Two Willow Road is somewhere that looks pretty ugly from the outside. Some may disagree with my analysis, but to me this modernist terrace sticks out like a sore thumb against the pleasant neighbouring Victorian houses, which incorporate on their brickwork interesting, varied designs and shapes. There’s none […]
Artists, poets, authors and other famous people have long been attracted to live in Highgate, one of north London’s hilltop villages. The City and other parts of central London are easily reachable, yet – thanks to the fact that it borders onto Hampstead Heath and other open spaces […]
Computer generated images showing residents enjoying bird’s eye views across London from a leafy roof garden set on top of a skyscraper is not unusual for marketing material in a city where architects and developers race to win over wealthy homebuyers with their glitzy projects. Toblerone Towers – […]
“Don’t run away with the idea that the Festival of Britain is going to be solemn,” wrote the newspaper editor Gerald Barry in early 1951. “Not a bit of it. It will afford us all the opportunity, as occasion allows, for some harmless jollification. After more than a […]
In an area of London where so many buildings have been flattened and replaced by new homes, Reverdy Road and Alma Grove come as pleasant surprises. Just a few minutes walk from busy Old Kent Road, you find these parallel streets of well-looked after Victorian two-storey, terraced houses […]
“The rozzers,” shouted one of the lads acting as a look out. And with that ‘Billy the bet’ abruptly ended a monologue about his illegal trade and vanished into the back streets of Walworth. Billy’s talk – on a street corner not far from the Old Kent Road […]
Open fields is probably the last thing you would expect to find in central London today. An area as developed as Seven Dials, just north of Covent Garden, is as typical as anywhere in the West End with upmarket boutiques and fine dining fighting to make use of […]
When the first residents moved in to the Totterdown Fields Estate, a 39-acre site close to Tooting Common, in the early 20th century, they would have found a standard of living that they could previously only have dreamed about. The new homes were well-built, with indoor toilets and […]
Walking down Upper Street in Islington would give you the impression that the borough is extremely wealthy. On any day of the week, the upmarket restaurants and shops on this busy stretch seem to be booming. But not all of Islington have been taken by the elite as […]
With rubbish strewn on the roadside, lorries thundering by to waste incinerator plants, distribution centres and oil storage depots, this is hardly the most picturesque part of London. Exploring on a Saturday morning, there are not many souls about as I weave my way around this desolate area […]
Past In The Present 