Recently we watched a programme on the history of Covent Garden Market, ending with its rescue from redevelopment after it closed as a fruit and vegetable market in the late 70s. The footage of an altogether more grimy and more industrial London took us straight back to the start of our working lives at the start of the 80s – me as a junior clerk in an office in Holborn, and Mrs M just down the road as a sales assistant in Foyles bookshop. I’d already been working up there during every school holiday, again as a temporary clerk in an office south of the river on the border of the Borough and Bermondsey (ironically, a former house, now restored to residential accommodation). In those days, my walk took me across London Bridge, through the tatty surroundings of London Bridge station, through Guys Hospital and the surrounding tower blocks, to earn my beer and record money.
Fortunately, on a couple of occasions, I had a camera in hand and was able to capture elements of a London that seemed timeless and permanent, but which is now long gone – or at least unrecognizable from the shiny retail and leisure palaces that some of the buildings have become. So, join me for a brief wander through the London of 1981…
We start with shots from London Bridge, three looking downriver and one back up toward the north. Downriver’s recognizable from the unmistakable silhouette of Tower Bridge in the background, and HMS Belfast in between. What’s still there bears no resemblance to today’s buildings – Hay’s Wharf, Chamberlain’s Wharf and the old hospital have been fully restored (indeed, bringing them back to what their designers probably had in mind when they were new) – and the big hole right next to the Bridge itself (most likely a bombsite, of which there were still many some 40 years after the Blitz), is now filled by a huge glass tower. It was in one of the warehouses lining the river bank from which at least one of the Blue Peter appeals was managed; I can remember pitching up there with a big bag of whatever it was they were collecting that year, and amazing to think that it was actually possible to park right up against the river. Behind the river frontage, the first tourist attraction in the area had just opened at the London Dungeon, taking advantage of the built in atmosphere of the units below London Bridge Station to create a truly (and literally) spine-chilling experience, where it needed no special effects to create the water running down the walls. On the other side of the Bridge, more derelict warehouses, including Pickfords, line the river bank, butting up alongside the viaduct into Cannon Street Station, and the tower of Bankside Power Station juts above the still low rise streetscape.
Closer to my first permanent workplace, we find the still closed Covent Garden Market, fairly newly reopened but awaiting its full rebirth as a destination for shopping and eating but fortunately preserved intact after the campaign that saved it from demolition. Walking back up towards Soho, you can immediately spot the kind of shopping that was placing a call on my wages. Just up from Covent Garden in Longacre was Flip, importing huge bales of original American clothing for those of us determined to draw our style from the 1950s. The Covent Garden outlet was where the selected and curated stock was destined; for those of us on a more meagre budget, their warehouse in Curtain Road, just behind Broad Street on the edge of the City and Islington, was a more affordable destination. Up into Soho, and 58 Dean Street records signals its location. It’s stock of original soundtracks was amazing and, though not cheap, was the only place one could pick up essentials like the music from The Wild One. Nowadays, I’m not so sure 1954 motorcycle gangs made a beeline for West Coast Jazz on the juke box, even if Brando’s Black Rebel MC and Lee Marvin’s Beetles were based on a gang who gained their notoriety in California but, hey, when you’re an 18 year-old office boy, discovering Shorty Rogers is the coolest thing on earth. Up the road, to the Band and Music Centre – hardly rock’n’roll heaven but any specialist record shop offered the possibility of turning up something to feed our insatiable desire for exploring the music of the 1940s and 50s.
And so our brief wander heads back up Shaftesbury Avenue, just in time to grab quick sandwich and dive back into the office before the Chief Clerk starts tapping his watch in disapproval. Collet’s specialist jazz shop hung on longer than many, having moved there from the basement of the Collet’s New Oxford Street bookstore. A lovely double-fronted property, with a similar frontage to the rear (eh?) onto Neal Street, it offered all kinds of delights for the tyro record collector. There were always bargains to be had, especially for someone willing to hoover up 78s and lug them back to the suburbs through the rush hour (and it was truly scary to visit in later years to see some of my purchases now appearing in the ‘Hen’s Teeth’ premium section). It later morphed into Ray’s Jazz Shop, run by jazz fanatic Ray Smith and, even when soaring rents forced closure of the dedicated premises, found itself a new home within Foyles bookshop. Now, if only I’d linked all those things together in 1982, taken my camera down the road to Foyles and struck up a conversation with the strikingly attractive new girl working there, who knows how it all could have turned out…
