The Oldest Footage of London

[Adams442T]

https://youtu.be/O_me3NrPMh8

[Londontram]

Most excellent thanks for that

[Guest]

Nice find - thanks for the link!

Some of the things that occurred to me while watching...

Wasn't the dome of St Pauls filthy back then?

Tower Bridge hadn't actually been there long in some of the earliest clips.

Liptons Tea would appear to be the only thing advertised on buses!

Excellent.

[F-UnitMad]

Wow thanks for posting!! I like the way the old films have been slowed to 'real time' instead of everyone seeming to walk like Charlie Chaplin on acid..!!

Obviously London always has had heavy traffic be it horse-drawn or motorised!

Can't help thinking of a few poignant things :-

Everyone in the old films is highly likely to be dead, now.

Many of the soldiers, & possibly the youngsters, were probably dead within a few years (WW1)

Dress really defined your class.... but although in many ways things were much more primitive 100 years ago, was it not really a more civilised, elegant era than today?

[Rugd1022]

What a fantastic find, many thanks for sharing that! I could watch that all day long... on the one hand it looks so ancient yet in the grand scheme of things it wasn't that long ago at all - amongst our family photographs there's one taken around Christmas 1965 with me aged three months in my mum's arms, with her mother and grandmother behind, her grandmother would have been in her very late teens at the time of the footage and her mother would have been around the same age I was in the '65 photo. I've said it before on RMWeb.... tis a funny old thing, time! 

[The Stationmaster]

What a fantastic find, many thanks for sharing that! I could watch that all day long... on the one hand it looks so ancient yet in the grand scheme of things it wasn't that long ago at all - amongst our family photographs there's one taken around Christmas 1965 with me aged three months in my mum's arms, with her mother and grandmother behind, her grandmother would have been in her very late teens at the time of the footage and her mother would have been around the same age I was in the '65 photo. I've said it before on RMWeb.... tis a funny old thing, time! 

All this kind of thing fascinates me - the past is but a step away.  Pictures with two or three generations in them used to be common - do families still do it? (and I don't mean those with grandparents in their 40s).  I only knew one of my great grandfathers but another, who retired from the GW PerWay in the 1920s, would have been someone who very likely was in one of the many gangs shipped to the south west to do the gauge conversion - definitely brings 'history' a bit closer.

[F-UnitMad]

Forgot to say about the video - I especially liked the side-by-side comparisons of the scenes, even to sometimes synchronised movement of pedestrians or buses!

[Ozexpatriate]

Liptons Tea would appear to be the only thing advertised on buses!

I did see "Jeyes Fluid" on one.

 

There were many "LIPTONS".

[DavidB-AU]

Very interesting, but the last segment is not the oldest surviving motion picture of London (Trafalgar Square, 1890). William Friese-Greene's film of Hyde Park Corner in 1889 (also the world's first celluloid) is in the possession of British Pathé.

 

Cheers

David

[Londontram]

My grandfather alas now long gone was a doorman at one of the west end Gentleman's clubs and recalled after the last guest had left or gone to bed he would sneak a quick seat on one of the clubs big leather arm chairs laying his head back and with his arms flopped by his side pretending he was tired i reality he was having a quick feel down the side of the chair cushion to see if any coins had slipped out of the members pockets. He said if you were lucky you might even find half a crown and you felt rich if you did (That's 12 1/2p in new money by the way)

  His trip home to south London was always on an open top tram and in the rain the down stairs might be full so you had to ride on top, if you were lucky sometimes the tram company supplied large water proof capes but you still sat there with your head exposed in the poring rain. Both my mum and dad as kids would before war go hop picking each year in Kent. Tracing the family tree back even further it turns out some of my ancestors were Thames boat men. Steve

[Robert]

Pictures with two or three generations in them used to be common - do families still do it? (and I don't mean those with grandparents in their 40s). 

 

My family does!  Unfortunately, none of my grandparents are still alive, but we did a family portrait a few years ago with me as the middle generation.

[Simond]

Whilst the buildings were clearly dirty from smoke, it's interesting to note that the roads seem relatively clean.

 

There were a lot of horses, and in other threads there have been discussions about manure trains taking the waste out to the country - yet really no sign of a mountain of horse doings! (Nor indeed, anyone clearing up)

 

http://bytesdaily.blogspot.de/2011/07/great-horse-manure-crisis-of-1894.html

 

Strange?

 

Simon

[AireValley1962]

Whew!  That is amazing!  Thanks for finding and sharing - I am actually going to London in a few weeks so it will be interesting to compare what is there now to what was there 110+ years ago.

[The Stationmaster]

Whew!  That is amazing!  Thanks for finding and sharing - I am actually going to London in a few weeks so it will be interesting to compare what is there now to what was there 110+ years ago.

Best of luck - my wife used to work in the City (the City being The City of London - the original heart of the city that London has since become over the centuries - and if she were to go there now less than 40 years on there are large parts of it that she simply wouldn't recognise.

 

Many buildings do survive from the period of those films but the City, in particular (along with the East End) suffered heavily in the blitz and even after being rebuilt following that much has since been rebuilt/redeveloped again.  But you'll find the government and public buildings in Westminster not very different from the way it was back when those films were made.

[Rugd1022]

I recall the parts of London we used to frequent forty odd years ago were often still just great big holes in the ground surrounded by wooden fencing with 'Taylor Woodrow' signs plastered all over them. Some of these sites hadn't been built on since the war, namely large parts of Hammersmith, Shepards Bush and Acton. The street my Great Gandmother lived on in the 'Bush resembled Septoe's yard well into the early '80s. One of the many reasons I still watch old '60s and '70s TV shows regularly is to see the 'old' face of London, almost every building was grimy grey, brown or black and it wasn't until the mid '80s or so that things started to change significantly. Having said that, the streets themselves were largely uncluttered and kept reasonably clean, but there have always been the more tidiy areas with little pockets of charming Mews flats and yellow brick cottages, even in the industrialised parts of West London. 

 

Grimy buildings / tidy streets...

 

 

 

A mix of old and new build...

 

 

A typical wet day in old London town, c.1968...

 

[PhilJ W]

Whilst the buildings were clearly dirty from smoke, it's interesting to note that the roads seem relatively clean.

 

There were a lot of horses, and in other threads there have been discussions about manure trains taking the waste out to the country - yet really no sign of a mountain of horse doings! (Nor indeed, anyone clearing up)

 

http://bytesdaily.blogspot.de/2011/07/great-horse-manure-crisis-of-1894.html

 

Strange?

 

Simon

Because of the number horses the streets were flushed every night of their droppings. Many London boroughs used steam wagons for the purpose. It was a particular problem for the LCC tramways which in inner London used the conduit system of power collection and having special steam wagons for the purpose.