INSIDE THE LATEST CAMBERWELL QUARTERLY
Jim Tanner recalls the effects of social change arriving in Camberwell
When Shirley and I moved into107 Camberwell Grove in September 1959 Britain was still just recovering from the aftermath of World War Two. Choice of food was limited, and many parts of central London and the docks still bore the scars of bomb damage.
We applied for a telephone, but there was a waiting list of months. A shared line would be available much sooner.
Camberwell in the early ’60s was run down and the once elegant terraces in Camberwell Grove and Grove Lane were slums owned by absentee landlords. Floors were let as flats and rooms as bedsits. There were few bathrooms and generally only outside lavatories.
Residents were mainly middle-aged or elderly. Younger generations were moved to New Towns. Gentrification was years way.
We occasionally shopped at Jones &Higgins, a 19th century department store on the northern end of Rye Lane, Peckham where there were once four other such establishments. We always paid by personal cheque. One day we were told that our cheque could not be accepted without the support of a bank card.
That was the beginning of the campaign by the high street banks to persuade everyone to have a bank account. When economic recovery really got under way and almost everyone opened bank accounts, we saw our local bank branches close as the banks merged. HSBC gobbled up the Midland for example.
Supermarkets had yet to be invented and even large shops like Sainsbury’s on Rye Lane only provided counter service (and was one of the last of the type to close after it built its huge store on Dog Kennel Hill).
You queued at the counter on one side of the store if you wanted, say, tinned produce and then joined the queue on the other side if you wanted dairy products. Butter was not pre-packaged; a shop assistant used a pair of wooden spatulas to slice what you wanted from a large slab, wrapping it in grease-proof paper.
It was difficult to get other than white bread. The only cheese readily available was mild cheddar.
When we moved in, we did not have much furniture; an ironing board doubled up as a table and a double bed. We had little money to spare. A tenant told us about Austin’s of Peckham. Austin’s, a family firm, was a second-hand furniture business with a large shop at the top of Rye Lane.
This sold good quality antique furniture fairly cheaply; another shop in Brayards Road, in the railway arches, sold bric-a-brac and junk.We bought a couple of Victorian chests of drawers in good condition for £7 each, a circular Victorian table and Victorian sideboards, a secretaire, and bookcases; none of which cost more than £10.
