It's clear that they did at least try to build something decent even if the reality didn't quite live up to the dream. Having lived there myself for a few years I can tell you that many of the problems were caused by a minority of the people that lived there who, in hindsight, simply didn't appreciate what they had. You can blame the Architecture for enabling some of these problems but ultimately its the humans themselves that must take responsibility for their actions.
Exactly. I live in a post war high rise, it's an amazing place buy spoiled by the minority of unappreciative people shitting in their own doorstep. Yet the same people tend to be out of work (by choice usually) and have the rent paid by the state.
if think brutalism drives people crazy, wait till you hear about how the rise of public violence in the US coincides with the rise of the gentrified, tech-obsessed, lifeless corporate faux-minimalist architecture that's been infesting the united states.
I have fabulous memories of Thamesmead. My family went there while stage 3 was being developed, I was 4 when we went to live there - such a unique experience: new school (first pupils), built a church as a community (St Paul), walked the amazing wild/abandoned areas, had access to new outlooks in dental and health, sailed on Southmere Lake, was fascinated by building work - I recall the smells of wood protector, the sounds of the pile-drivers, the building of the Thames barrier, the warning siren. Loved it. 💖💗💞 Alas such utopias never seem to last for long.
Hi Julia, I was a regular visitor to Thames mead throughout the 1980s and did eventually live there in the 90s. Its nice to read positive comments about the place and even though I no longer live there, I too have many fond memories and do sometimes find myself back there.
My mum moved into Thamesmead in May 1971. The house she moved into, 17 Wolvercote Road, hadn't long finished being built, so she was therefore one of Thamesmead's original tenants. I was born 17 years later and grew up in Thamesmead til we eventually moved away in Oct 2010. I too have some fond memories and sad it's now slowly being pulled down.
we first moved from bermondsey i was 6 months old my sister 12 brother 10 sister 7 to a 3 bed house in holstien way . we was there till the queens jubilee street party then moved to mangold way to a 4 bedroom . my siblings didnt like thamesmead as they loved bermondsy . i grew up on the squares . loved thamesmead . went parkway primary school mr hage as my head master then riverside with dr french . my wife is from stage 10 all her life . we still can tell thamesmead people from a mile off . unique in every way
These estates built in the 60s were designed by middle class professionals who were never going to live in them - they probably lived in Nice leafy suburbs . It was a social experiment at the cost of ordinary people - bet they'd never need a yacht marina . . .
Absolutely correct, I worked for one in the 1960s and even back then I thought his business churned out the most revolting architecture imaginable ( think Birthday central library 1973 ) and he lived in a magnificent detached Georgian house In leafy Edgbaston.
Utopia for the start of the seventies. I was at a party in one of the tower blocks in about 1980, and got lost trying to get home. The GLC was great in those days. I really enjoyed this clip. Thank you for putting it up.
It's utterly fascinating to see what the people planning and building these projects had in mind at the beginning and with time we now know how they turned out. Amazing.
This film is so hopeful for the future...Most of those people would have still been working a few years later when it had turned from a dream into a nightmare. I wonder what they thought of their utopian project in hindsight?
When they were designed, from about 1950 to 1970, these estates were seen as a futuristic happy dream. Many of them are still standing and today they are the icon of inner city deprivation and squalor.
i got a scar on my face 5inches long when i was 7 from the elta skelter in tavy bridge play ground .always bunking off school to go the one oclock club . hanging about stage 10 shops . say what you like about thamesmead . i loved it
Thamesmead was one of the areas blacklisted by me and most other Driving Instructors in the 1980s because there were too many teenagers looking for trouble..
Now the residents are protesting against it all being pulled down. Glad we moved away when we did and not part of all that as much as I miss Thamesmead.
I lived on Abbey Estate at this time 1970. Thamesmead was new. Joined Newacres library '73. This film was played to us at school. Went to De Lucy then Abbey Wood Comp. I still have the Thamesmead street plan which i got from their housing office in Harrow Manor Way.
I lived in Maplin house back in 95 with my newborn daughter, we moved out some weeks later when some feud between dealers saw one ending up brown bread on our landing, I said to the missus we are so out of here, spent a year in Gravesend then moved to the west country and now live in a town where quite a few of us ex South Londoner's are here. My grandfather was still working at the old GLC when this was made. I quite liked Thamesmead but a newborn in a high rise is never a good mix, was often down the estate social club or the pub near the estate entrance, got to know the gypsy's opposite and my baby girl was blessed by their elder. I do regret leaving South London, miss the fast talk, fast deals and what was a community now all gone.
Did you ever get bored being a Londoner and then down to the west country? I live central London but my mum and her family are from Somerset- its like chalk and cheese
I moved from London as a child to Milton Keynes in 1970,to another GLC funded project the Lakes estate. That started off well too. 10 years later the cracks were showing 30 years on and it's turned into a modern ghetto.
Thanks for the post. My nan lived in Abbeywood so spent a little time going over the walkway to get to the chippy. Was always a bit scared lol More tenuous links as kubrick filmed here for Clockwork orange and in my hometown of Aylesbury
Was Mr. Seton Forbes-Cockell ever a resident of Thamesmead ? I would hazard a guess that he wasn´t. More likely to have been a resident of Kensington or Mayfair !
The only thing the town planners failed to factor in was people and how they tend to turn these places into crime infested dumps. I lived there for a few years and it is a pretty dangerous place. Probably a nightmare now.
I lived there in the Mid 90’s Wolvefcote Road. My Car got done over more times than I ate hog meals. Roadworks couldn’t leave Cones or Barriers they’d end up in someone’s windscreen, somebody got attacked on the walkways with a Hammer, Some Rasta man used to Have an Argumemt with a phonecard box eveynight I wouldn’t mind if he had the receiver in his hand but he arguing with the Silver Metal stand and the phone itself 😞 My Blacony was full of Bird shit. Had more rising damp in my Bathroom than Mr Rigsby . The Place was like a Block of Ice in the winter With an Electric Bar Heater on the wall in the living room . But the kitchen was en-suite . a Bus driver nearly got killed by a Lump of Concrete thrown over the walkway into the path of a 180 bus on yarntonway. I hated it but it has a strange eerie Character to it .
@@mark-1rc502 Totally get that the place has a certain feel about it that's hard to describe. Especially at night. I think it's partly the contrasts between the urban and the natural - where else can you see swans drifting silently across the water reflected in the lights of tower blocks. I loved it.
I lived there in the early 80s. SE28. A monstrous and scary place. The concrete estates harboured criminals. Not to mention it's on the wrong side of the thames water barrier.
Tories got in charge and gutted all the affordable housing stock, and Labour did sod all to bring it back. No wonder this country is heading towards ruin when we can't supply housing at an affordable price.
My Uncle and Aunt were among the first Tenants ,, no yacht views for them though . Titmuss Avenue they lived . I was impressed with the under floor heating though I must say. . It could have been lovely by the look of this film , but it certainly isn't now and don't think it has been for a long time
Here's how I see it: 1. Unemployment: a collapsing manufacturing sector will turn any place into Detroit, running down of the docks and the death of British Leyland could not have came at the worse time. 2. Sink estates: the people make the community and if you treat an estate like a waste bin, a waste bin it shall become. Many tower blocks became the council's penal colony, forcing out many decent residents who didn't want to live like that. 3. The neglectful maintenance by the councils did not help the matters, the routine services were probably postponed untill they became emergency repairs, like how it happened on many tower block estates, which reflects on the tennants in many ways.
@romanbukins6527 hit the nail on the head. Most council estates were planned/built in the 60s right before the stagnation that hit in the 70s. Also, in a documentary I watched on council estates, in an interview with one of the tenants who'd been one of the first to move in, they blamed the labour government after 1974 for getting rid of the strict selection criteria and instead prioritising people "most in need" which unfortunately then allowed some antisocial people to be placed in the estates. It only takes a few bad apples to ruin a neighborhood, often irreparably. Plus the lack of maintenance by councils definitely didn't help either. People on top floors unable to use broken lifts etc.
Thamesmead - a cross between a megastructure (Cumbernauld) and various planned communities (the experimental new towns of 1930s America and the 1960s planned community of Reston Virginia) - may seem bizarrely misguided and even socially criminal today, but its ideology and idealism were common hallmarks of urban planning in the mid- and late 1960s. To people of the time, it may have seemed both 'futuristic' and yet nothing out of the ordinary since everybody was doing it - and 'garden estate' social housing (where working class people could finally live in the scenography of the bourgeoisie and literally sail up to the door of their council flat) was a prevalent image. One of the conceits of Modernist thought was that historic social ills could be regulated out of existence by central institutions if infrastructural support were provided. But although Jane Jacobs' 'The Death and Life of Great American Cities' had been published nearly a decade before, many of these über-planned 'communities' had ignored Jacob's assertions and dispensed 'history' with the social ills, not realizing that communities are organic and evolutionary - and, in a bitter irony, ended up generating more social problems than those which they had originally intended to refute..
2:37 there is something so poignant and sad about this particular frame when they show the great workmanship in that stone wall. And then the wild English lavender growing.
I think this is where the artists who created Judge Dredd in the comic 2000AD got their ideas from in imagining Mega City One; a high-rise dystopian crime-ridden future. I grew up in Manchester in the 70s and the bus route into Town took me through Moss Side and Hulme, past the infamous "Bull Ring". These flats were scary looking places, all gone now, thank God, Manchester is looking much better. These 1960s concrete monstrosities surely represent the biggest failure in architecture/social planning ever.
@Original Herdsman No, that was my parent's time when they grew up in two up, two downs in Salford.I am grateful I was born in more prosperous times yet the poverty in lots of areas of Greater Manchester is still profound. I am not sure what you are trying to get at with your comment either....
@@GNeuman architects don't make slums people do. People now days should be grateful for what they have and not what they haven't. My grandparents lost all twice in the blitz, house, family members and naighbours and made the best of life had to offer.
Original Herdsman I agree about people should be grateful for what they have but the sad facts are that these concrete monstrosities are a failed social experiment....the sense of isolation they create is proven to be a community killer. Therefore, I strongly disagree with the 2nd part of your argument.
Started the year I was born, 66. We were living in Bermondsey then, moved to Woolwich then Abbey Wood. We moved further south into Penge and then Croydon before leaving London altogether. They were great days.
As a young merchant seaman from Medway Towns, I traveled into London on the train through Gravesend regularly. Did not look good whilst being built, total disaster so very sad
Never dump bad council tenants into a community of good tenants. The good tenants do not have the power to raise the bad tenants. That's part of what destroyed most council properties. Local factory work would have helped. But no one cared enough as long as it took existing tenants out of Westminister Council in particular.
WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED. It looked amazing the ideas on paper and drawings and models, but in reality it really went very very wrong Thamesmead has become nothing more than London’s dumping ground now for the very poor and also houses one the the biggest prisons in the country Belmarsh
Good grief, the bloke was worried the scaf was going to help thieves break in and the council has the audacity to say, well you should have insurance. What a bleak place and bleak times the 1970s were.
The arsenal was my childhood playground, somewhere to escape the rat race, a natural paradise with barn owls, kestrels, whole heronry’s, hedgehogs, grass snakes, lizards, many endangered birds and animals, the beautiful sound of birds singing and grasshoppers and crickets chirping, I remember Chris Packham helping to relocate water shrews to new sites, it is quite depressing now, kinda like Mordor devouring the Shire.
My brothers and I back in the 50s would go to the marshes to see the wild life when ever we could fined the time .Spent many happy hours there. It is sad to see it the way it is now. We would find live ammo among the rubble and played war in the old sheds etc.
@@tararuaman Gutted I missed out on that. My grandparents both worked on the Arsenel during the war but it wasn't until the early 80s that I first visited it.
5:58 At Thamesmead the pedestrian will have an environment entirely of 'His own'. They really didn't have a clue back then did they. Probably thought women were still shut away in the home 24/7
19:18 Feels weird there was initially no roundabout at the end of Yarnton Way leading into Harrow Manor Way there as this was way before my time. Though from what I've seen of old Thamesmead photos, looks like the roundabout was built soon after.
The Abercrombie International Architectural Award……..and thus was created an urban nightmare for the souls who lived there. Like so many other carbuncles that came throughout this time. From Urban Planners who resided in the greener counties. Lovely!!!!!!
I was at school in Wanstead at this time, and the Motorway Opposition Group were campaigning against losing houses in Nightingale Lane, our sports field next to the River Roding, and other homes to a projected part of the M11 that was to run through the borough and link with an inner ring road. One friend's family had a notice that they would be subject to Compulsory Purchase as one of the supports for a flyover was planned to be placed exactly where their front garden was. More concrete monstrosities were projected for parts of Forest Gate and Plaistow areas but never got far. There seemed to be a general mad fetish for building high rise fire traps and to cover as much land as possible in concrete. I left in 1970, and was sublimely happy to do so. The docks were under threat to the new container shipping fleets, and the dockers refused to embrace the new technology, assuming that they would have jobs for ever. The docks died, the ships left, and the river emptied of a huge trade.
I can’t help but think London will never be sorted in the next 20 years it has been nothing but problems and stress since I started as a working professional in 2006 / progressively getting worse every year until now it’s utter despair , and I hate the people that did this to our city , millennials betrayed and it’s a f war zone now physically and mentally
We in the late 80's and 90's tried to change that, by tying to make this kind of stuff more interesting. unfortunately it was taken up by the uneducated quick money masses. what you get now is the EXTREMELY OVER RELAXED ATTITUDE OF THE CURRENT GENERATION who create their own videos for youtube and even some tv mainstream media in north America. 1. has to idiotic to keep attention 2 has to be crude 3 has to loud ans annoying 4. have to include swearing ...especially if you are creating somthing for youtube ...even if you know or a fact that 8 year olds will be watching
Are those houses still there?Im from Glasgow and it looks like the Gorbals during the 60s 70s.Most of the houses that were built during that period have been demolished.The utopian dream of the 60s became a drug and crime infested nightmare.
Lady Tron I’m also from Glasgow. I was in London 2 years ago. Stories of crime and gang activity meant I never visited. It is currently under demolition, with much of the original buildings already gone including the, in my opinion, stunningly cool health centre.
This was in a time where there were massive public contracts up for grabs to build houses and these estates were almost always poorly planned, under funded and badly made. The product was the cold sterility that turns communities into slums, the walkways were infested with muggers, sex pests and gangs, the monolithic cast concrete structures spanning out and up made it feel cold, it was and is a really filthy estate too. No wonder it was used to depict a dystopian future.
I think this is the problem. Rational discourse seems impossible - you prove it. I simply asked a question, for my own enquiry, not anyone else's. Why do you call people simpletons for asking questions?
@@cypriot4lyf There are plenty of brits living there but White women and girls are carrying blacks babies over there now slowly becoming out of existence unfortunately.
@@originalherdsman3524 I would somewhat disagree with you. Good design impacts a community enormously. This was a community intended to house poor people, and it was intentionally programmed and designed to impede a sense of community rather than facilitate such. Designed properly, the community would have had a good shot, but instead it was designed to resemble a mental institution, because that's all they thought poor people were worth. Had there been programs to help uplift poor people in terms of helping them purchase and maintain their own separate homes rather than live inside a stark tower block, that would have been good for a start. This design encourages a caste system mentality, which tells me that upperclass middle-20th Century Londoners still disdained the poor, just as they did in centuries past. Architecture can change a society for the better, or it can change it for the worse, and Thamesmead exemplifies this idea.
@@TVHouseHistorian basically i was bought up in a Victoriana property that is worth over a million on the London market now days. (That i can not afford ) My family made do with what we had and even had the old tin bath in the kitchen on family nights twice a week. So how lucky I was when i was old enough to be able to live on the 18th floor of a tower block in North London over looking Highgate and a very nice view over central London and with hot water , heating . Now days there's ungrateful people who want more and don't appreciate what they have .!!!! The people who would love a lovely life of these homes don't want to live amongst plastic gangsters.
Clearly a lot of thought and time, money and planning went into the scheme not at all like now I know it didn't work out but at least they tried something different again not like now and everything is the same.
Sod that living in a tower block like that they turn my stomach over, In those days they didnt really realise they are dangerous to live in incase of a fire break out and it feels like jail your cooped up in there, demolish the lot them dont build them.
It's the people that live in them. You go to Wilshire Boulevard next to Beverly Hills in Los Angeles, or to Miami Beach, Florida, or to anywhere in Midtown Manhattan or the Upper East Side or Upper West Side, and they all have concrete high-rises - and much higher than they have in Thamesmead, and those places are fought over and cost a fortune - unless you have money for a Beverly Hills mansion, those are THE places to live. Heck, go to the east side of Battersea Park today (next to Battersea Power Station), and people would kill to live in one of those high-rises. All of Nine Elms is like that too. Again, it is the people that inhabit the high-rises that determines whether they desireable or not.
You have to understand, a typical difference between an upscale high rise on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills is that the tenants do not, for example, urinate in the elevators as they do in Thamesmead.
@@justincarmichael9944 Fact's that's waht I like to see. The Nine Elms flats at the top I am told cost over 10 million pound for one flat. Some rents in tower blocks in London are 11 thousand pound a month.
I lived in Abbeywood and found thamesmead a cool playground for kids but you always had to look over you shoulder for gypsies and make sure no on nicked your BMX etc atleast there was affordable housing back then for young families
People sitting here in 2024 really need to drop their attitudes and realise that back then people were often moving from shty housing with inadequate room for their families. So these were luxury. That crpy people ended up living there was the roll of the dice - those sort of people can live anywhere
Where are the Gouch family now? I think west Thamesmead closer to woolwich/ Plumstead looks better . The tower blocks with walk ways do not exist here . It’s mainly yellow brick semi detached houses and low rise flats . Perhaps this was built after the concrete first bit of Thamesmead closer to abbey wood to the east and south. I was like what 😳heck is this !!! When I first went there! It felt cold and dead
Tembo believe it or not the husband still lives there. His wife has sadly died but they still have the same plaque they where presented with!! Another film that led me to this one had an interview with hin! Something about decline of council housing!!
I'm surprised that the tower blocks were still allowed to be built. Maybe they were passed the point of no return when the Ronan Point incident occurred.
My in-laws lived in Thamesmead when I met my husband, they owned a tiny townhouse. I don't remember there being a yacht harbour? Anyway, this was back in the late 80s early 90s and I thought it was a horrible place to live.
Thamesmead was probably a GREAT place to live between 1968 - 84. After 1984, the deterioration of Thamesmead slowly started to occur & it was about time to get out & move elsewhere. TM after 1985? NO!
@@mr.blackwell5423 Strangely the fishing went a bit down hill from that point too according to my diaries, especially Southmere, the Crucian Carp virtually vanished.
Bloody hell! Did the planners get that wrong! I worked on Thamesmead through the 80’s & early 90’s. Terrible place rife with crime and misery. Ripping it all down now thank god!
Compared to the filthy ugly slums this kind of development replaced in some parts of the country, the white clean concrete seemed like the answer. When you watch a film like this, you do get sucked in and wonder where on earth it went wrong? The idea of the segregated roads and pathways was a fantastic 60s and 70s notion. Newcastle has a whole walkway system in the sky, Birmingham had similar pedestrian only pathways etc. This idea should have been kept as much as possible.
Interesting points, thank you. Costs and real estate space not withstanding, I often wonder why architects of this era thought of people as not individuals, but a collective mass to be penned, neatly and identically organized in their dwellings, as if satisfying some OCD imperative on the part of designer. Simultaneously and without a hint of irony, the architect will travel home at the end of the day to his detached red brick in Surrey or Hampshire, on a road where no house looks similar to the others. In my mind, it was the failure of architects to treat those to be housed as individual people, that created serious problems and eventually played its part in the social breakdown of these vast Stalinesque concrete council estates. The couple in the video 'Where the Houses Used to Be' who lament that they don't want to be just like all of their neighbours, encapsulate this sentiment perfectly. A working class, respectable family with aspirations was truly not served by this kind of stultifying, anti-social housing. Thank god we have recognised the flaws and moved forward.
Yeah, but the thing about 'filthy ugly slums' is there was community. In the places that were pulled down, the plaster might have been peeling from the walls, there might only be an outside lavvy, but people were together, and relied upon each other. Neighbours were friends. As for 'segregated roads and pathways' sure, great idea on the surface, but the reality is, people don't want to be segregated. People don't want to live in tower blocks. They want to be in amonst it, traffic and all, at ground level. People aren't pidgeons. The architects were simply trying new ideas, without consulting real people, the actual people who were to live here. A classic case of treating people as a collective mass rather than individuals. This happened in every council area in the '50s '60s '70s.....it failed miseraby. The trajedy is, you could have housed just as many people on that land, by building traditional houses and gardens. Build that, and the community will build itself.
I prefer Victorian slums to modern slums. Victorian slums can at least be pictures and can be modernized into livable conditions as opposed to modern slums.
Why was that the guy talking about insurance? If it's outside bedroom windows, there's a risk of perverts and what not. He should've assured him of barriers around the scaffolded buildings and security or something. Insurance he says(9_9).
I've lived in thamesmead. It's not nice. It's a lot better than what it was to be fair tho. Alot of work has gone into to it to make more pleasent. Especially the tower blocks, they don't look half bad more as far as tower blocks go. But how on earth did they think that looked half decent when they built it. Mad.
I didn't turn out well for the public council estates that were built, that's for sure. The first demolitions of tower blocks occurred only 15 years later, once 1950s to 1970s Council estates had become a national social problem.
The interesting thing is that ordinary people in places like Japan, Hong Kong, Shanghai, South Korea, etc, seem to be able to live in high rise flats without too many problems, which proves that it is possible for human beings to live in this type of environment. The problem only seems to occur in other parts of the world like Europe and America. Maybe people here don't have the necessary self-restraint and good behaviour to live so close to other people without gardens, etc, whereas in east Asian countries they do.
cypriot4lyf I disagree, don’t give in to gentrification, at least the crime in Thamesmead is fairly low. Much lower than places like Peckham or Brixton
I watched an old BBC documentary on TH-cam recently about how social housing evolved in England. Very interesting! But they interviewed the husband of the first family to move in, the one that is featured here. He was still living in his maisonette anyway, and spoke about how the estate developed and deteriorated over the years. Documentary looked like it was filmed some time in the noughties.
Interesting video but a shame there's no detail of the construction.....e.g. are the room walls just concrete, plastered or concrete with plasterboard with a skim of plaster or even insulated plasterboard and then a skim of plaster? The heating is not even mentioned, apparently originally there was District Heating (decommissioned in 2000 and individual boilers installed.) Was this District Heating oil fired or gas fired...….there's no evidence of radiators 15:01...….was it underfloor heating? etc. There may be a radiator lurking behind that brown armchair 15:11 (can just about see what may be a radiator valve on the LHS and a return pipe on the RHS). This development is a good example of how poorly insulated buildings were in the 60s (designed in the 60s) because architects think like accountants, and because fuel was relatively inexpensive they didn't design in good insulation due to an unacceptable pay back time in their view. Double glazing? almost certainly not. Countries like Austria & Germany were I believe far better insulated in those days. The UK is not THAT much warmer than continental Europe. Amazing coincidence that the boy's friend is known as Ste 16:08 (Beautiful thing film). I had a friend called Stephen but he was known as Steve never Ste (unfortunately he's now on my long list (of ex friends LOL)). Edit: Having watched `Beautiful Thing' again recently the flats in the film appeared to have warm air central heating (ducting grilles in walls are evident in some scenes).
@Chubby T Interesting. The `mid terrace' flats sound like they ended up being quite well insulated if the fronts and backs had UPVC windows & UPVC panels (with presumably e.g. Celotex in the UPVC sandwich) to replace the concrete walls (the top flat ceilings could have been insulated internally). Just left the `end of terrace' flats with a cold flank wall (that could be fitted with internal insulation). Of course I'm no expert; I guess to insulate internally you have to carefully seal to prevent warm water vapour causing sweating of the cold concrete or you need to ventilate to outside the cold void, as you do a loft area). In your view why did the Council decide to spend such an enormous amout of money to demolish these Brutalist buildings. Was it the unsocial behavior? Would have been cheaper to pay for 24 hour security guards! Were the building falling apart / roofs leaking? I would be interested in your view having lived there.
I was born in St Pancras back in 57, My folks moved up north in 59. But I have always been proud to have been born in the greatest city in the world, and the greatest country in the world.
![PASULOL รามเกียรติ์ ตอนที่ 4 นนทกพบรัก [Ramakien Ep.4: Nonthok in love]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/tMUQgmZzf_A/mqdefault.jpg)
It's clear that they did at least try to build something decent even if the reality didn't quite live up to the dream. Having lived there myself for a few years I can tell you that many of the problems were caused by a minority of the people that lived there who, in hindsight, simply didn't appreciate what they had. You can blame the Architecture for enabling some of these problems but ultimately its the humans themselves that must take responsibility for their actions.
I've heard it was quite nice before the council started placing 'problem tenants' there.
Exactly. I live in a post war high rise, it's an amazing place buy spoiled by the minority of unappreciative people shitting in their own doorstep. Yet the same people tend to be out of work (by choice usually) and have the rent paid by the state.
Really? Couldn’t have made them uglier if they tried.
if think brutalism drives people crazy, wait till you hear about how the rise of public violence in the US coincides with the rise of the gentrified, tech-obsessed, lifeless corporate faux-minimalist architecture that's been infesting the united states.
I have fabulous memories of Thamesmead. My family went there while stage 3 was being developed, I was 4 when we went to live there - such a unique experience: new school (first pupils), built a church as a community (St Paul), walked the amazing wild/abandoned areas, had access to new outlooks in dental and health, sailed on Southmere Lake, was fascinated by building work - I recall the smells of wood protector, the sounds of the pile-drivers, the building of the Thames barrier, the warning siren. Loved it. 💖💗💞 Alas such utopias never seem to last for long.
Hi Julia, I was a regular visitor to Thames mead throughout the 1980s and did eventually live there in the 90s. Its nice to read positive comments about the place and even though I no longer live there, I too have many fond memories and do sometimes find myself back there.
My mum moved into Thamesmead in May 1971. The house she moved into, 17 Wolvercote Road, hadn't long finished being built, so she was therefore one of Thamesmead's original tenants. I was born 17 years later and grew up in Thamesmead til we eventually moved away in Oct 2010. I too have some fond memories and sad it's now slowly being pulled down.
we first moved from bermondsey i was 6 months old my sister 12 brother 10 sister 7 to a 3 bed house in holstien way . we was there till the queens jubilee street party then moved to mangold way to a 4 bedroom . my siblings didnt like thamesmead as they loved bermondsy . i grew up on the squares . loved thamesmead . went parkway primary school mr hage as my head master then riverside with dr french . my wife is from stage 10 all her life . we still can tell thamesmead people from a mile off . unique in every way
1977 I fell asleep on a London bus and woke in Thamesmead 'Bleeding Nightmare'
the cockney's siberia.
i can go better than that i fell asleep on a plane woke up in new delhi i was going to new york
@@bobsemple7660 he swam across, naturally.
What a funny story
Did you wake up to see Alex and his droogs!
These estates built in the 60s were designed by middle class professionals who were never going to live in them - they probably lived in Nice leafy suburbs . It was a social experiment at the cost of ordinary people - bet they'd never need a yacht marina . . .
Absolutely correct, I worked for one in the 1960s and even back then I thought his business churned out the most revolting architecture imaginable ( think Birthday central library 1973 ) and he lived in a magnificent detached Georgian house In leafy Edgbaston.
Birmingham central library “
More left wing 'it's everybody elses fault' twaddle
The chalk hill estate in Wembley was built for the middle class then the labour council took it over and the rest is history
Agenda 21?
Nice to see these promotional films in their entirety rather than tiny clips shown out of context in documentaries.
Feel like I'm watching a episode of Black Mirror. That place turned out to be the total opposite of what their describing.
Now that’s a pretty accurate comment. It really is like something out of Black Mirror!
Yeah a dump
Tho do have view from tower block but the lifts inside like two of you and it's s squeeze
Concrete city !!!
@@allylou5151 now people take dump in lift😂
Utopia for the start of the seventies. I was at a party in one of the tower blocks in about 1980, and got lost trying to get home. The GLC was great in those days. I really enjoyed this clip. Thank you for putting it up.
I love it..."The Yacht Basin". Yep I'm sure most of the Thamesmead residents had yachts.
"You mean those working class people don't have yachts? Next you'll be telling me they don't use napkin rings either "
@@keithwaites9991 Hm, not sure if they even had cloth napkins.
@@stischer47 oh can such poverty exist?
@@keithwaites9991 Only in the 70s...we are much more advanced now...not!
@@stischer47 lol
It's utterly fascinating to see what the people planning and building these projects had in mind at the beginning and with time we now know how they turned out. Amazing.
This film is so hopeful for the future...Most of those people would have still been working a few years later when it had turned from a dream into a nightmare. I wonder what they thought of their utopian project in hindsight?
Kubrick saw the squalor coming when he filmed Clockwork Orange there the following year
oh yeah!!! o my goodness your right, even today its the go to ghetto for any rappers filming videos lol
That's what genius is about and why it's timeless.
Aphex Twin also shot a video at the base of Maplin house for one of their horror songs lol
There's no milk bars though.
I heard a rumor that the house i'm living in was filmed in Clockwork Orange
I was born in Thamesmead in 1975. Dreadful memories, but it was idyllic compared to what it is nowadays.
What is it like now?
@@김김-e4w3o I’d say the decades spanning from 2000 up until now.
I can remember every family at Thamesmead having a two mast yacht and a pair rose coloured glasses.
@@김김-e4w3o housing estates and roundabouts
All the suits congratulating themselves and each other. I bet they never lived there. Probably didn't want to.
When they were designed, from about 1950 to 1970, these estates were seen as a futuristic happy dream. Many of them are still standing and today they are the icon of inner city deprivation and squalor.
Not one ! I totally agree . I knew around 15 family's that lived there . Tell you the truth it was scary to walk through there back in the late 80s.😱
It's easy spending other peoples taxes.... Just ask any socialist... They think they're entitled to it.
Friggin George Romney was there. How odd is that!
@@logicalmusicpro8799 people make slums not architects
i got a scar on my face 5inches long when i was 7 from the elta skelter in tavy bridge play ground .always bunking off school to go the one oclock club . hanging about stage 10 shops . say what you like about thamesmead . i loved it
Thamesmead was one of the areas blacklisted by me and most other Driving Instructors in the 1980s because there were too many teenagers looking for trouble..
It’s no better today .
Now the residents are protesting against it all being pulled down. Glad we moved away when we did and not part of all that as much as I miss Thamesmead.
I lived on Abbey Estate at this time 1970. Thamesmead was new. Joined Newacres library '73. This film was played to us at school. Went to De Lucy then Abbey Wood Comp. I still have the Thamesmead street plan which i got from their housing office in Harrow Manor Way.
Cool!
Volunteered at Radio Thamesmead in the late 1980s/early 1990s. Amazing time. A social connection in the city that puts the 'Lon' into Lonely.
I got a T-shirt from a quiz WHOOPEE !.
I lived in Maplin house back in 95 with my newborn daughter, we moved out some weeks later when some feud between dealers saw one ending up brown bread on our landing, I said to the missus we are so out of here, spent a year in Gravesend then moved to the west country and now live in a town where quite a few of us ex South Londoner's are here. My grandfather was still working at the old GLC when this was made. I quite liked Thamesmead but a newborn in a high rise is never a good mix, was often down the estate social club or the pub near the estate entrance, got to know the gypsy's opposite and my baby girl was blessed by their elder. I do regret leaving South London, miss the fast talk, fast deals and what was a community now all gone.
Brown bread?
@@gregorymalchuk272 dead
Did you ever get bored being a Londoner and then down to the west country? I live central London but my mum and her family are from Somerset- its like chalk and cheese
@@gregorymalchuk272 Brown bread = Dead
@@clair233¹¹
I moved from London as a child to Milton Keynes in 1970,to another GLC funded project the Lakes estate. That started off well too. 10 years later the cracks were showing 30 years on and it's turned into a modern ghetto.
Thanks for the post. My nan lived in Abbeywood so spent a little time going over the walkway to get to the chippy. Was always a bit scared lol
More tenuous links as kubrick filmed here for Clockwork orange and in my hometown of Aylesbury
Was Mr. Seton Forbes-Cockell ever a resident of Thamesmead ? I would hazard a guess that he wasn´t. More likely to have been a resident of Kensington or Mayfair !
london.wikia.org/wiki/Seton_Forbes-Cockell Absolutely no ;-)
@@igorm2631 Nice touch. Thanks for link to information about Forbes-Cockell. 🙂
First question the Dad asked Do we have a Public House 17.55 ! Love it !
the developer guys little smile when he pointed to them on the map was gold!
The only thing the town planners failed to factor in was people and how they tend to turn these places into crime infested dumps. I lived there for a few years and it is a pretty dangerous place. Probably a nightmare now.
Jelleepit not even dangerous nor crime infested, has a very very low crime rate
@@brokenbritain1930 People jump on a bandwagon saying it was dangerous, intead of sticking to facts.
I lived there in the Mid 90’s Wolvefcote Road.
My Car got done over more times than I ate hog meals. Roadworks couldn’t leave Cones or Barriers they’d end up in someone’s windscreen, somebody got attacked on the walkways with a Hammer, Some Rasta man used to Have an Argumemt with a phonecard box eveynight I wouldn’t mind if he had the receiver in his hand but he arguing with the Silver Metal stand and the phone itself 😞
My Blacony was full of Bird shit. Had more rising damp in my Bathroom than Mr Rigsby .
The Place was like a Block of Ice in the winter
With an Electric Bar Heater on the wall in the living room . But the kitchen was en-suite .
a Bus driver nearly got killed by a Lump of Concrete thrown over the walkway into the path of a 180 bus on yarntonway. I hated it but it has a strange eerie Character to it .
@chico Have a look at your pharmacy its full of drugs!
@@mark-1rc502 Totally get that the place has a certain feel about it that's hard to describe. Especially at night. I think it's partly the contrasts between the urban and the natural - where else can you see swans drifting silently across the water reflected in the lights of tower blocks. I loved it.
Thamesmead:
A Solution for a Utopia in the 1970s
A Nightmare of Social deprivation by the 1980s
This was made when cars and roads were deemed the solution to all urban planning problems. Thamesmead has always had poor railway provision.
I lived there in the early 80s. SE28. A monstrous and scary place. The concrete estates harboured criminals. Not to mention it's on the wrong side of the thames water barrier.
Everything looked so well thought out like playing a city simulation game. Where is all the affordable housing today?
Tories got in charge and gutted all the affordable housing stock, and Labour did sod all to bring it back. No wonder this country is heading towards ruin when we can't supply housing at an affordable price.
Agree , despair in London
Where’s the affordable housing? Barnsley.
@@ArmyJames Bulgaria 😂
fantastic footage. Even the colours look better than they do now.
My Uncle and Aunt were among the first Tenants ,, no yacht views for them though . Titmuss Avenue they lived . I was impressed with the under floor heating though I must say. . It could have been lovely by the look of this film , but it certainly isn't now and don't think it has been for a long time
Lisa Brown ha I know someone who lives in that hood
It had failed in just over ten years
This was paradise to some people. Question is what went wrong
Here's how I see it:
1. Unemployment: a collapsing manufacturing sector will turn any place into Detroit, running down of the docks and the death of British Leyland could not have came at the worse time.
2. Sink estates: the people make the community and if you treat an estate like a waste bin, a waste bin it shall become. Many tower blocks became the council's penal colony, forcing out many decent residents who didn't want to live like that.
3. The neglectful maintenance by the councils did not help the matters, the routine services were probably postponed untill they became emergency repairs, like how it happened on many tower block estates, which reflects on the tennants in many ways.
@romanbukins6527 hit the nail on the head.
Most council estates were planned/built in the 60s right before the stagnation that hit in the 70s.
Also, in a documentary I watched on council estates, in an interview with one of the tenants who'd been one of the first to move in, they blamed the labour government after 1974 for getting rid of the strict selection criteria and instead prioritising people "most in need" which unfortunately then allowed some antisocial people to be placed in the estates. It only takes a few bad apples to ruin a neighborhood, often irreparably.
Plus the lack of maintenance by councils definitely didn't help either. People on top floors unable to use broken lifts etc.
Thamesmead - a cross between a megastructure (Cumbernauld) and various planned communities (the experimental new towns of 1930s America and the 1960s planned community of Reston Virginia) - may seem bizarrely misguided and even socially criminal today, but its ideology and idealism were common hallmarks of urban planning in the mid- and late 1960s. To people of the time, it may have seemed both 'futuristic' and yet nothing out of the ordinary since everybody was doing it - and 'garden estate' social housing (where working class people could finally live in the scenography of the bourgeoisie and literally sail up to the door of their council flat) was a prevalent image.
One of the conceits of Modernist thought was that historic social ills could be regulated out of existence by central institutions if infrastructural support were provided. But although Jane Jacobs' 'The Death and Life of Great American Cities' had been published nearly a decade before, many of these über-planned 'communities' had ignored Jacob's assertions and dispensed 'history' with the social ills, not realizing that communities are organic and evolutionary - and, in a bitter irony, ended up generating more social problems than those which they had originally intended to refute..
2:37 there is something so poignant and sad about this particular frame when they show the great workmanship in that stone wall. And then the wild English lavender growing.
Misfits was also filmed at Thamesmead
I think this is where the artists who created Judge Dredd in the comic 2000AD got their ideas from in imagining Mega City One; a high-rise dystopian crime-ridden future. I grew up in Manchester in the 70s and the bus route into Town took me through Moss Side and Hulme, past the infamous "Bull Ring". These flats were scary looking places, all gone now, thank God, Manchester is looking much better.
These 1960s concrete monstrosities surely represent the biggest failure in architecture/social planning ever.
Obviously you have forgotten what it was like to have a family bath night once a week and if you could afford to boil hot water.
@Original Herdsman No, that was my parent's time when they grew up in two up, two downs in Salford.I am grateful I was born in more prosperous times yet the poverty in lots of areas of Greater Manchester is still profound.
I am not sure what you are trying to get at with your comment either....
@@GNeuman architects don't make slums people do.
People now days should be grateful for what they have and not what they haven't. My grandparents lost all twice in the blitz, house, family members and naighbours and made the best of life had to offer.
Original Herdsman I agree about people should be grateful for what they have but the sad facts are that these concrete monstrosities are a failed social experiment....the sense of isolation they create is proven to be a community killer. Therefore, I strongly disagree with the 2nd part of your argument.
Thanks Martin, great to see you’re still around
I’m dead!
Started the year I was born, 66. We were living in Bermondsey then, moved to Woolwich then Abbey Wood. We moved further south into Penge and then Croydon before leaving London altogether. They were great days.
As a young merchant seaman from Medway Towns, I traveled into London on the train through Gravesend regularly. Did not look good whilst being built, total disaster so very sad
I’d love to see this restored and high quality. It’s lovely
Me too, especially as I used to live in Thamesmead.
This was filmed on the only sunny day in the UK in 1970
Never dump bad council tenants into a community of good tenants. The good tenants do not have the power to raise the bad tenants.
That's part of what destroyed most council properties.
Local factory work would have helped. But no one cared enough as long as it took existing tenants out of Westminister Council in particular.
A 5 room maisonette?? In 1970?? Most are lucky to get a 4 bedroom flat today. I'm shocked!!!
WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED. It looked amazing the ideas on paper and drawings and models, but in reality it really went very very wrong Thamesmead has become nothing more than London’s dumping ground now for the very poor and also houses one the the biggest prisons in the country Belmarsh
Good grief, the bloke was worried the scaf was going to help thieves break in and the council has the audacity to say, well you should have insurance. What a bleak place and bleak times the 1970s were.
The arsenal was my childhood playground, somewhere to escape the rat race, a natural paradise with barn owls, kestrels, whole heronry’s, hedgehogs, grass snakes, lizards, many endangered birds and animals, the beautiful sound of birds singing and grasshoppers and crickets chirping, I remember Chris Packham helping to relocate water shrews to new sites, it is quite depressing now, kinda like Mordor devouring the Shire.
My brothers and I back in the 50s would go to the marshes to see the wild life when ever we could fined the time .Spent many happy hours there. It is sad to see it the way it is now. We would find live ammo among the rubble and played war in the old sheds etc.
@@tararuaman Gutted I missed out on that. My grandparents both worked on the Arsenel during the war but it wasn't until the early 80s that I first visited it.
Amazing to see such places new, before they turned into run down dumps. They actually looked decent!
5:58 At Thamesmead the pedestrian will have an environment entirely of 'His own'. They really didn't have a clue back then did they. Probably thought women were still shut away in the home 24/7
19:18 Feels weird there was initially no roundabout at the end of Yarnton Way leading into Harrow Manor Way there as this was way before my time. Though from what I've seen of old Thamesmead photos, looks like the roundabout was built soon after.
The Abercrombie International Architectural Award……..and thus was created an urban nightmare for the souls who lived there. Like so many other carbuncles that came throughout this time. From Urban Planners who resided in the greener counties. Lovely!!!!!!
The middle classes and graduates used Thamesmead to practice their civic planning fantasies on. Also, I bet the EDL loves this film.
And then it all went so horribly wrong!
The people were resourceful and proud that’s why they wanted them gone.
I was at school in Wanstead at this time, and the Motorway Opposition Group were campaigning against losing houses in Nightingale Lane, our sports field next to the River Roding, and other homes to a projected part of the M11 that was to run through the borough and link with an inner ring road. One friend's family had a notice that they would be subject to Compulsory Purchase as one of the supports for a flyover was planned to be placed exactly where their front garden was. More concrete monstrosities were projected for parts of Forest Gate and Plaistow areas but never got far. There seemed to be a general mad fetish for building high rise fire traps and to cover as much land as possible in concrete. I left in 1970, and was sublimely happy to do so. The docks were under threat to the new container shipping fleets, and the dockers refused to embrace the new technology, assuming that they would have jobs for ever. The docks died, the ships left, and the river emptied of a huge trade.
Developers, and Architects always get Rich, we the public have to suck it up., ☘️✌️
I can’t help but think London will never be sorted in the next 20 years it has been nothing but problems and stress since I started as a working professional in 2006 / progressively getting worse every year until now it’s utter despair , and I hate the people that did this to our city , millennials betrayed and it’s a f war zone now physically and mentally
@Roger Doger really ,awful isn’t it to think there were choices in the matter , have a good Christmas 🎄 anyway mate or be best we can do this year
Typical 70s Documentary. It's really a throw back way of doing things from the 60s.
We in the late 80's and 90's tried to change that, by tying to make this kind of stuff more interesting. unfortunately it was taken up by the uneducated quick money masses. what you get now is the EXTREMELY OVER RELAXED ATTITUDE OF THE CURRENT GENERATION who create their own videos for youtube and even some tv mainstream media in north America.
1. has to idiotic to keep attention
2 has to be crude
3 has to loud ans annoying
4. have to include swearing ...especially if you are creating somthing for youtube ...even if you know or a fact that 8 year olds will be watching
17:57 When asked about a public houses the TM Information Officer thinks he's sold it mentioning that there's in fact two. 😀
Are those houses still there?Im from Glasgow and it looks like the Gorbals during the 60s 70s.Most of the houses that were built during that period have been demolished.The utopian dream of the 60s became a drug and crime infested nightmare.
Lady Tron I’m also from Glasgow. I was in London 2 years ago. Stories of crime and gang activity meant I never visited. It is currently under demolition, with much of the original buildings already gone including the, in my opinion, stunningly cool health centre.
The Gorbals! When did the Gorbals have housing estates like that!
They're building large square mid rise buildings now, which will also turn into a dump.
This was in a time where there were massive public contracts up for grabs to build houses and these estates were almost always poorly planned, under funded and badly made. The product was the cold sterility that turns communities into slums, the walkways were infested with muggers, sex pests and gangs, the monolithic cast concrete structures spanning out and up made it feel cold, it was and is a really filthy estate too. No wonder it was used to depict a dystopian future.
Imagine if these tenants could see it now😪😪
Now it's like a 3rd world country
it was a third world country when the brits were living there too, and there are huge junk who still live there now.
Yay! A racist comment. Congratulations.
Facts? Were you part of the adult conversation? Please define the mongrels. Please provide the insight.
I think this is the problem. Rational discourse seems impossible - you prove it. I simply asked a question, for my own enquiry, not anyone else's. Why do you call people simpletons for asking questions?
@@cypriot4lyf There are plenty of brits living there but White women and girls are carrying blacks babies over there now slowly becoming out of existence unfortunately.
I just had a look at it on google maps, it seems pretty grim, not to mention there is a sewage treatment plant and a prison right next to it!
Wow even new it looks awful
People make slums not architects
The smell of the concrete when it rained was unique. Not a bad smell - in fact, one I miss even after all these years.
@@originalherdsman3524 I would somewhat disagree with you. Good design impacts a community enormously. This was a community intended to house poor people, and it was intentionally programmed and designed to impede a sense of community rather than facilitate such. Designed properly, the community would have had a good shot, but instead it was designed to resemble a mental institution, because that's all they thought poor people were worth. Had there been programs to help uplift poor people in terms of helping them purchase and maintain their own separate homes rather than live inside a stark tower block, that would have been good for a start. This design encourages a caste system mentality, which tells me that upperclass middle-20th Century Londoners still disdained the poor, just as they did in centuries past. Architecture can change a society for the better, or it can change it for the worse, and Thamesmead exemplifies this idea.
@@TVHouseHistorian basically i was bought up in a Victoriana property that is worth over a million on the London market now days. (That i can not afford )
My family made do with what we had and even had the old tin bath in the kitchen on family nights twice a week.
So how lucky I was when i was old enough to be able to live on the 18th floor of a tower block in North London over looking Highgate and a very nice view over central London and with hot water , heating .
Now days there's ungrateful people who want more and don't appreciate what they have .!!!!
The people who would love a lovely life of these homes don't want to live amongst plastic gangsters.
Take a scenic area and turn it into a monstrosity!
Clearly a lot of thought and time, money and planning went into the scheme not at all like now I know it didn't work out but at least they tried something different again not like now and everything is the same.
Sod that living in a tower block like that they turn my stomach over, In those days they didnt really realise they are dangerous to live in incase of a fire break out and it feels like jail your cooped up in there, demolish the lot them dont build them.
It's the people that live in them. You go to Wilshire Boulevard next to Beverly Hills in Los Angeles, or to Miami Beach, Florida, or to anywhere in Midtown Manhattan or the Upper East Side or Upper West Side, and they all have concrete high-rises - and much higher than they have in Thamesmead, and those places are fought over and cost a fortune - unless you have money for a Beverly Hills mansion, those are THE places to live. Heck, go to the east side of Battersea Park today (next to Battersea Power Station), and people would kill to live in one of those high-rises. All of Nine Elms is like that too. Again, it is the people that inhabit the high-rises that determines whether they desireable or not.
You have to understand, a typical difference between an upscale high rise on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills is that the tenants do not, for example, urinate in the elevators as they do in Thamesmead.
@@justincarmichael9944 Fact's that's waht I like to see. The Nine Elms flats at the top I am told cost over 10 million pound for one flat. Some rents in tower blocks in London are 11 thousand pound a month.
No mention of the sewage works at Crossness or the other sewage works across the river at Beckton!
The residents and council management are in charge of cleaning and maintaining their residences and common areas. The Gooch family got that memo.
I lived in Abbeywood and found thamesmead a cool playground for kids but you always had to look over you shoulder for gypsies and make sure no on nicked your BMX etc atleast there was affordable housing back then for young families
People sitting here in 2024 really need to drop their attitudes and realise that back then people were often moving from shty housing with inadequate room for their families. So these were luxury. That crpy people ended up living there was the roll of the dice - those sort of people can live anywhere
Looks a great place to live. I especially like the marinas and with the new Crossrail, I have no doubt this must be a very desirable residence.
14:55 "(...) sit out and get the sun...when there is any."
This is England after all.
Not a single hi-vis in site
Or hard hat 🤣 no such thing as health and safety in the 70’s. 😆
@@thornbird6768 I saw one it was blue. LOL.
Where are the Gouch family now?
I think west Thamesmead closer to woolwich/ Plumstead looks better . The tower blocks with walk ways do not exist here . It’s mainly yellow brick semi detached houses and low rise flats . Perhaps this was built after the concrete first bit of Thamesmead closer to abbey wood to the east and south. I was like what 😳heck is this !!! When I first went there! It felt cold and dead
Tembo believe it or not the husband still lives there. His wife has sadly died but they still have the same plaque they where presented with!! Another film that led me to this one had an interview with hin! Something about decline of council housing!!
@@jonathanking3223 Any update on this? I believe Coraline walk has been completely demolished now. Was he offered anything in return?
I'm surprised that the tower blocks were still allowed to be built. Maybe they were passed the point of no return when the Ronan Point incident occurred.
My in-laws lived in Thamesmead when I met my husband, they owned a tiny townhouse. I don't remember there being a yacht harbour? Anyway, this was back in the late 80s early 90s and I thought it was a horrible place to live.
I live in thamesmead not a nice place now they started knocking some blocks down but builder new ones lots of stabings and shootings and crime
sam nicholson How did it get that way? How do you think it could be fixed, if at all!
Shootings?! That’s a stretch
Paved paradise, put up a parking lot.
I lived there from 70 to 75. I remember it being a clean area back then. Walks in Abbey Wood. Brings back memories of a simpler time.
Thamesmead was probably a GREAT place to live between 1968 - 84.
After 1984, the deterioration of Thamesmead slowly started to occur
& it was about time to get out & move elsewhere. TM after 1985? NO!
@@mr.blackwell5423 Strangely the fishing went a bit down hill from that point too according to my diaries, especially Southmere, the Crucian Carp virtually vanished.
Stanley kubrik "a clockwork orange"setting
beautiful thing
Hidious!
Bloody hell! Did the planners get that wrong! I worked on Thamesmead through the 80’s & early 90’s. Terrible place rife with crime and misery. Ripping it all down now thank god!
What were they thinking? Why would anyone think it would be preferable to live in a dingy concrete hamster run?
Compared to the filthy ugly slums this kind of development replaced in some parts of the country, the white clean concrete seemed like the answer.
When you watch a film like this, you do get sucked in and wonder where on earth it went wrong?
The idea of the segregated roads and pathways was a fantastic 60s and 70s notion. Newcastle has a whole walkway system in the sky, Birmingham had similar pedestrian only pathways etc. This idea should have been kept as much as possible.
Interesting points, thank you. Costs and real estate space not withstanding, I often wonder why architects of this era thought of people as not individuals, but a collective mass to be penned, neatly and identically organized in their dwellings, as if satisfying some OCD imperative on the part of designer. Simultaneously and without a hint of irony, the architect will travel home at the end of the day to his detached red brick in Surrey or Hampshire, on a road where no house looks similar to the others. In my mind, it was the failure of architects to treat those to be housed as individual people, that created serious problems and eventually played its part in the social breakdown of these vast Stalinesque concrete council estates.
The couple in the video 'Where the Houses Used to Be' who lament that they don't want to be just like all of their neighbours, encapsulate this sentiment perfectly. A working class, respectable family with aspirations was truly not served by this kind of stultifying, anti-social housing. Thank god we have recognised the flaws and moved forward.
Yeah, but the thing about 'filthy ugly slums' is there was community. In the places that were pulled down, the plaster might have been peeling from the walls, there might only be an outside lavvy, but people were together, and relied upon each other. Neighbours were friends. As for 'segregated roads and pathways' sure, great idea on the surface, but the reality is, people don't want to be segregated. People don't want to live in tower blocks. They want to be in amonst it, traffic and all, at ground level. People aren't pidgeons. The architects were simply trying new ideas, without consulting real people, the actual people who were to live here. A classic case of treating people as a collective mass rather than individuals. This happened in every council area in the '50s '60s '70s.....it failed miseraby. The trajedy is, you could have housed just as many people on that land, by building traditional houses and gardens. Build that, and the community will build itself.
I prefer Victorian slums to modern slums. Victorian slums can at least be pictures and can be modernized into livable conditions as opposed to modern slums.
Yeah, it was designed with very good intentions
Clockwork orange
One scene for about 90 seconds.
@@orsoncart9441 But’ what a great scene👌
Why was that the guy talking about insurance? If it's outside bedroom windows, there's a risk of perverts and what not. He should've assured him of barriers around the scaffolded buildings and security or something. Insurance he says(9_9).
Many things changed since then. Except one thing... Propaganda was top notch back then same as nowadays.
Before we had to be replaced.
@Spinler Muckflitt don't be so silly... you've heard of her, that means she's the finger... obviously *NOT* the Moon!
@Spinler Muckflitt exactly... & is acting as their decoy, so you focus on her instead.
Not the buildings that are the problem, it's the people who live in them
If nothing else it was great to see Barking and Belvedere power stations! Childhood memories on the skyline
I've lived in thamesmead. It's not nice. It's a lot better than what it was to be fair tho. Alot of work has gone into to it to make more pleasent. Especially the tower blocks, they don't look half bad more as far as tower blocks go. But how on earth did they think that looked half decent when they built it. Mad.
Didn't turn out well, people live in a dream world.
Ric Bonnici the problem wasn't what they built, it was the sort of people they put there.
I didn't turn out well for the public council estates that were built, that's for sure. The first demolitions of tower blocks occurred only 15 years later, once 1950s to 1970s Council estates had become a national social problem.
Nope, the problem was what they built.
My Uncle and Aunt were "put there" and were decent people , ,Don't tar everyone with the same brush
The interesting thing is that ordinary people in places like Japan, Hong Kong, Shanghai, South Korea, etc, seem to be able to live in high rise flats without too many problems, which proves that it is possible for human beings to live in this type of environment. The problem only seems to occur in other parts of the world like Europe and America. Maybe people here don't have the necessary self-restraint and good behaviour to live so close to other people without gardens, etc, whereas in east Asian countries they do.
They built the biggest dump site. Whole place needs to be rebuilt
cypriot4lyf I disagree, don’t give in to gentrification, at least the crime in Thamesmead is fairly low. Much lower than places like Peckham or Brixton
@. So you are implying the mongrels living there who are majority white working class?
They are rebuilding it all
Cool video. 👍
I wonder if anyone knows what became of the first family to move in ?
I watched an old BBC documentary on TH-cam recently about how social housing evolved in England. Very interesting! But they interviewed the husband of the first family to move in, the one that is featured here. He was still living in his maisonette anyway, and spoke about how the estate developed and deteriorated over the years. Documentary looked like it was filmed some time in the noughties.
Wow ! Interesting, thank you. Il look out for that then on here. Tom.
Tom....The Great Estate -The rise and fall of the council house.....it's around about 47 and half minutes the bit your after.
the green dress is that Jeremy Clarkson as a child
Cameo from Mitt Romney's dad at 23:20
Interesting video but a shame there's no detail of the construction.....e.g. are the room walls just concrete, plastered or concrete with plasterboard with a skim of plaster or even insulated plasterboard and then a skim of plaster? The heating is not even mentioned, apparently originally there was District Heating (decommissioned in 2000 and individual boilers installed.) Was this District Heating oil fired or gas fired...….there's no evidence of radiators 15:01...….was it underfloor heating? etc. There may be a radiator lurking behind that brown armchair 15:11 (can just about see what may be a radiator valve on the LHS and a return pipe on the RHS).
This development is a good example of how poorly insulated buildings were in the 60s (designed in the 60s) because architects think like accountants, and because fuel was relatively inexpensive they didn't design in good insulation due to an unacceptable pay back time in their view. Double glazing? almost certainly not. Countries like Austria & Germany were I believe far better insulated in those days. The UK is not THAT much warmer than continental Europe.
Amazing coincidence that the boy's friend is known as Ste 16:08 (Beautiful thing film). I had a friend called Stephen but he was known as Steve never Ste (unfortunately he's now on my long list (of ex friends LOL)).
Edit: Having watched `Beautiful Thing' again recently the flats in the film appeared to have warm air central heating (ducting grilles in walls are evident in some scenes).
@Chubby T Interesting. The `mid terrace' flats sound like they ended up being quite well insulated if the fronts and backs had UPVC windows & UPVC panels (with presumably e.g. Celotex in the UPVC sandwich) to replace the concrete walls (the top flat ceilings could have been insulated internally). Just left the `end of terrace' flats with a cold flank wall (that could be fitted with internal insulation). Of course I'm no expert; I guess to insulate internally you have to carefully seal to prevent warm water vapour causing sweating of the cold concrete or you need to ventilate to outside the cold void, as you do a loft area).
In your view why did the Council decide to spend such an enormous amout of money to demolish these Brutalist buildings.
Was it the unsocial behavior? Would have been cheaper to pay for 24 hour security guards!
Were the building falling apart / roofs leaking?
I would be interested in your view having lived there.
Could someone please identify the intro track for me!!! I can't seem to find this specific sound in the album referenced in the description
I was born in St Pancras back in 57, My folks moved up north in 59. But I have always been proud to have been born in the greatest city in the world, and the greatest country in the world.
Magical
Left hand seems to nether know what the right ones doing
Watch out for Alex and his Droogs 😂
Come from the states to Thamesmead estate.... LOL trip of a life time......but guess clock work orange was!!