You're listening to the London History Podcast.
I am Hazel Baker from londonguidedwalks.co.uk.
Today's episode is Milner Square through a hole in the wall in
Islington, just off the bustle of.
Upper Street, a short walk. From the Emelda Theatre sits A
narrow rectangle of houses called Milner Square, laid out
in the 1840s as part of London's great northward expansion.
It was meant to attract the aspiring middle classes fleeing
the smoke of the city for cleaner Islington Air, The
Milner Gibson family and their architect, Gough and Rimue,
wrapped the square in a single continuous terrace of tall
houses. No grand corner mansions, no
breaks in the facade. Just one pale brick wall.
Turning and. Turning on itself.
By the 20th century, that vision had curdled.
Like so many other London squares, Milner Square had slid
from respectability into multi occupation, rooms let floor by
floor, families sharing toilets, washing strung out over the
garden between the walls. And into the 1950s Barnesbury
and the surrounding streets were written up as some of the worst
slums in London, a world away from the Islington of political
shorthand and £800,000 flats that we know today.
Yet behind the headlines, life. Here was full.
Of work, noise and community. Richford Iron Foundry glowed
with molten metal Nearby, the British Siphon Company made
equipment in Waterloo House. Caledonia had local women
folding greeting cards. Piece work brought home to
cramped front rooms. Children played in the central
garden of the square, dodging washing lines in Tim Baths,
while their parents navigated to London, where no one had very
much but everyone seemed to know everyone else.
In 1972, Islington Council stepped in with a compulsory
purchase order, clearing what was officially unfit tenements
and rehousing families in new estates or even new towns like
Milton Keynes and Stevenage. New flats came with indoor
bathrooms, boilers and central heating, modern comforts that
felt miraculous. But they also came with front
doors that neighbors shut behind them and estates where children
had nowhere safe to play. Meanwhile, as bonds re
gentrified through the late 20th century, Milner Square followed
the now familiar inner London pattern from slum designation to
conservation area, from controlled rents to eye watering
property prices. Compared with prettier
neighbors, Milner Square continues terrace and tight
proportions gives it a slightly severe air.
It's central garden has shifted from a rough and ready
playground shared by working class families to a much more
managed and in part private space.
Unlike many 19th century squares, it never gained the
planned. Church at its centre.
An absence that perhaps made the Tightweber kinship, rather than
formal religion, the real glue of the community.
Into this layered landscape steps writer and screenwriter
Susan Udo, born and brought up in Islington, whose grandparents
moved into Milner Square in the 1930s and whose parents stayed
until the clearances of the early 1970s.
In her 2015 film Through the Hole in the Wall, she walks us
back through Milner's Square, using family memories,
neighbors, voices and evocative objects such as a Tim Bath, a
Russian book factory, tools to open up much bigger questions
about housing, work, class and belonging in 20th century
London. The film has become a powerful
tool for reminiscence and oral history training across the
borough, helping older listeners remember neighborhoods that have
been transformed almost beyond recognition.
Hello, Susan. Welcome.
Thank you for joining. Me today, it's a pleasure.
Now your film really inspired me to think about more about the
everyday people in history, because part of the challenge
really is. When you're.
Thinking about history, a lot of the time you're thinking about
the olden days when things have changed so much in the last 100
years. What was it that prompted you to
create and produce this film in the 1st place?
Oh it. Kind of evolved because when I
had the initial idea, it was a very, very small idea.
I was, I literally went out and bought myself a little Sony
camcorder and the idea was really to talked to my aunt and
uncle who were the sort of older generation of people who'd lived
around Milner Square because of their age really, they were
knocking 80. And I thought, my own parents
are dead. There wasn't going to be a lot
of time left to capture those memories.
And then it kind of grew because I'm fortunate enough to work in,
in a, in the television industry.
So I was talking to a mate who was a director and he said, I'll
direct it for you. And, and actually, he
unfortunately became ill and recommended someone else who was
our director, Chiara Massenet, who's brilliant.
And so it kind of grew because then Chiara came on board and
she said, oh, we need, we need a sound Accordis, we need this.
And, and we had no money, so we applied to the lottery fund, the
history of the element of the lottery fund for a very small
amount of money. Actually, if I'd only known, I
would have got asked for more. And so we ended up, well, all my
kids were brought in as, as kind of runners and my sister did the
foods and my husband was the cab driver.
So it became a family affair and it became it, it grew from being
just my family to other people who'd also lived around Milner
Square. And I suppose I was keen to
capture it for the reason I've said about, you know, those
older people dying off, but also because of the impression people
have of Islington. So it was also because when you
tell people you live in Islington, they have a view, I
guess, from people like Tony Blair and all the film stars we
have living here now that you've got a lot of money, that it's a
very posh area. And so which it is.
But I, I wanted to tell people a bit about the history of it and
what it was like to live in Islington kind of back in the
day before gentrification and before all of that money poured
into the borough. Wow, that's one of the things
that high enough about being a tour guide, especially if I'm
researching something. There I am with my little
clipboard and I'm walking around the streets just trying to get
John very often. I mean, like an old lady, you
know, gentlemen will come and go.
What you doing? You know what you're hovering
around for? I'll say, oh, well, I'm trying
to do this and try. Oh, well, you know, my
generation, my mother, you know, she was born here and, you know,
and you're talking about how they felt like they needed to
click between the steps of the house every day.
You know all that, you know, it was your, it was your
responsibility that the bit of the pavement in front of the
house and all these unwritten rules that we, we assume the
council's going to do nowadays. So it was actually part of that,
the community holding themselves together in the council.
Absolutely. Because in, in the houses in
Milner Square, which I suppose if you were to describe them at
the time I lived there in the, I was born there in the 50s.
But my, my aunt and uncle who were in the film were in the
30s. They were very much tenements in
that they weren't even self-contained flats.
They were rooms. So with our place for instance,
and we were my mum and dad and four kids, we were on the 1st
and 2nd floor, but they weren't, it wasn't a contained flat.
You went to the first floor. There were no locks on the door.
Anybody could have come into our flat.
Yeah, I call it a flat and it just went into our rooms and
then you went up and on the half landing.
Eventually, I think I was about 12 when my dad turned this
rubbish room into a bathroom. Up till then we'd had a tin bath
like most people and then up to the rest to the, to the next
floor up and there were three bedrooms, which is where you
know, we all, we all slept. But again, there were no locks
on the doors. It wasn't self-contained.
So and there was no real heating until I was in my teenage years.
You know, we, we've got gas fires put in, but it was 2 coal
fires basically and nothing in the bedroom.
So it was that evening of being very old very often and there
was, you know, there weren't bathrooms.
There was shared loose very often.
I think in the film Margaret talks about sharing there's one
toilet in the whole house with four families.
So they were very much kind of merging on slum tenements, which
again, is something people don't really associate Islington with.
So it was, it wasn't really saying poor me, poor me, because
the other thing that comes through on the film is that
although everybody was very poor, they were very happy.
So it wasn't people saying that they had a terrible life.
They didn't. I mean, you know, there wasn't a
lot of money. There wasn't a lot of luxuries
or food, but it it was people were very happy in that
community and it was getting across that kind of community
which sadly I think doesn't exist to the same degree these
days. No, no, I've concluded that.
But one other thing I think you talk about kind of lead on is
that better use of space. When the Council stepped in with
the commodity repurchase in 72, you know, they they changed it
all but the space used beforehand.
And also if we think about who's in and out of that space, so
mum's at home. So we're thinking shared toilet
through all the mums. You've got the kids either at
school or playing in the square. And I think one of the gentlemen
mentioned about all the boys not bothering going back to spend
the pennies. Unfortunately, my brother, yes.
That's that's. You man, think of that.
You can imagine it. Aren't you going old?
Go in hat. Side and then mum will ask me to
do something. George should make me wipe my
face or I can just stay here outside with my friends and, you
know, fix it all. But it's a safe space for the
kids to play as well. And then of course the.
And the men were at work. So you've got three different
groups of people being able to coexist because they're able to
move around. Yeah, I, I mean, thank God for
that garden area in the middle of the square because, you know,
I just think women of that generation were amazing when I
think of my own mum, you know, with four kids and before the
White Revolution. So you didn't have a washing
machine and, you know, you didn't have a fridge.
And so nappies were washed by hand and put through the mangle
and hung out. And my mum would go early
morning cleaning jobs and then she'd have jobs she did at home
so that, you know, she could be there for the kids.
So it was kind of 24/7 because you're trying to keep the house
going as well and making, you know, food stretch.
My dad was a plasterer, but I mean, these days plasterers and
a bloody fortune. Sorry for the language, but
they, they do good luck to them. But back in my dad's day, they
didn't. And very often, you know, he was
especially in the winter months to be was out of work.
So and there was no unemployment benefit for if you were.
So it was trying to kind of make a little go a long way.
And so and that generally fell on the women you know who
performed miracles, really. Yeah, I wonder what would have
happened with all the the children if there hadn't been
the square, because there had been a church originally and
funded for that. Indeed, there had been, which is
amazing to imagine. It was a Chapel of ease.
So because obviously the Saint Mary's Church, which was the the
one on Upper Street in Islington where my parents got married, my
aunts and uncles got married. I was christened there and, and,
and must have had a full congregation in the, IT was, it
must have been the square was built in the 1840s.
So at that time, I guess mid 19th century, people went to
church in their, in their numbers.
But that Chapel wasn't built in the end, but the square.
And it's funny going back there now because it seems so small,
but at the time it, it seemed huge and it was divided into
areas. So you had the swings and you
had the seated part in the middle and you had a grass area
at the end. And so people were, you know,
playing football, hanging out with friends, doing hopscotch,
playing cannon, you know, Bulldog or any of those other
games that, that. And it was, it was the, you
know, the whole square, all the kids from the square.
So it was a, a large number. You never, you were never short
of somebody to play with. Yeah, what a great feeling that
would be. Just out in the world.
You're not free, but you know that you're going to be meeting
routine friends there. I think there's something that
new you mentioned on in the film and you just touched on it about
this, you know, community. I think it was your uncle was
talking about having parties in the house fitting 30 or 40
people there. And that kind of links my
thoughts with when you were mentioning about the community
at the church, you know, all the weddings and all the Christians.
So assuming they wouldn't need the church hall, they'd come
back. To the square where.
All the. Extended family and and and you
know, neighbors straight friends were and and had a little bit of
a needs up there well. Very often, yeah, I think there
were a couple of I remember my Aunt Pat, who's in the film.
I was her bridesmaids and I remember her wedding.
I was about 5:00, but that that was in in some kind of church
all I think. But very often, especially at
Christmas time or those occasions, there would be huge
numbers of people there and it would be music and playing cards
and and kids, you know, up all hours nicking bits of alcoholic
drinks from the table when nobody was looking.
It's that kind of thing. And then on Boxing Day, you
know, if the Arsenal had to know how much, we'd all go to the
Arsenal. And yes, so it was, yeah, it was
great, great times. Or.
And you call the film through the hole in the wall.
Yeah. You're explained to the
listeners what that mean. Yeah, there was a literally a
kind of a long alleyway that was built between two of the houses
that linked Milner Square with Almeida St. on the other side.
And it was a cut through. And at that time it's it's no
longer there actually. And it the alleyway is there,
but they used to be a front door halfway down the alleyway.
So somebody's front door was there.
I mean, in this black space, A people I know, actually.
And and it was just a rather forbidding kind of place because
it was so dark. So you'd go, I'd literally go up
if it was night time to, if I was out with friends, I'd, I'd
have to think twice about going home that way.
But I'd get up to the end of the, the alleyway in Almeda St.
and literally run through it till you get to the other side.
And there's a sense of safety because it's what you know, and
you know, all the people in it. And I think it was something
else that in a way my uncle touched on in the film that,
that the world we lived in was very small.
I think, you know, nobody owned a car.
We didn't really have that many holidays because there wasn't
much money. And so the world you inhabited
was much smaller than the one that generally people have these
days. So it was very much concentrated
on the square and the walk to school.
You know, I, I went to, to Laycock School, which you know,
is, is a 10 minute walk away along Liverpool Road.
And that was the kind of journey that you, you did regularly, but
there weren't that many others. I, I had a dodgy eye when I was
a kid. And I remember going from on the
thing that on the bus to Moorefield's Eye Hospital in, in
City Road. And that was exotic.
And I remember being on the top. We sat on the top of the bus and
it went over the canal and it was like, Oh my God, it was like
going to the seaside, you know, a stretch of water.
So I think that, you know, our, our kind of experiences were,
were ridiculously kind of few in comparison with what most kids
have these days. I'm looking back now because
it's it's been what, 10 years since it launched.
What are your fondest memories from the making of film?
From making the film, I think it was my aunt who since died on
film and my uncle who's very poorly is on the film and Doris
who was a neighbor whose kids I used to play with and when I was
a kid has since died. So I think I feel very pleased
that I was able to kind of capture that a bit of their
stories really. And and because, you know, as
you say said before, that kind of sense of oral history that,
you know, we, you know, we stand to lose a lot of that and these
things are done. I mean, someone said to me after
I did this one or what's the next one you're going to do?
And it's like, Oh my God, because it was like we were
filming with octogenarians in 85° heat.
It was it's not easy. And, and we had to beg, steal
and borrow, you know, people were so generous and gave the,
the editor work for nothing, the director work for nothing.
You know, people were brilliant because we had a, a proper ITV
who I, I work for this, all the loan, just all the equipment.
We had professional equipment. The screen on the green in
Islington. You know, we, we, we had our
premiere there, the recording studio that's on Upper Street.
Where I think Kylie had been the day before recording her
Christmas song. I went in there and they gave us
a studio to do some voice over. You know, people were fantastic.
But it's like a full time job doing it.
But you know, it is it is something I'm very proud of and
I'm very glad I did. Yeah, you know, talking about,
you know, sounds like you built your own community during this
project. Well, it was interesting going
back to Milner Square as well. So the thing when you get
lottery funding is that there are various things that you have
to comply with. And I'm one of those was
involving people who lived in Milner Square now, none of whom
I knew and, and, and other groups interested groups.
So we ended up as quite a weird band in the end because we had
Age UK involved, we had the Veterans Association involved
and I put on an event at the Islington Town Hall and we
leafleted Milner Square and asked people to come along.
And the current residents, I mean, many of them were
brilliant because they allowed us access to their homes.
Now, you know, without that, there would have been no kind of
comparison for us to make. So yeah, we had, there were lots
of people who I was very privileged to kind of work with
on it. And one of them was actually
Julie Myers from the Islington History Museum, local History
Museum. And they were brilliant because
we had use of their archive. And that was fantastic going
through the archive and seeing lots of old photographs of
Islington and, and I think our stuff is now in there as as part
of their archive. So yeah, it was, it was a great
experience. Tiring, but great.
And of all the things that subjects that you covered, what
was the thing that you were surprised about the most?
I don't, I don't think I was surprised by people's responses
in terms of the, the, the fact that that growing up there was a
very happy experience because I think that everybody loves that
sense of community and, and safety.
Really, I think especially now in what's the kind of fairly
scary world, to have that sense that there were always people
looking out for you. So I, I wasn't surprised by
that. I suppose some of the individual
stories, I mean, Brian, who I didn't know growing up, he's a
bit older than me. My brother, my oldest brother
knew him, but he'd had a very poor childhood and sadly his dad
died before Brian, a couple of months before Brian was born.
So he never knew his dad and, and his step dad, I think wasn't
that keen on, you know, the, the kids and he'd had a really hard
time. So that was a bit of an eye out
in a really because I mean, although we had no money, we had
a loving family, extended family.
So when we had no money, my nan who ran a Christmas club, you
know, where my aunts and my mum would put in two and six a week
and you know, then you'd have food for Christmas.
So but also use that as some money you could borrow during
the year and you could pay it back or so hard.
Nobody really went to a bank. We didn't have bank accounts.
But Brian's was very poor and that kind of surprised me
because you know, he we lived in that same environment.
And Margaret who lives then still Margaret Crown who was in
the film has lived there all her life and she now lives on a a
block that was built, I think it was built in the 70s after the
council took over Milner Square and was on the site of the old
Richmond Foundry. She has only ever known Milner
Square and has and her dad died there.
And that was quite a shocking story as well.
The fact that somebody has a heart attack, you run to the
doctor and the doctor won't come, you know, and you go to
the place. It's like that life was the
value on it was so much less. I think that came through Brian
and Margaret's stories, and I think she's making the film in a
way. It's even though she says she
walks through the square every day.
It made her relooked, if you like and remember what it was
like. And when her dad died, for
instance, they had two floors. There were three children and
and her parents and they rented rooms on two floors.
But when her dad died, they had no income, there was no money.
So they had to, they had to give up one of the floors.
And they were all three girls and, and her mum, I mean they
slept 2 in the bed in, in, you know, the 2 rooms upstairs that
was the kitchen, the living room and so on.
So it was those kinds of hardships that continued into a
time when you just thought that things were better.
Well, quality of life is so much different now, isn't it?
You know children expect their. Their own room let.
Alone their own bed my mum was talking about Yes exactly yeah,
not even like yeah my mum talk about sharing the one bedroom
that she and her sister shared and shared the same brand and
you. Know that was just.
Your inquiries. I think until I left home I'd
never had my own bedroom. I mean, I was either, you know,
I was in with my brother when we were little, then my sister, and
then when my eldest brother got married and he came to live with
us temporarily and my parents gave him their bed.
And so at one point, at the other bedroom, there were my
parents, my brother and me, you know, just in one bedroom.
So, you know, no, it was kind of par for the course.
So you wouldn't think of yourself as deprived or anything
like that. It was just, that's just what
happened. So yeah.
Some of the stories like Rhinos, I was surprised about it.
It was also heartwarming it about the practicality of the
the fathers, especially during wartime, and strengthening the
house and all the family could be together.
Yeah, yeah. So that was my granddad to my
aunt remembers him putting true Trump's in.
He was quite resourceful. Was my grandfather putting tree
trunks in the living room? I mean, I'm not sure how
effective they would have been, to be honest with you, because I
think the old Latham plaster ceilings probably would have
caved in pretty quickly. But yeah, trying to prop up the
ceilings and having the kids there so they didn't go off.
They weren't evacuated and they they stayed in the square.
And I know people had very difficult decisions to make on
that time and whether we'd catch our kids around you or not.
But fortunately they were safe. But there was a lot of bombing
in and around that area. And as my uncle says in the film
that, you know, you turned up for school sometimes and kids
didn't arrive. So yeah, it was, it was an area
that kind of then got rebuilt in certain areas.
And I think there was a very old looking head of planning at
Islington Council at that time. Well, not during the war, but
after the war and leading up to the council purchasing Milner
Square, who didn't opt for the solutions that a lot of other
London boroughs that had been bombed had taken, which was to
build high rise blocks of flats. There were very few flats.
I mean, if you look at Islington now, there are very high rise
blocks, if any. I mean you'd barely call them
high rise. And so the, the interesting
thing about Milner Square, or all the squares really, is that
they were very mixed because the, the Islington Council
wanted to keep council tenants in the street properties rather
than in these big high rises. So, so still today you have
squares that are very mixed in terms of being privately owned
housing association and council. So the, the, the, you know, the
geographic is a very mixed demographic in Islington, living
cheek by jowl. Yeah, I do think it was under
the pressure post war with a big housing shortage.
Yeah, the. Easiest thing to do was to knock
up a high rise and just get everybody into that.
And so, yeah, but building these perhaps that often look like
houses as well, and keeping that, that, that small square
nature was a very good idea, I think.
I mean, the square visually has changed a lot, hasn't it?
I'm looking at old photos. It's.
What it looks now? It's, it's a very, it's a very
unusual square. The architects were, were
slightly eccentric, I think. And I think the another example
of, of their work is just down in our media St. towards the end
where the Armida Theatre is now. And it's not, it's not quite
brutal, but it's, it's a very, it's a very unusual kind of
architecture and it's quite a beautiful square now, because
the council, which is still is still the freeholder of that
square, maintain it very well. But after, you know, a, a, a
period of time with them slot people using coal as their main
source of heating. You had the brickwork in Milner
Square was blackened and because of this less than ornate
architecture that, you know, other squares in Islington enjoy
it. It did have a rather foreboding
kind of look to it. So you had the blackened
brickwork and the peeling paint on the doors and so on.
So it, it did look like you'd walked into a kind of Dickensian
film when it nowadays it, it actually looks pretty good, I
think. And, and just an example of, I
mean, a lot of obviously the demographic of Islington became
partly as it is because of people buying under the right to
buy under Thatcher. So you, you Milma Square is very
like that where you have private flats and council flats and it's
a, it's a very mixed area. And visually it's very
different. They like Lonsdale Square, your
next door neighbor in terms of, but I think also it the the
scale of things, they're not just the pretty architecture.
You've got a lot planar architecture, but also it's.
Nothing. A lozenge.
Rather than a square, isn't it? It's long and thin, and I
suppose that and imagine that with the church.
In as well. That wouldn't have got any lots.
Of it, yes, yes, it would have been quite a sight.
Yeah, it is a bit like that. And I think it's the height of
the buildings that accentuates that because it is it's there
are basements and then four floors.
So it's that they're very tall buildings and because the upper
floors, the first floor in particular would have been where
the. The drawing room.
Would have been so the ceilings were incredibly high with, you
know, marble fireplaces and cornices.
And so it was a very, very tall building.
And like, as you say, with Lonsdale squares is a Gothic
architecture. Gibson Square built not that far
away in time to Milner Square. And in fact, some of the
material we used in the documentary was actually taken
from an excellent six part series that the BBC did back in
the 1960s called Six Sides of the Square.
I'd recommend anyone to check it out if you can in an archive.
And it was about the the emerging kind of gentrification
of places like Islington, where it showed you solicitors and
doctors moving in and cleaning out their cornices and so on.
And down in the basement next door would be some little old
lady with no heating living in abject poverty.
So. And it covered a different
subject to each each episode. But that was, that was, yeah, a
brilliant piece of documentary footage that we drew from for
hours. I'll link the six sides of the
square as well. It's on the BBC Archive website
I think. Still they haven't moved it.
They'll be able to get a better idea of what real London was.
Like I suppose it's that sense of residential being kind of
cheap by jowl with industry, which we had in with the iron
foundry, but also with to the well, it was 1 factory, but at
one time it was the siphon factory.
You remember like James Bock millions whiskey and soda or
whatever. Yeah.
And Cardonia is why wasn't it a greeting?
Card and in fact, the nieces of the guy who owned the Cardonia
were the ones who gave us the footage of the women that were
inside May folding the the cards was and and a number of people,
women mainly or probably exclusively from the square who
worked in factory industries. At least you know to earn money
again. And bringing work home with them
as well. Oh yeah, I remember my mum doing
padded hangers and that you know, and something with loads
of glister. I remember that it was really
different homework to, yeah, just to kind of try and
supplement your income and whilst juggling kids because it
was your extended family again who looked after your kids if
you worked. So that was the other beauty I
guess for having that set up round, well in any community but
round Mona Square at that time. Anthony.
Yourself, you said you were you were born in Milner Square.
So what? What family did you have
connected together on that? Street so, so my both, both my
maternal and paternal grandparents live there.
So one, one of my nan's lived at 35 and my other nan lived at 49.
We lived at 41 and my Aunt Pat, who's in the film, she lived at
33. But she took over that flat from
my Uncle Ronnie, who was at 33 and then moved out to Aylesbury.
And then my other aunt, well, my great aunt lived on on the other
side of the square. At one point, my aunt Shut, my
great Aunt Charlotte and my Aunt Doris and my Uncle George lived
over the other side of the square as well.
So yeah, So when my parents met in the square, that's where they
met. And they got married.
And my mom was 18. And, you know, my dad was 1920,
and then he went off to war, you know, after that.
Yeah. So we had but a lot of families.
Doris, who I interview in the film, she had both her brothers
lived on the square with their families.
They had a large number of kids. So there, there was a lot of
that. You know, it was like Beaujo's
or, or the Brennan was, you know, and it was like a little
tribe. So I suppose when people heard
of flats becoming vacant, they told their family members and
they'd go to Dove Brothers, who were the people who you paid the
rent to. You just say, you know, have you
got a flat? It wasn't, it's not like today
where kids can't get properties in Islington for love, no money.
My dad, my dad always used to tell the story of how back in I
was probably in the 60s, that they were trying to offload the
properties because they were in such a state of disrepair.
It's too expensive to put the right.
And they were 4000 lbs. But of course, it might just as
well have been 4 million because there's no way we could have,
you know, 4000 lbs. Yeah.
And so it did take a lot, you know, that company that bought
the square and, and did nothing with it for a long time.
And they were rented, just rented out and allowed to go
into an even greater state of disrepair until council bought
them under the compulsory purchase order.
Yeah, it's amazing also how I suppose families moved away at
that climb as well, you know, Milton Keynes, etcetera.
I was on hybrid fields and I was just walking along the Crescent
there and there's an older lady, she said you used to live on
Highbury Fields and with her family and they were just
falling apart. Once again.
Could offer the opportunity to buy it, but no child, you know,
you might as well say go and live on the moon.
And so now, of course, that's in.
What was it for weddings and a funeral, A really beautiful
facade, but that was crumbling down then as well.
So all these places that look nice and posh.
You know. If they're if they're old, then
they've got a story and those stories are pre falls and
communities in them. So yeah, so lots, lots of
changed in this thing to us and having lived, you know, living
there yourself and rating your four daughters.
Have you seen that A type of community change?
Radio World. Yeah, I have.
I mean, when we left Milner Square, we moved, we moved on to
a council estate which was off of Caledonian Rd. which had just
been built. And my grandmother who was still
was living in Milner Square was desperate to go there because it
had a bathroom, not because for her, she was on the 3rd floor in
Milner Square and the toilet was down by the garden.
So we moved to this council estate and and then at some
point I got, I moved into a flat in Thornhill Road and, and my
husband moved in. And then when we were looking to
buy somewhere we couldn't afford Islington.
So we moved to Stoke Newington. And my dad thought I was mad.
It was like at that time him thinks Stoke Newington High
Street was Muggers Mile and. It was, yeah.
So anyway, we bought it. We managed to buy a house
because nobody wanted to live there, £31,000 for a 5 bedroom
house. And eventually we moved after we
had our fourth daughter, we moved back to Islington to a
house that was semi derelict. It's the story of our lives.
But I live in a square now. Mostly they are flats.
It it's, you know, 4 flats in a house or whatever.
And I probably, I mean, we've got residents associations and
whatnot, but I don't know that many people, you know, I suppose
my kids possibly that's another thing.
No, no, no, actually, no. I did have young kids when we
moved to here, but to this place.
But I think it is different. Yeah, I think I think people
kind of keep themselves to themselves a bit more now.
I'm always different when I go up north to work.
I'm always defending the South because people say we're so
unfriendly and so on and that, you know, everyone in Manchester
is, is is so jolly. Then I can, I mean, then
sometimes I think, you know, probably, you know, they're not
wrong respects with, but I think people, I think there are lots
more problems in London and I think people are never quite
sure, you know, what they might get themselves into.
So I think I think it's some little streets.
There's probably that same sense of community, but I'd say it's
not as as widespread as it was. Now that you're right, I'm if
I'm in a Victorian tariff and really only see the neighbors
when we all put our bins out. Otherwise.
You know, we're, we're inside. But I think that is the other
thing, isn't it, that a lot more women were at home during that
time? And so, and, and it was like you
said early on, you know, even though she were kind of slums
and we didn't own them. I mean, you know, women were out
there with their tub of BIM scrubbing the front steps every
week. It was you take it in turns.
And my Nan's, you know the lino in my nan's hallway, it was like
an ice skating rink. So yeah.
They were all at home or they were hanging out the washing or
doing the winds windows and so on and going to the local shop.
I mean, you know, there was in Islington, because I've worked
here, so many shops in Islington growing up, whether it's Marks
and Spencer's clerks, the bakers, the Wimpy, the bookies.
But there wasn't a Sainsbury's, you know, there weren't, there
weren't those big supermarkets. And so people went to the local
grocery shop on Barnsbury St. and the sweet shop next door to
get their tobacco on whatever. So there was a lot more
interaction with local people. And I think that that that
perhaps has has gone a little bit.
And where was the local boozer? Which one was the go to?
Neither. And my parents drank, I think my
mum got drunk on port when she was about 19 and she came home
with a Turkey under her arm or something for Chris first time.
And then she didn't, she never dragged after that.
And my dad didn't really drink. So, so they we, we kind of
didn't go to the to the boozers that much.
You know, I know kids who didn't sat outside for the bucket of
Chris, but I think it, yeah, I don't know which ones people
used, really. Right, what fantastic way to to
remember Little little Pocket of London Line and thank you so
much for talking about your your experiences with this film and
sharing your family stories as well.
I wish, I wish more. People did it because we're just
going to. We're going to lose so much if
we don't. Indeed, indeed.
Yeah, yeah. Thank you, Susan.
That's been. Absolutely wonderful.
You're very welcome.