I have been playing around with photoshop. I took pictures of Keeling House and the Parkview Estate and inverted the colours and got a very different picture. I am quite pleased with the results, what do you think?
Taking Natalies advice here is the Parkview picture cropped to remove the road, making a much better picture.
I have been playing around with photoshop. I took pictures of Keeling House and the Parkview Estate and inverted the colours and got a very different picture. I am quite pleased with the results, what do you think?
Taking Natalies advice here is the Parkview picture cropped to remove the road, making a much better picture.
The photo above depicts Patriot Square in 1972.
At the back of the picture you can see the entrance to Thomas Paines haulage company. When I was a child I used to spend hours watching the lorries come and go from the living room of my grandparents flat on the 8th floor of Thomas Hollywood House. As you can see many of the houses are already vacant but I seem to remember that 1 or 2 houses still had residents living in them.
I can also remember being taken by my nan into the town hall to pay her rent. This was where I first fell in love with art deco architecture. I loved the entrance hall staircase and the lighting.
Later on in the 70s, I can remember the houses being demolished and Paines yard being dug up to exhume the bodies that were buried there when the yard was part of a cemetery in the late 19th century.
Below is a picture of the flats that were built to replace the houses. This shot would have been where the back yards to the houses were
.
Graham asked if there were any of my relatives in the Coronation day celebration pictures.
The young boy leaning on the front bench and the boy to his left are Great Aunt Dollys’ sons Ronald & Michael Whitehand. Also my grandfather George Firmin can be seen in the 3rd floor window in the corner, this was also the day that Great Aunt Jean married Uncle Tom and in June they will celebrate their diamond anniversary.
The photo above is from VE day and in this pic is my nan Elsie Firmin her sister Lily and my great nan Alice Page. Elsie who was pregnant with my mum at the time is 1st on the left of the back row. Lily is 6th from the right in the 2nd row and Alice is to the right of Elsie holding 1 finger aloft.
This is the Cabin jug house and my mum 1st met my dad here in 1961 he was sitting on the window ledge. They were married at Our Lady of the Assumption Church in Victoria Park Sq in October 1963 and this year is their golden wedding anniversary.
In this picture are Aunt Lilys daughter Sandra, my dads sister Bett, my dads mum Annie, dads brother John, mum and dad and in the front row Aunt Jeans daughters Linda & Caron and my dads youngest brother Douglas. Mum had 9 bridesmaids and a pageboy her wedding bouquet was made of orchids that were flown in from Thailand. Once the ceremony was over everybody retired to the upstairs function room at the Approach for the reception.
One final pic of Mum & Dad this was taken in Jan 2006 in Sydney Harbour where they joined me to celebrate dads 63rd birthday. We had just attended the Australian premier of Mrs Henderson Presents at a spectacular open air cinema which had fantastic views of the opera house and harbour bridge.
The pictures below are of my Great Nan and her son in laws George (my grand-dad) Tom & Charles. The colour pic is of my Nan and her sisters which was taken in my parents garden in Hornchurch. We were celebrating her diamond wedding anniversary. From left to right they are Lily, Elsie (my Nan), Dolly and Jeanie.
Up until 1964 almost all of my relatives that are older than me were living or had lived in the Square. The pics below show the square in relation to the modern Russia Lane blocks and where my family lived.
My dad’s family lived at 95 when they first arrived from Ireland in 1957 then at 82 until 1964 when they were rehoused into Maitland House on the Waterloo Estate (no. 1 on map). My great Aunt Dolly and her husband Charles lived at 147 until they were rehoused into Bradley House on the Claredale Estate in 1957 (no. 2). My grandparents and my mum lived at 161 and 173 until they were rehoused into Thomas Hollywood House in 1963. My dad also lived there for a short time too after he and mum were married (no. 3 & 4).
My great grandparents lived at 170 (no. 5) and also for a while ran the greengrocers (no. 8). My Great Aunt Jean and her husband Tom also lived at 170 until they were rehoused into a House in Hereford St. They were one of the last families to be rehoused from the square in 1964; they moved on 15th April the day I was born. Some of the buildings had already been demolished and they had to walk over rubble to get home.
Great Aunt Lil left 170 when she married her husband Walter and relocated first to Botolph Rd Bow and then to Linton House in St Pauls Way. My Great Uncle Arthur and his wife Anna lived at 224 until 1952 when they were one of the first families to be rehoused in Harold Hill Essex. My mum remembers their house being surrounded by fields and open countryside (no. 6). Finally no. 7 marks the location of The Cabin public house which was tiny most people used to take in a jug have it filled and return home. More of which in a later post.
One of the first sites to be redeveloped after the war was a 7 acre site on the north side of Old Bethnal Green Road.
The site had been compulsory purchased in 1938 and four streets were closed. No development took place because of the war. Then in 1945 after extensive bomb damage, an estate scheme consisting of 8 three and four storey blocks was announced.
The estate was to be called Minerva after the central street in the development and the blocks were named after characters in the Trojan war.
The buildings were based on plans by former LCC architect T H Forshaw using one of the pre-war block types. The major difference was that instead of using brick the building used monolithic concrete to save time and labour. The building were then faced in concrete made from Portland stone salvaged from bombed buildings. Originally the blocks had playground on the roof. The estate was known locally as the white flats.
The estate stayed in council ownership until 1999 when it was transferred to Tower Hamlets Community Housing and underwent a major refurbishment including the addition of lifts and underground rubbish collection facilities.
The picture above was taken in 1967 and below is what the estate looks like today.
Spotted yesterday evening through my kitchen window.
This block has stood since 1962 at the end Russia Lane. It was built as a part replacement for Quinns Square tenement buildings built late the previous century. The block is 11 stories tall and the flats offer completely unobstructed views both east over Victoria Park, the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and west over the City of London and West End.
The building holds many happy memories for me as it was the home of my grandparents for 40 years from the opening of the building until my grandmothers death in 2002. Was also a resident myself for the few months of my life in 1964 as my parents were living with my grandparents until we moved Iinto our first home in Wennington St (Bow Wharf).
I also attended Parmiters school a bit further up Approach Road.
Terraces, Tenements and Tower Blocks 