Sunday, 26 February 2012

A Hoxton Childhood


A couple of months ago I read “A Hoxton Childhood”, A S Jaspers memoir of growing up around the time of the First World War, close to my local area.

The area back then was extremely poverty stricken, but I’m not going to hold forth on how fashionable and well-heeled the area is now, because that Nathan Barley part of Hoxton is quite small. The rest of it, to the north, is still an area of council housing estates and high unemployment rates, and that’s where A S Jasper grew up.

Anyway, as a child, he and his family moved around a lot, and he mentions most of the places he lived at or his father drank in. So I set off one day to visit them, all being within a mile or two of where I live. There was a lot that wasn’t there anymore, mainly the result of the devastation that happened to the east end, during bombing raids in both world wars. But I used old maps where needed to try and figure out where things would have been. Only of vague semi interest if you’ve read the book, I guess, but anyway.

The first home the author mentions is on Canal Road, off Hyde Road. Canal Road is still there, renamed Orsman Road. He doesn’t mention the actual address on this road, but I doubt it’s there anymore, as most of the buildings are after the time of the books setting.


The first pub mentioned is the Kings Arms on Hoxton Market.  It’s still there, but is now a Nigerian restaurant.



The next home of the author mentioned is 3 Clinger Street. This doesn’t exist anymore, except in the name of one of the buildings in this 1950s housing scheme. Clinger Court, on the Hobbs Place estate.



Looking at old maps, I think this is area of garages is probably the remnants Clinger Street.


The next location mentioned is Wilmer Gardens, where he goes with his father to pay his respects to a dead child. The road is still there, partially, but none of the original buildings, replaced by an estate called the Whitmore. I guess this is the rough location mentioned in the book.




The next home the author lived in is Salisbury Street, just off the New North Road. This whole area is completely gone, and is now Shoreditch Park, where I take my son cycling. This park used to be tenements, destroyed in the war. I think some of the park paths still follow the lines of the old roads, and judging by relative positions on old maps, this is where Salisbury Street was. There was a Time Team special, “Buried by the Blitz” where they excavated in Shoreditch Park to uncover the damage done in the Blitz to this area - http://www.channel4.com/programmes/time-team-specials/episode-guide/series-211/episode-2



Pimlico Walk

Bridport Arms, at 67 Bridport Place, is another pub that his father frequented. Again, Bridport place is still there partially, but is intersected by Shoreditch park. No 67 would have been on the right of this picture, in what is now parkland, opposite the cream tenbements on the left.

Ebeneezer Buildings, 1-5 Rotherfield Street

Another house the family move to is 15 Loanda Street. Again, all the original buildings are gone, replaced by council housing, but the street name survives.

Yet another house the family moved to is Scawfell Street off the Hackney Road. Two houses here, the first one on the road, above a dairy, which I assume is now this Tesco Metro, and his friends house at number 10 which is still intact.


Whiston Street Gasworks is now a park, although you can tell it's industrial origins in the high brick park walls.


Golden Lane

Featherstone street

Shepherdess Walk

Great Eastern St Arch. The actual overhead train line has been knocked down, but the uprights remain. Very apt graffiti as it is here that the family slept when they were homeless, along with tens of other fasmilies.



13 comments:

  1. I came across this book some years back and it's a real treasure; I learnt a lot about the background, atmosphere, character of my Dad's life that I never knew, around the time his family lived there from 1900s - 1920s (moving around, the same as the author, in several rented flats in N.1). In fact, at one time he lived at 41 Bridport Place, which was next door to where my Dad's family lived for about 15 years.

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  2. Hi,

    Thanks for your comment. Yes, it is a very good read, gives a real feeling for living in this area at that time. Although a lot of the area isn't there anymore, the buildings that remain from that time are still very evocative. There was a BBC4 series on the Streets of London, one of which was based around Arnold Circus, not far from here, that was very interesting with photos and details from that time too.

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  3. Hi Nik
    What a brilliant thing to have done, to follow this book's path in search of your father's past. I recently discovered that the author is my grand-uncle. His son, Terry, contacted my sister and we've been in touch ever since. I'm a writer too and asked if I could re-publish A Hoxton Childhood with a view to donate all profits to a street children and runaways charity called Railway Children and Terry agreed, so I've been tapping away to put the book to Word. This would normally be a gruelling exercise but it's such a fascinating read told so well that I'm enjoying every second as I tap away. In fact, I can't seem to get off my laptop!
    I read that your father's family used to live next door in Bridport Place so one could easily assume that the two families knew each other.
    Terry and his wife are such lovely people and this contact has allowed me to delve into my grandmother's past (she was Molly, the author's youngest sister in the book).
    The pictures you have taken just go to show how the landscape has changed, mostly for good reason although the atmosphere provided by the author's memory makes me slightly envious of those days in a strange way. I was mesmerised by Mark Lester in Oliver and often used to imagine myself as a Dick Whittington street urchin. Funny how it feels like it was in the blood from such an early age.
    Thank you for posting this piece of your father's past. The new edition of the book should be out by August so please do get in touch and I'll send you a copy for your bookshelf.
    All the best
    Richard Penny

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    1. Hi,

      Thanks for that, sorry for my late reply! This blog has kind of taken a bit of a sabbatical as I try to get some other stuff done. It was a previous poster whose family lived in the area, I'm actually originally from Dundee. I've just always been really interested in the local history of wherever I've lived, especially somewhere as interesting as here. It's a great book, really gives a feeling of the time and place. Your grand uncle had a way with words.Yes, I'd definitely like to get a new copy of the book, if you let me know when it's out, I'll buy one...it is for charity after all.

      Cheers and all the best,

      Nik.

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  4. I Loved this post, I live locally, just off The Hackney Road. I found my copy in a charity shop, what a good read.

    Thanks for the effort, I kept trying to imagine what was where whilst I was reading and had my answers with one google search on finishing the book.

    Just by-the-by, I am originally from Dundee - what's your connection to Wallaces' Land O' Cakes, above?

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    1. Hi,

      Thanks very much for your comment. Yep, it's a good wee book. I read a few books both of the time and describing the time, such as Child of the Jago and Sarah wise's The Blackest Streets, as I was thinking about doing a computer model reconstruction of this area at that time, and it's definitely my favourite book out of those ones.

      I'm originally from Dundee too. I always loved the Wallace land O' Cakes "brand", so I modified it a bit into Land O' Breaks for a wee club I used to do when I still lived there.

      I absolutely love your blog by the way. It's been added to the "Check Often" column on my bookmarks. Fascinating stuff, and if I ever get round to finishing my reconstruction of this area at the turn of the last century, I'm sure I'll be utilising/stealing a lot of your reference.

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  5. Hi Nik
    Good to see your reply. I'm new to blogs but need to start one for myself now. I went up to Hoxton to take some photos early on a Sunday morning, with a view for a front cover, but it was such a surprise scenario that I don't think I took a single photo. As you described here, there was hardly a thing to denote the past apart from a few places in Hoxton Market, only noticeable from decayed concrete inscriptions on the tops of houses.
    I can't help thinking that if A S Jasper saw what Hoxton had turned into (a sprawling ghost-town hidden away to promote a fashionable outpost to nocturnal transients and hike up night-time parking charges), he may well be wiping his brow, thankful he lived in the good old dark days. At the very least there was the hustle and bustle of life back then.
    Nowadays, Hoxton looks like God's waiting-room. I realise I shouldn't be judging someone else's area and I don't intend to be rude, but an absence of old buildings has a weird effect on me, especially when it's in central London. I can only imagine how devastating the bombing was in the area if almost nothing remains of the past. Where bombs didn't do it, infestation would have, the slums removed to sweep away the reality of how the people who grafted the most for the empire really lived in those days.
    Hoxton must be the only area I've visited in London where there is literally no sign of history. It's perhaps ironic that this book may be the only guide to how things were a hundred years ago. Shoreditch, Bethnal Green and all other areas didn't suffer the fate of Hoxton, and I do wonder how this came to be. Nothing's coincidental.
    That the govt replaced the slums and bombed-out areas of Hoxton with characterless, low-level social housing is surely indicative of how it viewed Hoxton's regeneration. In many ways, Hoxton is a glorified shanty town because if the govt hadn't done what it did (investing the least it could), the poor would have seen an opportunity and rebuilt it as best they could.
    The book looks great, received from the printers a short while ago. Monsieur Jasper would be delighted with it, I think, and hopefully it will do well.
    Terry Jasper and I are meeting informally at 11.45am this coming Wednesday at Broadway Books in the Broadway Market so if you'd like to come along I can give you a copy then. If you can't make it, I'll leave one behind the counter for you. It would be nice to meet you, though, as I really love this blog. The same applies to Costume Detail. I think your blog is brilliant. The Gentle Author's book looks good and I saw Get Carter again last night. Have you heard the CD soundtrack? It's brill.
    Economics and the cold light of day are such that only 25% of the profits from the book will go to the Railway Children charity and not the whole shebang, but it should make a difference.
    Signing off now. Hope to see you Wednesday if not another time.
    Richard

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  6. Hi Nik
    Just to let you know that the launch for 'A Hoxton Childhood' will be at Broadway Bookshop in Hackney on Wednesday 9th October at about 7pm.
    It would be good to meet you so do try to come along.
    All the best
    Richard

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  7. Hi there, I work in the Victoria, British Columbia public library and we have a copy of A Hoxton Childhood. I had a lot of ancestors from that area. I think my great great grandfather had some connection to Shepherdess Walk in the 1880s and other members of the family lived on half a dozen streets in that area. Always interesting to read stories like this.

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    1. Hi Maureen, did you used to work at rosemary works? I'm magalies friend and pips mum and beanie and I were just remembering the great doc you were in years ago. I'd love to see it again, you were great.
      Kate x

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  8. Catchy Monkey Boots,
    your comment regarding the near total absence of Victorian buildings within the Hoxton area is as sad as it is true. I was born in 1957 in Gopsall St, just off Bridport place, in a Victorian terraced house. My formative years were not dissimilar to Mr Jaspers as the area was still quite poor with up to three separate families occupying a single house. Thing is, most of the many Victorian streets and their characterful buildings and mews and pubs were intact after the wars end. The LCC had targeted the whole area pre war for regeneration and this work had already commenced as in the Colville Estate on Hyde Road. However, the rate of demolition throughout the 60's 70's and into the 80's was zealotry gone mad. It's as if all trace of the Victorian era should be expunged from Hoxton. This was historical vandalism on a grand scale and not once was any attempt made to involve local people in this wanton act of ignorant destruction. All the old mews with their cottage industry business (potters, woodcarvers etc) plus the alleyways, old shop fronts, many many old pub building...all gone. I weep for the loss of this vibrant and historically important area now replaced by so many ugly concrete boxes, which themselves are now facing demolition as the city rolls out and over what used to be a genuine Victorian village.

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    1. Hi I was born in 1954 in bridport place. I grew up with some people I knew in Gopsal street. I was just wondering who you might be and if I may have known you.

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