50s/60s Britain and Now

[Joseph_Pestell]

1 hour ago, Johann Marsbar said:

Colchester Rd Fire Station in Ipswich used to have the same, and that remained in use as such until the early 1970's - Preumably by which time things like telephone pagers had been introduced to summen firemen there. It was certainly loud, as you could hear it from a couple of miles away!

In rural France they still use a siren to call in the volunteer firemen. The number of times that it sounds varies according to what sort of "shout" it is. Our local fire station is 3.5km away but one can hear the siren clearly in the right weather conditions.

[Joseph_Pestell]

19 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Very nice photos Rugd1022. What IS interesting is that had we had the wherewithal back then to buy those "dumps" and "Slum/Derilect Properties" and had spent some money in gentrifying them, we'd ave a property portfolio worth millions....

 

In the mid 70s, I used to buy wine from a warehouse in Wapping High St. Most of the warehouses were empty and unused and I suggested that they would make great apartments. People thought that I was mad.

[BlackRat]

Old school Victory V's....... grandad used to have big tins of them.

 

Used to blow your head off....... 

Edited April 10, 2020 by BlackRat

[gordon s]

9 hours ago, friscopete said:

My daughter gets spooked by a warning that a siren will inform the area  that a prisoner has escaped ....from Broadmoor .

For years they had a siren test every Monday at 10.00am and you could set your watch by it. The surrounding towns had repeated sirens, so you could hear it for a radius of a few miles.

 

I can’t tell you when it stopped as it was one of those things that went without anyone noticing for weeks, but I’m guessing a year or so ago.

 

Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadmoor_Sirens

Edited April 10, 2020 by gordon s

[Rugd1022]

Taking things for granted is probably something we've all done throughout our lives no matter when we were born, but as a car mad youngster in the '70s anything that wasn't grey or brown and built anywhere other than Longbridge, Luton or Dagenham was very noticable and considered highly exotic. Anything German, Italian, French or Japanese was looked on with genuine awe by my little circle of Matchbox / Dinky / Corgi car owning chums. Anything American was even more 'far out', we only ever saw things like that when 'The Streets Of San Francisco' was on the TV. I remember vividly the gold diecast Mercury Cougar my Dad bought me for Christmas one year, it was beyond cool compared to my Matchbox Mk1 Jag. It was almost ten years later that saw I a real one in the metal for the first time, outside an American dealer about half way between Hammersmith and Old Oak.  When my pal down the road was the first one of us to receive a Mattel Toys Hot-Wheels set for his birthday the excitement was palpable. His parents had recently got divorced and his Mum's new beau (a piano player in the Sid Lawrence Orchestra) had a big Chrysler land yacht which seemed bigger than a house at the time and took our breath away. It was pearl white with a black vinyl roof and always wobbled like a big jelly on its soft suspension when he pulled up and got out, it made a huge impression on me at the time.

 

These days exotics are ten a penny, most people barely bat an eyelid when a Lamborghini or Ferrari goes by (I still do sometimes!).

 

 

[Fat Controller]

3 hours ago, gordon s said:

For years they had a siren test every Monday at 10.00am and you could set your watch by it. The surrounding towns had repeated sirens, so you could hear it for a radius of a few miles.

 

I can’t tell you when it stopped as it was one of those things that went without anyone noticing for weeks, but I’m guessing a year or so ago.

 

Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadmoor_Sirens

I certainly remember the 'air-raid' siren being sounded on a regular basis when I was in Primary School (so 1960-66) in S W Wales.

Those who have spent any time in rural France will have heard the Pompier's sirens at some point. These use a sort of code to advise what sort of an incident it is, be it fire, road accident or medical emergency. The siren is used because the fire crews, being volunteers, will be scattered around, often in areas with no phone.

[Nearholmer]

Rugd

 

my grandfather was a professional gardener all his long life, and during the 60/70s was head gardener for an estate which was latterly rented by His Lordship to the US Embassy, as country residence for the US Ambassador, who barely ever used it. The Embassy Chauffeur was often at a loose-end, and would come to fetch us in the gigantic American car when we went to stay for a week with our grandparents.

 

I have no idea what the car was, but it was gold, with a black upper portion, and the rear seat was as wide as two sofas. It had a very soft, wallowy ride, which caused my middle bro carsickness, which put an end to the lifts!

 

A Lincoln Continental Formal Sedan maybe?

 

K

 

 

Edited April 10, 2020 by Nearholmer

[John Harris]

 

• ”Foreign Food” being limited to the occasional Italian, Chinese and Indian restaurant (all serving dishes heavily modified from the originals to suit the British palate.

The dishes served in most India restaurants (usually staffed by Bangladeshis) still bear no resemblance to those served in Indian homes, usually they are too sweet and too salty

• Chocolate Cigarettes (gone)

I remember candy cigarettes, the only chocolate ones were one my Dad brought back from Germany.

• Sweets from large glass jars, weighed out into paper bags

There are several sweet shops locally (East London) that sell loose sweets in paper bags.

• ”Proper” butchers with carcasses hanging in the window (pretty much disappeared today, I think)

Likewise, there are several traditional butchers in my area.

• Double-Rovers (combined LT underground and bus pass)

They are called 'One Day Travel Cards' and work on all TfL services.

• Wooden escalators

The Kings Cross fire meant the removal of wooden escalators, probably for the best?

• Ham, cut off the bone as you waited (and whatever has happened to “York Ham”: boiled, de-rinded, rolled in yellow breadcrumbs and then sliced to order?)

Ham 'off the bone' is available in most supermarkets, on the deli counter, plus specialist delicatessen shops.

• Cadbury’s Smash (instant mashed potato) 

You can still that in my local Tesco, Asda, Sainsburys.

• BabyCham (pseudo Champagne - marketed as being a “sophisticated” drink)

It's called "Prosecco" these days.

• Black and White TV

They still issue B&W TV licences, 7,000 in the latest figures.

• Milky Bars

You can still get Milky Bars in various sizes.

• Skool Uniform of short trousers and blazer, plus cap (not forgetting white shirt, skool tie, knee-high socks and lace-up black leather shoes)

Many junior and infants schools have uniforms with shorts, plus the rest.

• Leather satchels for skool.

School style satchels are very fashionable, and expensive, albeit not for school children

• Proper plimsolls!

Converse make "plimsolls", canvas lace-up or elasticated shoes.

• The wooden ruler and/or cane as punishment at skool

Beating children was never really a good thing

• Walnut Whips (I haven’t seen those for ages..)

Still made in various sizes.

 

Dare I suggest you haven't been looking?

 

[tomparryharry]

15 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

A great many memory joggers in this thread, so I'll throw one in that I don't think has been mentioned: Home Helps.

 

Not sure entirely who got home help and who didn't, but both of my brothers were born at home (quite rare in itself now, I guess) and, because it was expected that the father would be out at work, there was a service (NHS?) whereby a woman came and did basic housework for a few weeks.

 

Our Home Help was Old Ma C*****, locally famous as the only cockney in a small country town, where she'd somehow fetched-up having been bombed-out of the east End during the Blitz. She was straight out of a Giles cartoon, with knotted whatever-it-was on her head, leaning on a mop-handle, fag in mouth. I can remember standing on the bottom step of the stairs, watching her "swabbing the decks" in the hall.

 

And, the District Nurse, Miss S*****, a small plump, kindly woman in a small plump grey car, wearing her incredibly neat blue uniform, and a dark blue (?) hat, who used to come and make sure that mother and baby were doing well. I associate her somehow with National Dried Milk tins, so maybe one of my bros was bottle-fed.

 

Certainly my youngest bro was born in the middle of the deep freeze of January 1963, which is another subject in itself.

 

PS: we had a fire siren until the 1970s at least. A pal of mine at the MRC was a fireman, and all the Brigade tied houses were within hearing distance of the siren. When he bought a house, that had to be within hearing and running distance of the fire station too. Like many firemen then, he was also a painter and decorator "on the side", and when the siren went I've seen him come down a painting ladder from three storeys up, doing that sliding-feet-down-the-outside thing, hit the ground running, handing me his brush and paint kettle as he went - very impressive it was!

 

 

 

My mother was a 'home help'. She went to see quite a few of her older ladies once or twice a week each. 

[Nearholmer]

Interesting.

 

Who was she employed by, was it the NHS, or the local council?

[tomparryharry]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Interesting.

 

Who was she employed by, was it the NHS, or the local council?

 

I 'think' it was LCC.

 

[DaveF]

 

A few of Dad's photos from the early 1950s.

 

I wonder what the same places are like now?

 

Brighton 1950 Mum in middle I am in the pram.  

 

 

Nottingham Derby Road area, circa 1952

 

 

Nottingham Derby Road area circa 1952.

 

Nottingham Mansfield Road circa 1951.

 

 

David

Edited April 10, 2020 by DaveF

[great central]

2 hours ago, DaveF said:

 

A few of Dad's photos from the early 1950s.

 

I wonder what the same places are like now?

 

Brighton 1950 Mum in middle I am in the pram.  

 

 

Nottingham Derby Road area, circa 1952

 

 

Nottingham Derby Road area circa 1952.

 

Nottingham Mansfield Road circa 1951.

 

 

David

 

The Nottingham ones haven't changed that much apart from the street furniture and vehicles.

I drive past the Mansfield road church to and from work.

Different businesses in the buildings on the Derby road ones and road layout but again pretty much the same, although I haven't been that way in some time as Alfreton road which I would use is full of speed bumps now.

[Steamport Southport]

One place that has changed (not for the better IMO) is Piccadilly Circus. I noticed it the other day on the news and it's now just a big screen TV.

 

I always felt it was iconic. Now it could be virtually anywhere. 1960s and 1970s.

 

 

 

Now.

 

 

 

 

Jason

[Nearholmer]

The sheer dominance/ubiquity of the car now, as compared with the 60s has to be one of, possible the biggest single, change.

 

One car per household certainly wasn’t the norm during the 60s, let alone one car per adult in the household, and the pattern of our lives has been hugely altered as a result.

 

The shape of our towns and cities, the way we shop, how leisure-time works, access to the countryside for leisure, the list is endless.

 

How many houses in your street had a car in, say, the early 60s? Ours was one house in twenty. Everyone else use motorbikes (ok, one bloke actually), bikes, feet, and ‘buses, or the train for long trips.

 

 

Edited April 10, 2020 by Nearholmer

[Reorte]

32 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

The sheer dominance/ubiquity of the car now, as compared with the 60s has to be one of, possible the biggest single, change.

 

One car per household certainly wasn’t the norm during the 60s, let alone one car per adult in the household, and the pattern of our lives has been hugely altered as a result.

 

The shape of our towns and cities, the way we shop, how leisure-time works, access to the countryside for leisure, the list is endless.

 

How many houses in your street had a car in, say, the early 60s? Ours was one house in twenty. Everyone else use motorbikes (ok, one bloke actually), bikes, feet, and ‘buses, or the train for long trips.

I looked up some numbers on that the other day. Cars had reached 50% of households by about 1970 and the rate of acceleration was rapid. It was about 25% at the start of the 60s. Motorway construction was well underway in the 60s.

[Nearholmer]

That tallies with “our street”, which very definitely consisted of twenty small 3-bed semis in an ‘ordinary’ area, where from one car in the early 60s, by 1970 it had risen to, IIRC, a minivan, a Hillman minx, another car, an A40, and a three-wheeler, so 25% of households having a car, plus I think two motorbikes (my father had a very feeble one by then) at that stage.

 

By the early 1980s it was definitely very unusual not to have a car for each family.

Edited April 10, 2020 by Nearholmer

[stewartingram]

Regarding sirens and fire stations. The comms in most if not all brigades was provided by The Home Office (Directorate of Telecoms). I started working for them in 1983, after being at Pye in Cambridge since 1964. Whilst at Pye in the 70s, their paging syatem was introduced - not a telephone pager such as that later offered by BT. The HO was a big user of Pye equipment, one of the reasons I was offered a post there (). All our region's brigades used the Pye pagers, working on the same channel as the Brigade radio. I presume these were introduced nationally when Pye offered them in the 70s. That would lead to the demise of the sirens.

 

Stewart

[Joseph_Pestell]

10 hours ago, gordon s said:

For years they had a siren test every Monday at 10.00am and you could set your watch by it. The surrounding towns had repeated sirens, so you could hear it for a radius of a few miles.

 

I can’t tell you when it stopped as it was one of those things that went without anyone noticing for weeks, but I’m guessing a year or so ago.

 

Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadmoor_Sirens

 

You remind me of a siren going off when I was staying at Bourg St Maurice with my then partner, 1983. It was just a standard "shout" for the local pompiers but Dominique was very nervous about it. She had not told me, before we booked the holiday, that she had serious issues about staying below a large dam!

[stewartingram]

8 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

That tallies with “our street”, which wasn’t at the upper-end of prosperous, where from one care in the early 60s, by 1970 it had risen to, IIRC, a minivan, a Hillman minx, another car, an A40, and a three-wheeler, so 25% of households having a car, plus I think two motorbikes (my father had a very feeble one by then) at that stage.

When we got married we moved into a new house, on a new housing estate, in 1973. Of the 9 houses on our "release" sold at the same time, we had a car (admittedly 18 years old), along with one other person in the release. It remained thus for about 3 years.

 

Stewart

[Nearholmer]

About time this thread had a graph.

 

Doubtless I can find a few more to put figures to our nostalgia.

 

 

[caradoc]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

The sheer dominance/ubiquity of the car now, as compared with the 60s has to be one of, possible the biggest single, change.

 

One car per household certainly wasn’t the norm during the 60s, let alone one car per adult in the household, and the pattern of our lives has been hugely altered as a result.

 

The shape of our towns and cities, the way we shop, how leisure-time works, access to the countryside for leisure, the list is endless.

 

I was born in 1959, but we didn't get a car until around 1970. Up till then, family holidays were by train, but never thereafter !

 

Regarding the shape of our towns and cities, my Mum and Dad's house, when they bought it in 1964, was the last one in a cul-de-sac, and we used to sit playing with toy cars on the kerb. Now, that same road has become the main access from the Oxford bypass to one of the UK's biggest hospitals, the JR, and the traffic is constant, even backing up onto the bypass during morning rush hour. 

 

DaveF's photos have reminded me of one thing I miss, but only just, having no more than a memory of seeing them in Bournemouth in the 60s; Trolleybuses ! What a great idea they were, why haven't they made a comeback yet ? 

 

 

[gordon s]

In our street in North London, cars were definitely a rarity. After tea, the jumpers would be down in the street and we’d play football most nights. Even though we were a through road (rat run today) we could play and the interruptions were probably one car every half an hour. We all moved to the side, let them pass and then the game resumed. That would have been in the mid 50’s to the 60’s.

 

Anyone who had a car in our street must have been wealthy.

 

Another difference I recall is that in Southgate we had one road, Broad Walk, that was end to end really posh houses. To buy one now would set you back several million, yet as kids we cycled up and down there on the way to Grovelands Park and there was no jealousy or envy whatsoever. OK, we were kids, but I never heard my parents once say they weren’t happy living where they were. There was no them and us. We all just got on with our lives and some people lived in big houses, some didn’t, but that’s they way it was.

 

Today it would appear, people want success and to make as much money as possible in the shortest time with the least effort. Sadly those that do are a very small percentage of the population and yet the media make you believe it’s everybody. 

 

 

[Kickstart]

4 hours ago, DaveF said:

 

Nottingham Derby Road area, circa 1952

 

 

Nottingham Derby Road area circa 1952.

 

 

The first one is taken from the junction of Talbot Street and Wollaton Street. Hasn’t changed that much.

 

The second one is taken about 50 yards down the road. The Falcon is still there (it was the main pub used by people at a place I used to work), but there is now a road beside it.

 

All the best

 

Katy

[Reorte]

1 hour ago, Kickstart said:

The first one is taken from the junction of Talbot Street and Wollaton Street. Hasn’t changed that much.

 

The second one is taken about 50 yards down the road. The Falcon is still there (it was the main pub used by people at a place I used to work), but there is now a road beside it.

That puts them here

 

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.9560242,-1.1607873,3a,73.8y,247.86h,95.15t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s5n7lOD1IUxkezCU09VIxZw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

 

and here

 

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.9560677,-1.1618244,3a,75y,284.46h,79.78t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s6zNh5unZI5jjuZWxNqj7iw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

 

for a then and now comparison (both Streetview views are from 2019, so almost up to date).