How grim was mid 1970's London?

[Krupp88]

Admittedly its not a great source but I have been working my way through the episodes of 'The Sweeney' and noticed that the parts of London used for the filming look terribly run down and dirty with more litter and graffiti than now.

Obviously the locations would have been chosen for the gritty style of the show but it got me thinking how bad was it really?

Looks like there were plenty of bomb sites still around at that time as well.

Edited by Krupp88 on Monday 6th April 15:14

[Krupp88]

SCEtoAUX said:

It's still a st hole.

Even the parts filmed in the newly built areas such as Brunel University campus looked like a dystopian wasteland.

Edited by Krupp88 on Monday 6th April 15:24

[Krupp88]

AC43 said:

Krupp88 said:

Admittedly its not a great source but I have been working my way through the episodes of 'The Sweeney' and noticed that the parts of London used for the filming look terribly run down and dirty with more litter and graffiti than now.

Obviously the locations would have been chosen for the gritty style of the show but it got me thinking how bad was it really?

Looks like there were plenty of bomb sites still around at that time as well.

I recently read Steve Jone's autobiography and he talks about how run down it was when he was a kid. Loads of bomb sites & gap sites. Very run down.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01GR49BXO/ref=dp-kind...

Thanks - looks like an interesting read.

[Krupp88]

nikaiyo2 said:

Krupp88 said:

Admittedly its not a great source but I have been working my way through the episodes of 'The Sweeney' and noticed that the parts of London used for the filming look terribly run down and dirty with more litter and graffiti than now.

Obviously the locations would have been chosen for the gritty style of the show but it got me thinking how bad was it really?

Looks like there were plenty of bomb sites still around at that time as well.

Edited by Krupp88 on Monday 6th April 15:14

It’s easy to forget how London was pre thatcher.

I don’t remember it personally, but when I was at uni we had a lecture from a really old town planner (studied Civil Engineering) who had been part of a group working on what to do with all the un used housing in London, they were worried what to when all the people had left.

I guess the wholesale relocation of communities (e.g Bethnal Green) , the loss of the docklands as major employers and the smashing of new trunk roads through areas all contributed....

[Krupp88]

vixen1700 said:

I just remember it being a good colourful time,

And that's just the fashion

[Krupp88]

P5BNij said:

For the most part the film crew didn't venture very far from their HQ at Colet Court in Hammersmith, they were on a fairly tight schedule (ten days per episode with the odd overun) so didn't want to waste time travelling around more than necessary. This meant that the same run down areas were used several times, although they did go out to the suburbs and the docklands occasionally for certain story lines.

The opening title sequence was shot directly opposite Colet Court in the wasteground off Colet Gardens in 1974, it was the site of a school which was demolished in '69 and has since been built on, it was also used in the classic 'blag' episode 'Faces' from series 2, shot in '75...


I used to live in Hammersmith and worked at Willesden and Old Oak Common in the early '80s, much of it was still quite run down looking even then. Everything looked grey and brown back then!

Thats really interesting - thanks!

[Krupp88]

psi310398 said:

P5BNij said:

SNIP


This one of Whitechapel is from much earlier ('69) but some areas of London still looked like this in the '70s...

There are streets off Commercial Road that still look like that. I remember visiting one the the last Jewish delis in the area (parallel to Cable Street) within the past ten years.

And this website has some pictures as a reminder of Covent Garden as a fruit market all the way up to 1974 before it was tarted up: http://www.nickelinthemachine.com/2012/05/the-glc-...

I hope that those buildings in that picture survived, although run down and dirty at the time, fundamentally sound buildings must have been bulldozed in their thousands.

[Krupp88]

Thanks to everyone who has replied.

I was born in 1980 so this is a time completely unknown to me.

Its seems that for the most part nostalgia has jumped the '70's, optimism and vibrancy in the immediate post war period and the 60's and then it all gets a bit crap until the 80's (a massive over simplification I admit).

I have been really enjoying 'The Sweeney' and have been getting my fill of 'On the Buses' so a bit of a 70's convert during this lockdown.

Edited by Krupp88 on Monday 6th April 17:12

[Krupp88]

My wife was exclaiming at the poor taste in mens hair styles in one of the episodes, my theory was that it was fashionable to have long hair in the 60's so they stuck with it in the 70's and as hair lines receded you ended up with these odd styles.

Have to say that I was shocked to read that John Thaw was only 32 when the Sweeney started, I'm 8 years older than that and still don't look as old as he did then.

[Krupp88]

Europa1 said:

OP, a couple of other posters have mentioned it in passing. If you're enjoying seeing London in the 1970s, watch The Professionals as well.

Thanks - will check it out!

[Krupp88]

Just wanted to say thank you again for all the replies, making really interesting reading.

Find out at 10am if I am being put on furlough, if it happens I now have plenty of viewing and reading material!

The 'After the Battle' series of books (Blitz Then and Now vol.s 1 -3 and East End Then and Now) are well worth the price if you enjoy comparisons, although many of the 'then's' were taken in the 80's so in a way more reflective of the era of this thread rather than 2020.

[Krupp88]

PurpleTurtle said:

Great thread OP!!

I loved all those programs growing up as a kid, growing up in a nice leafy suburb of Birmingham (itself very similarly run down in the city centre), London seemed a million miles away.

I think The Sweeney chose the grittier locations because they wanted to show that Regan was a hard copper who wasn't afraid of mixing it with hardened criminals on the mean streets. By contrast, The Professionals often featured the more well-heeled parts of London, you can't have an Arab arms dealer claiming Diplomatic Immunity and then disappearing into a two bed council flat in Canning Town, it was Kensington or nothing!

CI5 also got out to places like Marlow quite a bit for the countryside scenes.

There's a whole archive of details here: http://www.mark-1.co.uk/Professionals/

Thanks for the link, 4 weeks furlough from next Tuesday so plenty of reading material!

[Krupp88]

P5BNij said:

psi310398 said:

Pothole said:

I had a temp job working for a family friend in the 80s in Peterborough Road but was never aware of the Sloaney Pony until I got a permanent job bizarrely in the same building, possibly in the same office (for Betfair, back when they had about 50 full-time staff) in 2002...we used to drink in the Duke of Cumberland on the corner of Peterborough Road and New Kings Road, which now appears to be called the Duke on the Green.

My God was not that a scuzzy dive before it was gussied up and taken over by the Old Harrovians and their ilk? You could imagine Regan meeting a snout in there.

There was a splendid greasy spoon - the Peterborough Cafe - round the back as well, with proper fried breakfasts and tea you could stand a spoon up in. Not quite Regency Cafe territory but again it would fit right in to a Sweeney set.

Wasn't there also an early kebab shop in the 80s that could be guaranteed to give you a dose of the trots one time in about every five on the New King's Road just along from there as well?

The Old Oak Cafe, just outside the entrance to the railway depot is still open for business (cracking full English by the way, top notch), but back in the '60s and early '70s it was run by a couple of brothers whose local reputation was certainly Kray-like at the time, they were known to put the fear of God into anyone who dared criticise the contents of their grease ridden offerings. The cafe was but one arm of their little empire and rumours abounded in the mess room at Old Oak about low life aquaintances who crossed them disappearing never to be seen again. My nan told me stories about them in the '70s but it wasn't until I started working at the depot in '83 that I heard the gory details from some of the older drivers who knew them. Not nice people at all!

I'm sure directly opposite the Cafe is Atlas Road, the offsite car park for our office is down there.

HS2 is smashing through around the Victoria Road area , a couple of entire streets levelled opposite the Boden offices, so more change....

[Krupp88]

NMNeil said:

alabbasi said:

Yep, at least in the 80's while I was growing up. The telephone company couldn't dig a hole without finding an unexploded WW2 bomb. It seemed like we had to evacuate the school a couple of times / year. On a side note, they filmed a few episodes 'minder' pretty close to my old high school. We used to be able to watch them from the playing fields.

I'll always remember the look of horror on my Mum and Grans faces when I proudly showed them my latest find from a bomb site.
https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/300...

Should have kept it - I paid £150 for one (inert obviously) a couple of months ago, even the fins by themselves can fetch £50/60.

[Krupp88]

P5BNij said:

A bit of a contrast here between the old and the new - Stepney Green in 1968, I wonder if those high rises became as grim as the slums they're about to replace....

It's easy to say when you are not the one living in the environment however even from the fragment of the half demolished building and the old street lamps in the distance you can get a sense of place and history, this stands in contrast to the bland and in some instances, substandard, new tower blocks.

If there was ever a socialist revolution in Britain it was manifested through this kind of architecture and facilitated by the worst of capitalism - all at the detriment of the residents.

[Krupp88]

I finally got around to watching 'Villain' at the weekend having seen it mentioned a few times on this thread.

For me it was a great film, maybe not as good as its contemporary 'Get Carter', and yes Burton's accent does wonder around a bit. I was surprised at the themes included in the film and the nudity - I had naively presumed that the censors back then would have been stricter.

Some of the locations look as if time has stood still (including the pub where the robbery conspiracy is discussed) but others have long been demolished and it is sad to see what has happened to the West Pier in a few short decades. Have to say that even the plastics factory in Bracknell had its own charm when set against the Waitrose DC that replaced it.

[Krupp88]

I am thoroughly enjoying re watching 'The Sweeney' starting back from series one episode one, hard to believe that its coming up for 50 years since it first aired.

Picking up on some minor details, such as the reference to the 'jago' in S1E1, something that must be lost to the majority of Londoners today.

[Krupp88]

Any ideas as to the location of the pub that the focal point of S1E6 with a gang using the cellar to access the neighboring bank vault? The interior looked amazing, really hope its still standing.

[Krupp88]

P5BNij said:

That might be The Warrington in West London which is still in business, a few of us went there for a ‘tea break’ a few years ago.

Amazing - that's the one, looks a little more upmarket these days. Thanks!

Edited by Krupp88 on Thursday 2nd March 12:49