1970's And 1980's East Ham Memories
A Memory of East Ham.
I left East Ham behind around 1983 for Essex, my mother and father told me we were moving because East Ham was changing, becoming dirty and run down, I was devastated. Recently I have met up with old class mates after a search via Facebook, and memories have just come flooding back. The shack, West Ham FA Cup parade, snow slides down the sewer bank on the way to Brampton Manor School, East Ham baths, donkey kong game in the chip shop at the White Horse, Crockers sweet shop, skate boards,s ilver jubilee street party, Star Wars swap cards and football stickers, chicken run with dad, grifter and mongoose bikes, next door's Escort RS2000, Mr Lucas, a teacher at Brampton junior, I hated him! golf putting at Central Park and nicking their fish in their pond, Saturday morning cinema at the Boleyn, pie and mash, Central Park fair, watching the Imps bike display, Smarty Pants dress shop, Nike Wimbledon, Winston's dress shop, I could go on forever, and so will my memories, never felt like an Essex boy and never will.
#225539
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I was there too, on Boundary road. Yep Saturday morning pictures @ the Boleyn Odeon, a penny bag of broken sweets or biscuits from the sweetshop across the road, the economic stores (the 1st supermarket), the Mansfield's Grocery thing across the road from the Boleyn, the Victorian public loo middle of the road island (now a west ham statue), Cardosi's cafe (my mate's Mum and Dad owned that, the Green Gate (and Pub), East Ham 'rec (or wreck). Upton Park Station, Green Street Dry Cleaners clock with "Don't kill your wife, let us do it", the dumps and the above ground sewers (and walks) and the quiet gardeney bit that ran the length of CentralPark and that we weren't allowed into.
So here's my Geography/history take on the East End (Commercial Street/Aldgate through East Ham to Barking).
South England's prevailing winds (I sail now) have always been from the South West (and going East and a little bit North). So...in London from the middle ages on through to say the 1970's and 80's that's the way the winds blew ....and also the smells. Put Docks, commercial industries, factories, sugar and coal refineries and fish markets all bang in the middle and on the river and you create two distinct districts....a cheap smelly one down wind to the east (the East End) and a pleasant up-wind and up-market one to the west e.g. Hampstead Heath etc.
This is why you find big houses (for the wealth merchants) in the West End of London and dockers/workers small terraced houses in East Ham.
Now...immigration comes in waves...and that's where the east-end comes in. Immigrants trying to get an affordable foothold don't tend to go to an expensive area first.
Can anyone remember "Never mind the quality, feel the width"? That was a cross-over period at the end of the Jewish and start of the Irish immigration. My parents came with the Irish influx.
I remember Jewish, Irish, Caribbean, Ugandan Asian, quickly followed by Pakistanis and Indians and I've been told eastern Europeans are the latest.
Jewish tailors on commercial street were replaced by Indian/sari businesses.
So East End immigration has always been there and thus the East End's character is constantly changing. That's what it does. Generally people don't like change and so the existing population always resists the new intake or themselves move to other areas.
East ham has always been poor and a place to strive to leave. now all the factories and industry smells have gone, I understand the resultant gentrification has further resulted in the fastest growing property market in the UK. !!!