absolutely everything.
* This picture forms the cover of â
Blitz over Westminster
â by Roy Harrison. A caption notes that âExtra Police were called in to stop looting after this raid.â
* See
Soho
by Judith Summers.
3
How People Lived
People from outside London, and indeed from other parts of the capital, know the West End as a playground or tourist destination, somewhere you go for shops, sights, shows and nights on the razzle. The streets are thronged with office-workers by day and theatre, cinema, restaurant and club-goers by night. It rarely occurs to these visitors that anyone actually lives there, apart from the odd posh person: of course, the Queen has her place at the end of the Mall, and the Prime Minister is handily placed for a trip to the cinema, while presumably someone sometimes lurks behind the curtains and shutters of the genteel town houses in Mayfair, Knightsbridge, St Jamesâs and the Adelphi.
Even today, though, ordinary people live in the West End, usually above the ground floor or tucked away in side streets, or down back alleys. In the post-war decades, there were far more of them. Tens of thousands of native WestEnders lived their lives largely out of sight, often in cramped and poky flats above the shops, cafés and restaurants set in the Georgian terraces that lined the streets of Soho and the West End. Although most of these had been built as family homes, very few remained in single occupancy by the end of the Second World War. There were also some late Victorian tenement houses on the Charing Cross side, such as Newport Dwellings (also known as Newport Buildings) and Sandringham Buildings â but very few houses.
Some Covent Gardeners also lived âabove the shopâ in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century buildings, or in houses that had long ago been converted into flats. The area contained a great deal of what we now call social housing. This was built following the slum clearances of the 1870s and 1880s, when the Metropolitan Board of Works used compulsory purchase orders to sweep away the worst of the slums defacing the West End. At the same time they created new streets, including Shaftesbury Avenue, Kingsway, Aldwych and the Charing Cross Road. There were several blocks of flats in private ownership, others run by the London County Council, and two Peabody estates. The last were built with funds provided by a London-based American banker and philanthropist, George Peabody, in the late nineteenth century to house Londonâs ârespectableâ (or employed) poor.
One of the Peabody estates was in Wild Street, just to the east of Drury Lane, and the other was in Bedfordbury, which runs parallel to St Martinâs Lane. Wild Street was one of the largest of the Peabody estates, with 347 tenements in thirteenblocks, while in Bedfordbury, five blocks were squeezed in to a much smaller site. Both had a higher density of tenants than their equivalents in the East End, because the clearances of the Covent Garden ârookeriesâ â a generic term for areas where tall, decrepit houses were crowded along dark access alleys no more than three or four feet wide â had displaced so many people. *
Despite the great size of many Victorian families, the tenement flats in both the Peabody and LCC blocks tended to be small. Some were just bedsits, and in most the kitchen â equipped with a coal-fired range (also known as a âblack grateâ) or gas cooker â also served as the living room and an auxiliary bedroom. Every flat shared a toilet, sink and wash-house with the other flats on their landing. There were no bathrooms. Graham Jackson âused to have friends in Sandringham Buildings in Charing Cross Road, by Cambridge Circus. They were little tiny flats, and my father used to say you could sit on the toilet, cook your breakfast and have a shave at the same time.â The cramped flats and narrow corridors afforded young Graham
* This picture forms the cover of â
Blitz over Westminster
â by Roy Harrison. A caption notes that âExtra Police were called in to stop looting after this raid.â
* See
Soho
by Judith Summers.
3
How People Lived
People from outside London, and indeed from other parts of the capital, know the West End as a playground or tourist destination, somewhere you go for shops, sights, shows and nights on the razzle. The streets are thronged with office-workers by day and theatre, cinema, restaurant and club-goers by night. It rarely occurs to these visitors that anyone actually lives there, apart from the odd posh person: of course, the Queen has her place at the end of the Mall, and the Prime Minister is handily placed for a trip to the cinema, while presumably someone sometimes lurks behind the curtains and shutters of the genteel town houses in Mayfair, Knightsbridge, St Jamesâs and the Adelphi.
Even today, though, ordinary people live in the West End, usually above the ground floor or tucked away in side streets, or down back alleys. In the post-war decades, there were far more of them. Tens of thousands of native WestEnders lived their lives largely out of sight, often in cramped and poky flats above the shops, cafés and restaurants set in the Georgian terraces that lined the streets of Soho and the West End. Although most of these had been built as family homes, very few remained in single occupancy by the end of the Second World War. There were also some late Victorian tenement houses on the Charing Cross side, such as Newport Dwellings (also known as Newport Buildings) and Sandringham Buildings â but very few houses.
Some Covent Gardeners also lived âabove the shopâ in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century buildings, or in houses that had long ago been converted into flats. The area contained a great deal of what we now call social housing. This was built following the slum clearances of the 1870s and 1880s, when the Metropolitan Board of Works used compulsory purchase orders to sweep away the worst of the slums defacing the West End. At the same time they created new streets, including Shaftesbury Avenue, Kingsway, Aldwych and the Charing Cross Road. There were several blocks of flats in private ownership, others run by the London County Council, and two Peabody estates. The last were built with funds provided by a London-based American banker and philanthropist, George Peabody, in the late nineteenth century to house Londonâs ârespectableâ (or employed) poor.
One of the Peabody estates was in Wild Street, just to the east of Drury Lane, and the other was in Bedfordbury, which runs parallel to St Martinâs Lane. Wild Street was one of the largest of the Peabody estates, with 347 tenements in thirteenblocks, while in Bedfordbury, five blocks were squeezed in to a much smaller site. Both had a higher density of tenants than their equivalents in the East End, because the clearances of the Covent Garden ârookeriesâ â a generic term for areas where tall, decrepit houses were crowded along dark access alleys no more than three or four feet wide â had displaced so many people. *
Despite the great size of many Victorian families, the tenement flats in both the Peabody and LCC blocks tended to be small. Some were just bedsits, and in most the kitchen â equipped with a coal-fired range (also known as a âblack grateâ) or gas cooker â also served as the living room and an auxiliary bedroom. Every flat shared a toilet, sink and wash-house with the other flats on their landing. There were no bathrooms. Graham Jackson âused to have friends in Sandringham Buildings in Charing Cross Road, by Cambridge Circus. They were little tiny flats, and my father used to say you could sit on the toilet, cook your breakfast and have a shave at the same time.â The cramped flats and narrow corridors afforded young Graham
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