BBC 4, Tuesdays 22:00. Dead good. (Deptford High St one will be on iPlayer now)
Probs a repeat but who gives a shit, fucking interesting show this. Charts the history of a specific street in LDN each week based of a demographics map some bloke did in the late 1800s (or thereabouts) up to the modern day.
Does it mention the Job Centre.
It didn’t (which is what makes me think it was probably a repeat as the ‘modern day’ footage looked a tad different to how it is now).
That fucking place is a disgrace though and watching this made me angrier about it.
Yeah, I’ve only been once, and just on it’s own, taken purely as a pub, it was fine, but the whole vibe of how it came to be and what it represents is… icky.
I like this show. In Brighton once they had an exhibit in the North Laine, where they gave each house on the street a sign which had info about the people who had lived there in the past and their jobs from all the old censuses that are public information now.
Is it going to do one on every street in London? Will probably get a bit boring
Don’t be absurd
That sounds great, really love stuff like this. Made me consider my own ancestry a lot more than I’ve usually done as well.
Yeah, the Deptford High Street one as the first show of the first series, from about four or five years ago, so it won’t have the Job Centre pub in there.
The Camberwell and Notting Hill ones are good too.
I got a free trial of Ancestry. It’s kind of hard to track my family, as they were poor people who seemed to go back and forth between London and various places in Scotland, marrying foreign people whose names were recorded wrong/badly/not at all, and none of them were very literate, respectable or lived at the same address for long so it’s often a struggle to even work out what someone’s actual name was or if those are two people with similar names or just one who crops up in various places.
Yeah, mine gets ridiculously complicated really quickly as my Great Nan (who was still alive when I was a kid so I remember well) was one of about 13 kids or something and her and my Great Granddad both moved from London to the Kent countryside during the war and lost touch with siblings etc. That side of the family all basically came to Kent to work on the Hop Farms which my Dad’s side of the family grew up with (The Darling Buds of May was filmed in the area that his side all come from) so it gets a bit tricky. Think it’s something I could see myself putting some proper time into when I’m old though.
This show was superb. Genuinely surprised they haven’t made another series of it.
Although it was rooted in Booth’s maps - would have been good for them to have made a few series, y’know, of streets in cities other than London?
What would be the point?
;)
Yeah I was just being diplomatic to be honest. No chance I’d ACTUALLY watch it.
They did. First series was based in London, second series included places outside of it.
Fuck! I completely missed this. Completely.
Well there we go. Thanks for the link - I’ll plough through it this weekend hopefully.
They should do a street in Street (or Strete). Just for fun.
A lot of folk used to migrate between London and Kent back in the day for the hop season. It makes tracing births and deaths doubly tricky as you have to search two lots of records.
Going to check out the Deptford High Street episode as I do, still, love that street…
Aye, that’s very much my heritage innit. The farmers on my Dad’s side, the pickers on my Mum’s, used to find it so dull when my grandparents etc used to talk about it, wish I’d been more interested now 
Really enjoyed the Deptford episode, thought it was fascinating, mainly centres on the demolition of loads of the old housing which is something I had a vague concept of but not to this level.