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General Brixton history - photos, stories etc

editor said:
Brixton 15 years ago:

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I have to admit, I love all your photo features. Those not too long ago. I first started coming to London in 1995, moved here in 2008 and have been here since. I think that the small changes in pictures of the High Road make the photos more interesting than those from the 20s with massive changes.

Keep taking the photos. Today's will be fascinating in fifteen years' time.
 
MsEyeson said:
I went to Ashby Mill Primary School in the 90's - Did anyone on here go there on Lyham Road?
Cant seem to find any other old photos of it only of the exterior which is obviously now flats. :rolleyes:
ashby-mill-school.jpg
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hi there my name is Elizabeth kerr I want to Ashby Mill Primary School and want to a deferent school when it closed down
 
Here's a great little documentary from 1980, narrated by young Danny Baker, looking at the Jazz-Funk scene in London, with a big section of it in Brixton.
See some young gents making their way down the stairs of Brixton tube and popping into Solar Records in the station. Then on to the Frontline Club for pints and a dance. Great stuff.

 
CH1 said:
The manager showed me round a year or so ago. (It is of course now called the Karibu).

You can see from the windows that a mezzanine floor was added splitting the hall horizontally at window level and doubling the floor area - probably when the building became the telephone exchange.

The insertion of a mezzanine floor - thus destroying the original grand auditorium also happened at Rayleigh Hall/Brixton Liberal Club at 1, Saltoun Road. That building had a concert hall added to the rear (flanking Saltoun Road) but when it fell into disuse as a political club and meeting/concert venue the hall was subdivided and used as a garment factory sweatshop. When Lambeth took control they allowed artists and furniture manufacturers to occupy the space, and then lost control to the occupiers in a court case. That is why the Black Cultural Archives only have the part of the building fronting Windrush Square, which in retrospect is a great pity. The rear part would have made a good lecture hall/cinema etc.
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I'd bet that the mezzanine floor was added to convert the building from a telephone exchange to other uses. Exchanges had very high ceilings to accommodate tall racks of Strowger (electro-mechanical) relay cans. Above the racks were usually trays or trunking for all the necessary cables and jumper wires.

I can't find a film of a full-sized urban exchange, but this shows a small, rural version.

 
Tricky Skills said:
Remember a time when Lambeth Labour opposed Tory cuts?
There's some tremendous historical footage in here. Tagging CH1 and lang rabbie.
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This is a brilliant find. Thanks for posting.

Last things first - note that this is a NEWSLINE film.
Newsline was the newspaper arm of the Workers Revolutionary Party.
WRP had connections with Lambeth/Brixton. The Regraves - Corin and Vanessa apparently lived in Clapham. They were leading members of WRP and Corin stood as parliamentary candidate in the Lambeth Central by election in February 1979.

It was said that leader of the council Ted Knight's campaigning in Ferndale Ward was largely done by WRP activists.

The WRP bookshop was in Atlantic Road (site now occupied by Argos).

The main issue highlighted is housing. Ted Knight (leader) and Matthew Warburton - chair of Housing - are complaining that funding cuts mean zero new council housing starts in 1982.

Obviously this is a continuing issue - but in context you hear Ted Knight complaining about Michael Heseltine refusing funding to Lambeth as a policy. Ted is right on that - but that is only half the story. Heseltine was directing funding away from London towards areas where there were even bigger problems due to closing steel works etc.

As Warburton says we did indeed reap the reward of zero housing investment in later years.

Social Services - this part was introduced by Cllr Lesley Hammond (Angell Ward) chair of Social Services.
Presumably if she had been alive today she would be liable to be called as a witness in the new Independent Child Abuse Enquiry - not least because one of the hot spots was in Angell Ward. I am not suggesting Lesley Hammond had any direct responsibility - just that as she had been Social Services chair and a ward councillor to one of the children's homes concerned the enquiry might have wanted to hear her comments.

The bits about home helps and physiotherapy etc were very enlightening. Wonder how much of that is going on currently. One hears stories of people being allowed 10 minutes "contact time" per week.

I noticed that a that one of the major areas was not included - mental health. Presumably large numbers of current "community care" cases were still banged up in Tooting Bec Hospital (capacity 2,255 allegedly). In any case is seems at that time the budget for mental (ill) health was an NHS matter, not local councils.

Skills training
This was interesting. Lambeth Council was providing what are now laughingly called apprenticeships - on the rates. I would have thought such efforts were commendable by any measure and no doubt 100% better than what is currently dne by A4E and Green Man Skills Zone.

Verdict
I am not sure what function this film was intended to fulfil. It gives a sympathetic spin on the Labour administration of 1978-82. In fact the voters verdict was somewhat mixed - the council from 1982-1986 stared as a Conservative/SDP coalition - on the casting vote of the Conservative mayor.
Later one of the SDP councillors switched back to Labour. In my opinion this less than wholehearted political support for Ted Knight's policies was down to one thing - the constant increase of the rates (until the Tory government introduced rate capping to stop it).
And finally.....
I loved the advert on the back of the bus "RATS! - I forgot to put the lid back on my bin!"
 
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Video footage from 1978:

How do people in Brixton feel about race relations and immigration? World in Action sets out to investigate, amid the contentious Lambeth Central by-election campaign, where candidates range from the National Front to the Workers Revolutionary Party. The residents of Haycroft Road SW2 seem nonplussed by the furore, reasoning that the only real issue is whether or not their neighbours are 'Brixtonian'.

Watch Black to Front 1978
 
re. endangered species - the Nelson Mandela School never actually existed, did it?
 
Winot said:
re. endangered species - the Nelson Mandela School never actually existed, did it?
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It was proposed in 2005 with the support of Mr Dammers...
Jerry Dammers, the co-founder of the ska band the Specials, wrote the anti-apartheid ballad more than 20 years ago as part of the campaign to release Mr Mandela from jail in South Africa, but his new protest has a more prosaic feel: he has rewritten the work as a special plea to Lambeth council to give the go-ahead to build a secondary school in Brixton. The song will be re-recorded this afternoon to be delivered to local councillors.

The lyrics to the original song, which reached No 9 in the charts in 1984, have been amended as part of a campaign to build a school bearing Mr Mandela's name in an area of south London that currently has no secondary school.

The words now read:

We can work together
To build our school called Nelson Mandela

We go to school every day
Please don't send us far away
We want a school in Brixton town
Please, oh please, don't let us down

Primary schools in and around Brixton have been given a CD of the new version of the song and lyrics in order for them to prepare for the recording session at a local primary school. The children will record the new song in a session led by Mr Dammers and attended by local musicians and gospel singers.

Devon Allison, the leader of the group Secondary Schools Campaign in Lambeth (SSCiL), told EducationGuardian.co.uk that Dammers, a local resident, was happy to be involved: "Jerry is genuinely supportive and just wants people to have a fair shake."

"Everything we have done has been based on us plumbing our community ... otherwise, Brixton would be totally ignored."

Nelson Mandela gave permission two years for a secondary school in Brixton to be named after him, but the plans have stalled since.

The school would be the first academy in the UK sponsored by parents, who created the Nelson Mandela School Foundation for that purpose.

Specials song rewound for Mandela school campaign
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Yep (Devon is a friend). It never got past the proposal stage - Lambeth went for the site on the south circular instead that became City Heights Academy.
 
Winot said:
Yep (Devon is a friend). It never got past the proposal stage - Lambeth went for the site on the south circular instead that became City Heights Academy.
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That name makes me shudder. It's pure Blairite/Tory aspirational US-style high fiving tosh.
 
I know gentrification has been done a lot here. But heard this radio programme tonight ( its on I player now). Covered a lot of subjects and one of the best programmes Ive heard on cities recently.

Starts out as discussion of cities and safety- given recent terrorism. And past with discussion of Conrad "The Secret Agent" Then goes into how cities are becoming more divided and this is potentially in the future going to make cities less safe. ( My disagreement with contributors is that cities are always contested spaces. Even if this take place over long period of time.)

Good discussion of the downsides of CCTV in making cities ( allegedly) safe. The academics agreeing there is little evidence CCTV reduces crime.

Wide ranging talk from US cities to Hackney in London.

Hackney was discussed a lot as typical of what is happening to inner city. One example was research by one of the academics ( plug for academics they are much more interesting to listen to than politicians) was that school results had improved in Hackney. Probably due to "gentrification" but that at same time school exclusions of poorer black kids had increased. Implication is that the less well off were now considered to be more a a problem in schools now there was larger amount of well off middle class kids.

CH1
 
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Good morning people, I have just spent a most entertaining hour, travelling back through some memories of youth. Let me introduce myself, I grew up in Brixton, with my siblings (Sunbury now: moved out here in 1995) From attending Stockwell Primary School, then St Helens, from being turfed out on a Sunday morning, with my sisters, to go to mass at 'Our Lady of the Rosary' (actually we converted the collection money into sweets, and spent the time in Angel Park, where we could see the church empty, then merge with the exit) my mind there even volunteered me that now the garden of the priests house (was Fr. O'Herphes then-no, not a typo) A couple of my sisters worked at Woolgars (a deli under the railway) My older brother started off pulling the market barrows out in the mornings.
I arrived here, looking up the skinny white guy, who used to position himself outside the record shop, at the exit of Reliance Arcade, opposite the Atlantic arcade but this was in my youth, which was the eighties, also: there was an old rasta, with walking stick, (would be very ancient by now) who used to particularly abuse taxi's. He used to frequent Landor Road (due to South Western Hospital having a unit there) we presumed he was one of their residents, but this would be about 82-83ish. We regularly attended Brockwell Park Lido, if you got there before 9am, it was free to get in back then, so we could definitely use all day in summer holidays, and get back home through Railton/ Atlantic road, too many sights and characters to list. There was also a residential unit on Stockwell road, opposite the skateboard park, where one resident would always be at the gate, asking if we had a fag (ignoring the fact that we weren't even teenagers)
I still love going back to Brixton, from the moment I go up the steps at the Tube station, wondering which group is managing to make the most joyous noise today, if we'll be treated for the sight of a random Christian group exorcising demons from drunks, there is much more fish available in Brixton today, than there was then, it is an area in a constant state of flux. I left Brixton just before the arrival of the Portuguese and Spanish, but recall all riots( our first vdeo recorder was 'slightly' riot damaged) one of the most surreal sights I ever saw, was Brixton at 1am, the main road was lined with green police buses, or glazing vans, Colliers was reduced to an RSJ and rubble, while the market area on Atlantic road was serving as an impromptu rest area for the cops. The residents of Brixton, always keen to check in with a 'happening' were milling about, as they would on a Saturday afternoon, while groups of riot police stood, looking very unsure, as they fielded questions from some of Brixton finest. When I tell people now, where I grew up, they say "oh that must have been rough". Well no, Brixton was a fantastic place to grow up, I enjoyed my youth there, I appreciate the area more, now that I live away, and realise how utterly vanilla some places are.
PS can anyone tell me what ever happened to Pat, the stern old Irish woman who ran the Prince Albert? If she didn't want you in that pub, she could get from the bar to the door, in less time that an 'undesirable' could open the door 45°. She was old school tough.
 
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OGJC said:
PS can anyone tell me what ever happened to Pat, the stern old Irish woman who ran the Prince Albert? If she didn't want you in that pub, she could get from the bar to the door, in less time that an 'undesirable' could open the door 45°. She was old school tough.
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Sad to say that Pat passed away in 2002.

Tribute to Pat Burke, landlady of the Prince Albert pub in Coldharbour Lane, Brixton SW9 8TT
Tribute to Pat Burke, landlady of the Prince Albert pub in Coldharbour Lane, Brixton SW9 8TT - comments from the urban75 bulletin board, May 2002
Pat Burke: in memory of Brixton's finest landlady
 
Does anyone have a shot gun I can borrow? I need to blast a pair of screeching squirrels through my ceiling. :mad:
 
I'm glad you recorded that story of historical note. Future generations will seat you alongside Herodotus and Starkey
 
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