riley and Paula Rego had studios on Berry Street in Clerkenwell.

See Also: ITALIANS Clerkenwell

Fagin

In Oliver Twist (1838), Charles Dickens set Fagin's den in what is now Saffron Hill. The area would have been shunned by all those who were not in the state of the direst poverty. This was because Smithfield meat traders dumped offal into the River Fleet, which created an offensive reek that pervaded the district.

Location: Saffron Hill, EC1R 5BU (purple, orange)

Covent Garden

During the 1950s and 1960s the Italian tenor Gianni Raimondi (1923-2008) declined to perform at the Royal Opera House because of the lack of suitable late-night restaurants nearby.

The original Covent Garden fruit and vegetable market closed in 1974. The site and the warehouses that serviced it were left vacant.

The Conservative controlled Greater London Council (G.L.C.) and a group of developers were eager to redevelop the district by pulling down many of the existing buildings and putting up new ones in their place. However, they were frustrated by concerted opposition from the neighbourhood's residents. In large part, the area was revitalised through the efforts of young, independent entrepreneurs who found new uses for Covent Garden's existing buildings. The regeneration of the district drew upon the work of the American urban planner James Rouse, who had led the rejuvenation of Boston and New York waterfronts.

Tommy Roberts (1942-2012) closed the Mr Freedom shop in Kensington in 1972. He then opened the City Lights Studio boutique above a banana warehouse in Covent Garden

In 1970 The Survey of London published two volumes to commemorate the 300^th anniversary of the founding of Covent Garden Market. These facilitated the granting of listed status to a number of buildings in the district.

Location: Covent Garden Piazza, WC2E 8HB (blue, grey)

Neal's Yard

In the late 1970s the Neal's Yard retailing business opened up in former fruit and vegetable warehouses that had been used by the market's traders. Nicholas Saunders was the principal moving force behind the venture; Nicholas Albery assisted him. The development marked the start of the transition of Covent Garden from being a wholesale trade district into being a retail and leisure one.

Location: Neal s Yard, WC2H 9DP (grey, pink)

Raine, Raine

From the mid-1950s until the early 1970s the Countess of Dartmouth (n e Raine McCorquodale) (1929-2016). As the chairperson of the Greater London Council's Historic Buildings Board she successfully resisted by the government to make major changes to both the Tate Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery. From 1971 to 1972 she served as the chairperson of the Covent Garden development scheme. As such, she came to appreciate that it had no local support. Rather than drive it ahead she chose to resign. (Subsequently, as the Countess Spencer - and this stepmother to Diana, Princess of Wales - she acquired a notoriety for disposing of artefacts that the Spencer family had collected over several centuries and redecorating much of Althorp, their country seat, in a gaudy manner. The chant Raine, Raine, go away! became her stepchildren's mantra. They dubbed her Acid Raine . Diana came to appreciate how much her father had been loved by her stepmother and made the effort to ensure that she was reconciled to her.)

The Docks

In the mid-2000s the town Clive Dutton (1953-2015) had worked in the regeneration of West Belfast. Part of the reason for the success of the British bid to hold the 2012 Olympics had been the legacy commitments. The London Borough Newham contained Royal Docks complex. This had been unable to attract developers. There had been over 70 masterplans. In 2009 the council hired Dutton. He scrapped all of the masterplans. He devised a shore core strategy, persuaded the politicians to endorse it, and then spoke to anyone who would listen to him. He proved to be able to end the decades of investment drought.

East London's Growth

Sir Joseph Bazalgette's (d.1891) sewage system helped to make east London what it is today. The south-western corner of Essex, the portion that lies to the immediate east of the River Lea before the watercourse enters the Thames, was, until well into the 19^thC, occupied by the rural mansion houses of wealthy City of London merchants and their descendants. The building of the Metropolitan Main Drainage System's Northern Main Sewer had been intended to relieve the City and East End. However, its construction, in conjunction with the advent of cheap railway travel, provided landowners and builders with an immense opportunity for speculative development along its path that they were quick to exploit; urbanisation could take place without the district's newcomers being buried in their own filth. The wealthy inhabitants moved elsewhere. The change that was wrought is illustrated by West Ham Park in east London, which is now a public amenity. Formerly, it was a private garden.

Beckton, Cubitt Town, and Silvertown

See Also THE EAST END; SEWAGE

Gentrification

The German-born sociologist Ruth Glass (née Lazarus) (1912-1990) coined the term gentrification in 1962.

Location: University College, Gower Street, WC1E 6BT (purple, red)

Islington

In the 1950s Islington was a decidedly run-down area. Its townhouses had been converted into bed-sits and flats.

Charles Ware (1935-2015) was appointed to be a lecturer in etching at The Slade in the late 1950s. He and some colleagues rented in Islington. He bought a rickety terrace house and restored it with friends. He sold it and bought another. During the first half of the 1960s he and his associates renovated 1200 Georgian properties in the district. In 1965 he secured a position at Bath Academy of Art. He played a major role in saving much of the city's Georgian housing. The opening of the Victoria Line in 1968 prompted a social turnaround for much of the district. Property prices rose. However, Mr Ware was bankrupted by the 1971 property crash. Subsequently, he created a business that restored Morris Minors.

In the 1990s the area's name was a byword that described left-of-centre, socially aspirational, middle-class professionals. Tony Blair, a local resident before he became Prime Minister, was perceived of by many people as being very Islington .

Location: The Angel Underground Station, Islington High Street, N1 8XX (orange, purple)

Highbury & Islington Underground Station, Holloway Road, N5 1RA

Norwood & Sydenham

Following the closure of Great Exhibition of 1851, the Sir Joseph Paxton-designed Crystal Palace was bought by the Brighton Railway Company. The structure was taken down and re-erected in 1854 in an extended form at Sydenham in South London. It became an exhibition and leisure centre that people travelled to and from via the company's railway line. The Palace played a role in the process by which Norwood and Sydenham became fashionable middle-class districts during the later 19^thC. A century later the idea of such bordered upon the unimaginable.

Sydenham Trousers were a fashionable item. Dickens referred to them.

With success Conan Doyle moved to Norwood.

Notting Hill

In the 1950s and 1960s Notting Hill was run-down. A number of artists lived there. Many of them associated with the Royal College of Art, which lay on the far side of Kensington Gardens. The likes of Peter Blake and David Hockney used to frequent Hennekey's (The Earl of Lonsdale).

Movie: W11 (c.1964). A Michael Winner-directed film about drifters in Notting Hill.

See Also: DEVELOPMENTS Notting Hill

The Penge Murder

In 1877 Harriet Staunton, an heiress, was starved near Bromley. She was taken to Penge to die.

The story attracted international attention. Penge went downmarket as a result.

Schools

In the 1990s many families with school age children moved to outer suburbs because of the poor quality of schools in Inner London. During the Blair and Brown Labour governments, they improved.

In 2023 it was the case that primary schools were closing in the affluent inner-city boroughs and opening in the poorer outer-city ones. In part, this derived from people on low incomes no longer being to afford to rent in Central London. Poverty was being suburbanised . The phenomenon was also occurring in other large British cities.

Shoreditch

The artists Gilbert & George moved into Fournier Street in 1973.

In the 1980s Spitalfields Market and the Truman Brewery closed. Much of the bustle disappeared from Shoreditch.

Hackney Council gave support to City Artists, a scheme that furnished studios for eight artists and an exhibition space. It was run by George Foster (1951-2015), a lecturer who taught at Kingston Polytechnic and who specialised in making assemblages that combined sculpture and painting. The facility opened on East Road near Old Street.

City Artists metamorphosed into being Sculpture House, a Kingston-based charity.

The Angela Flowers Gallery opened its Flowers East space in Hackney in 1988.

Canteloupe in Charlotte Street was the first of the Hoxton bars. It opened in 1996.

Location: The Golden Heart, 110 Commercial Street, E1 6LZ (red, brown)

The Flat White Economy

There is an argument that the Shoreditch entrepreneurs responded to there being less money available than had been the case twenty years earlier by going for novelty.

Patrick Hughes

Patrick Hughes was one of the first artists to move into Shoreditch. He had taught many of the Y.B.A.s who subsequently settled in the district. Upon one occasion, while giving a talk at the Chelsea Arts Club, he spoonerised Shoreditch and Hoxton to Horeditch and Shoxton ( Whoreditch and Shockston ).

Location: The Cloakroom Level, The British Library, 96 Euston Road, St Pancras, NW1 2DB (blue, yellow)

Website: www.patrickhughes.co.uk

Strand

In medieval times, the Strand provided a route from the City of London to the royal palace of Westminster. As the city grew westwards during the late 17^thC and the 18^thC the road became a retailing hub. The aristocrats and prelates moved from the riverside palaces to newer, more select neighbourhoods and allowed their former residences either to be let or sold off to building speculators who tore them down and used the land to build shops and workshops upon.

Location: Strand WC2R 0DE (blue, yellow)

Tarquinia

In the 1970s and 1980s Fulham changed from being a working-class and lower middle district into being one where only the affluent could afford to buy a house. The soccer club Queen's Park Rangers is based a mile north in Shepherds Bush. Its supporters took to referring to Fulham fans as Tarquins.

Location: Fulham F.C., Craven Cottage, Stevenage Road, SW6 6HH

See Also: CLASS

The West End

The premises of the garment trade in the West End were in large part taken over by the advertising industry.

See Also: GARMENT MANUFACTURING

West London Factories

The Firestone Factory

In 1980 Thomas Wallis's Firestone Tyre factory (1920) on west London's Great West Road was pulled down by Trafalgar House.

Location: 1000 Great West Road, TW8 9DW

See Also: CARS The Michelin Building

The Gillette Factory

In 1937 Gillette opened a razor blade factory in Isleworth, Middlesex.

In 2003 it was reported that Gillette was planning to transfer 400 jobs from the U.K. to Eastern Europe. This would involve the closure of its razor blade factory in Isleworth in 2007.

Location: 101 Syon Lane, TW7 5LW

The Hoover Building

In 1933 the art deco Hoover Factory in Perivale on London's Western Avenue was opened in 1933 and closed in 1986.

In 1987 Hoover closed its plant in Perivale.

Location: Western Avenue, Perivale, UB6 8AT

David Backhouse 2024