Reverdy Road The Secret History of Our Streets

London, in 1886.

The largest city in the world,

the financial and industrial centre of a vast empire.

It was a city divided between fabulous wealth and miserable poverty.

It seems a mystery to us now.

It was a different world. An entirely different world.

But there is a guide to this human jungle -

Charles Booth, Victorian London's social explorer.

Booth produced a series of pioneering maps

that colour-coded the streets of his London,

according to the ever-shifting class of its residents.

Booth's maps are like scans,

X-rays that reveal to us the secret past

beneath the skin of the present.

If people knew how many cattle was killed there,

I don't think they'd live there!

He wanted his maps

to chart stories of momentous social change.

I was on the bottom,

and those houses were the lowest of the low.

The ebb and flow between enormous wealth and terrible poverty.

How easily desirable or well-to-do neighbourhoods

could descend into the haunts of the vicious and semi-criminal,

and back again.

Now the maps can help us reveal the changes

that have shaped all our lives and made the story of the streets

the story of us all.

Oh my goodness!

The old toilet's gone!

Gentrification has swept across

much of the Victorian housing stock in London.

Reverdy Road in Bermondsey

has largely resisted the middle-class invasion.

A street that hasn't changed much at all in the last hundred years.

I'm working class, I always will be, you know.

I don't aspire to be anything else.

I've got friends who say they're middle class, it makes us laugh.

Bloody Cockneys, the same as us!

Who wants to be middle class anyway?

Terry Sullivan has lived in Bermondsey all his life

and has been in this house since 1962.

I don't think because you drink fine wine

it makes you middle class

or if you like good music it makes you middle class.

I think you should be proud of your roots, and I am.

We call this the eating room, but actually we never eat in here.

Lynne uses it for her artwork.

It's one of her pictures she's doing at the moment, I think.

Waterbed.

Oh, I'm proud of that.

See that marble?

It's not marble, it's wood.

That's what I did, marbling. I do marbling sometimes.

That's one of my more successful ones,

because I think that does look like marble, doesn't it?

That's across the road. That's my grandfather, my father,

my Aunt Mary and Lena, Aunt Lena, and that's John.

That's in Reverdy Road, looking down towards Southwark Park Road.

In 1900, Charles Booth visits Bermondsey in south-east London.

It's an area bounded to the north by the River Thames

and to the south by the Old Kent Road.

Reverdy Road is a street of 85 two-storey houses,

built in the 1860s.

Booth classifies this street as pink,

meaning fairly comfortable, with good ordinary earnings.

His first impressions of Reverdy Road,

as recorded in his notebook, are favourable.

These are all two-storied houses on comfortable streets.

Yellowed brick and built at the time of the Crimea.

Some were tenanted by one family like salesmen and travellers,

but the majority, by two.

Good gardens at the back,

railwaymen, engine drivers, police and guards live here.

The houses are seldom empty and hard to get.

Fairly small fronts, with iron railings.

Fairly clean and broad streets.

I remember coming first, and my husband fetched his friend in here.

We were looking around the house, empty,

looking around, and we went upstairs and looked at a bedroom.

This friend of his, "Oh, this is the master bedroom, isn't it?" you know.

And I looked at the garden.

"Ooh, I'd need a bus to get down there," you know. It was a really big, if you know what I mean...

Compared to the place I lived in when I was young.

Reverdy Road has always been a respectable street

for respectable working-class people.

But the house on the corner is different.

It's bigger and ever since 1891, it's been home to a doctor.

This house has seen the formation of important principles of public health provision.

Max Gammon arrived here in 1979

with a keen sense of being a community-based doctor.

'You saw a patient right through as a person.'

The numbers of cases that I've had

in which I've seen a patient through

from the early stages, say, of a carcinoma,

to the deathbed...

You were part, an organic part, of this community,

and one could actually feel that one was playing a crucial part

in the life not only of that patient, but also of that family.

How many people had been seen in that surgery

since it began? I said, I thought, probably,

-50-week year, and we saw 200 a week.

-Right. So that's...

-For 100 years.

-OK. So that's 10,000 a year,

and then for 100 years, so then 10,000 times by 100,

which is a million.

Yeah, a million is a ballpark figure. It certainly wouldn't be less.

That's quite extraordinary. A million patients.

The doctor's house was built in 1861 for local farmer William Poupart.

This house was part of also the row of houses in Southwark Park Road,

which was once Blue Anchor Lane,

and it was Lily Cottage, Rose Cottage, etc, down the road,

and we were part of a farmstead built for the farm workers.

The farm and mill attached to the cottage burned down in 1866,

making way for the rest of Reverdy Road to be built two years later.

The first census was in 1891,

and reveals that Dr George Cooper was resident in the house,

along with his wife, eight children and a servant.

Cooper had a strong notion of public service

and was devoted to his work as a Bermondsey GP.

In 1906, he was elected as the Liberal Member of Parliament for Bermondsey.

When he wasn't in the House of Commons,

Cooper would've been treating people in the Reverdy Road surgery.

We found this in the old stables,

because just through there, beyond the surgery, there was the coach house,

because Mr Cooper had a coach and horse,

and behind the coach house, there's a stable and a tack room.

This would have been the coach house.

There would have been a highly polished carriage...

single horse, I think, but I did have a patient who remembered Dr Cooper.

He was 90 years old, this patient of mine,

when I first came here,

and he said he remembered Dr Cooper visiting in his carriage, wearing a top hat.

Even though the area was a very poor area,

they'd got a very smart doctor in a very smart equipage,

you know, the equivalent today of a decent Mercedes, I suppose.

Booth assessed Reverdy Road as being "fairly comfortable".

The majority of houses contained two families, one living upstairs, one down.

Cooking facilities were shared, and nobody had a bathroom.

Then, as now, Reverdy Road was slightly superior,

a little posher, perhaps, than neighbouring streets,

mostly working class, but very respectable working class.

Census material tells us the kind of people

who were living here at the turn of the 19th century.

Charles Gibbs, born 1818, living on my own means.

Elizabeth Fences, widow, born 1849, with six children.

My name is Rebecca Newhouse. I'm 11 years old, I was born in 1880 and I'm a scholar.

The most surprising thing about Reverdy Road is that it's hardly changed

since Booth had a look around in 1900.

He found a street of hard-working people,

most of whom were born in south London.

And it's still not far off of that, is it?

Still not far off of that.

There's not that many foreign people here,

I would have thought,

in relation to the area, in relation to the area.

My brother, he's gone to middle class.

He lives in Surbiton and he had a good job. He had brains.

Went to a good school and got a good job

and earned a lot of money, and he's very comfortable.

But I'm not.

I'm not academic like he was, I'm more artistic, you know,

which doesn't earn you money.

I wasn't good enough at that, anyway.

But I'm working class.

I gamble a bit.

Bingo. Only once a week. But I like that.

Look at the camera, look!

Terrible. Sorry about that!

I'll tell you a funny thing.

I've got a picture, taken by the South London Press,

of my two daughters at the school.

The photographers took the picture of all the schoolchildren.

They'd grown flowers or something.

And the caption to the photograph said, "These are the children from a deprived area.

"They've probably never seen the sea and never seen a tree."

Bermondsey never seen a tree!

And we laughed, because that day, my two daughters had taken

pate de foie gras for their lunch break.

120 miles to the north of Reverdy Road stands Alscot Hall,

a rococo Gothic pile in the Warwickshire countryside

and once home to James West, former Secretary to the Treasury,

now occupied by his descendant, Emma Holman West.

Pretty special, isn't it? As I say to everyone,

the day that I wake up and I don't enjoy the view is the day I need to retire.

The West family had acquired a chunk of rural land in Bermondsey

in the mid 19th century and soon saw an opportunity

to profit from the population boom in London. They built 790 houses on that land.

This became known as the West Estate, part of which was Reverdy Road.

The Wests were Victorian property developers.

James West, who was married to Sarah,

it was her family estate land. And basically Sarah's brother,

who should have inherited, died, and so it then came to the Wests.

It was basically farmland

and it was part of the railways, and they had the river,

and it's near where London Bridge is now.

This map is a commercial map of London from 1807...

Emma knows little about the building of the estate that bears her name.

Most of the documents relating to it were donated years ago

to the John Harvard Library in Bermondsey.

Historian Stephen Humphries has brought back some of these documents to show her.

The estate has coloured in all its lands in pink and purple.

The purple bits are going to be disposed of, but the pink bits,

including Reverdy Road, were kept down to 1960.

And is there any reason where they decided to build?

London was expanding, and by the 1860s, anything south of Southwark Park Road

was the next area in line to be developed.

-The value of it for building land was greater than it was for market gardens...

-Sure.

..or farming of any other sort.

And do we know how the Wests financed the building of it?

The usual way was to sell off chunks of the land on building leases,

so the builder took the responsibility

for paying out all the money needed to build the houses.

And then the builder would sell on the lease and get his money back,

and the estate would then have the ground rents...

-OK.

-..which, on each house put together, would be vastly bigger

than what one meadow had had before.

Rents would vary according to which builder owned the lease.

But people wanted to make a profit,

so anyone wanting to live in this shiny new development needed proper employment.

In the early years, there was a wide variety of occupations,

ranging from a music publisher to an errand boy.

Florence Barker, draper's assistant, born 1871.

There are 12 people living in this house, and my name is Tom Shepherd,

and I was born here in 1867 and I work on the transport system.

Tom Ashdown, born 1856, food and sanitary inspector.

So the West family were quite particular about renting

to people in employment,

and to ensure their tenants enjoyed good spiritual health,

James West helped fund the building of a church

in nearby Thorburn Square.

In the late 1850s, a young curate called Thornton Wilkinson

was given the task of actually founding a congregation in this area.

And Thornton Wilkinson did it by standing on street corners

and holding impromptu services. He'd done that for quite some time,

very bravely, when a group of people who must have had some money

came to him one day and said, "Look, we've seen you,

"we admire what you're doing, we'll build a church for you."

-He is in fact named on here.

-Oh, right, OK.

-JR West Esq.

-Yep.

-He's giving £100

to the contributions for the new St Anne's Church.

-Oh, right.

-Which was to be built in Thorburn Square.

-It's on that map.

-And is the church still there?

There's still a church there, yes.

He's giving twice as much as the Bishop of Winchester on this list.

When Booth paid his visit in 1900,

the vicar of St Anne's was a Mr Walsh.

The vicar mentioned the reluctance of men to attend organised religion,

saying, "It is no use blinking the fact

"that the bulk of our congregation are boys and women who cannot get the men to church."

So the women of Reverdy Road attended church regularly

and made a good impression on the vicar.

Perhaps it was the air of hard-working respectability

that led him to describe his parish as the Belgravia of Bermondsey.

His wife had formed a different view

and spoke despairingly about her life in what she called

the desert of Bermondsey. Her middle-class snobbery about the local women was undisguised.

The women think of themselves ladies. That is the word that expresses it best. Ladies.

It is terrible. What do they do? Well, it is very difficult to say.

They're very difficult to classify, and most are a very mixed set.

Life down here is very hard for my daughters,

as, except for the local clergy, there is no-one to know.

Mr Stobart is a snob, and Mr Ainsworth is a cad.

And as for the wife of the latter,

she is an obnoxious person, impossible.

Poor Mrs Walsh, marooned amongst the proles with no-one to speak to.

At the other end of the street,

Dr Cooper was able to bridge the class divide

as a popular GP and Member of Parliament.

He died at home in 1909, after a late sitting in the House of Commons.

By 1920, the surgery had been taken over by Dr Alfred Salter,

a republican and pacifist.

Dr Salter was born in Greenwich in 1873.

He trained at Guy's Hospital

and took up residence in the Bermondsey settlement in 1898.

He married Ada in 1900. Writing to Ada just before they married,

Alfred Salter said this. "I have no lingering hankering for the flesh bots of Sudbury

"or Guy's or Harley Street,

"but I have sometimes quailed before the dull, interminable,

"leisureless grind, the weary, monotonous treadmill of work

"that certainly awaits me if I have to practise down here

"among the working people of Bermondsey."

Alfred considered himself to be a Christian missionary

and described his work as a divine vocation

and said in a letter to his wife, Ada,

"We are to be given over to the service of Bermondsey,

"to be her faithful servants, to live for her,

"if need be, to give our lives for her."

He began to work with Bermondsey Council on a mission

to put in place a radical set of public health measures.

Well, I knew about Dr Salter,

because of the fact he used to...

It was him who got the council

to send a van round with pictures.

These vans used to open up the back

and they used to have a screen there,

and the pictures were health, hygiene,

and all that kind of thing, you know -

keeping everybody sort of healthy.

"You should always wash your hands." It showed your hands, sort of thing,

and children walking about and things like that.

As kids, we just sat there, stood there, watching it,

until the thing was finished, they closed the things

and away they went to somewhere else. It was good. It was free pictures.

Alfred Salter had started out as an idealistic young doctor.

He made a big impression on Charles Booth, who met him in 1900

and wrote the following.

Mr Salter is above average -

a cheery, pleasant fellow, whose visits are more likely to be welcome

and much more tactful than many of his brother missionaries

in approaching the spiritual side of his task.

The teetotal doctor liked to joke

that he charged publicans' wives double for his services.

Everyone else paid what they could afford.

If they couldn't afford the treatment, it was free.

He was a familiar sight,

peddling the streets of Bermondsey on his bike,

and became immensely popular with his patients.

If we are a little sick, Mother sends for Dr Khan.

But if we are proper sick, she sends for Dr Salter.

A man turned up to the surgery one day with his wife

and was told that Dr Salter was away but that he could see another doctor.

However, the man said that no-one else would do for his wife,

not even if it was the bloke who does for the Queen.

Bermondsey had the highest rates of scarlet fever in London.

Overcrowding and proximity to the river

meant this highly contagious bacterial illness spread rapidly

and often with deadly effect.

Today, it is easily treated with antibiotics,

but in the early decades of the 20th century,

scarlet fever was a killer.

Alfred and Ada lost their beloved daughter Joyce to the fever.

She was eight years old.

But their tragic loss did not deter them

from continuing their work in Bermondsey.

Alfred Salter never wavered

in his commitment to the people of the borough

and he was most concerned to tackle the social conditions that give rise to illness,

as revealed in another of his letters to his wife.

I've been paying numerous visits

to derelict families

all the afternoon and evening.

Several of the homes I've just been into have made me feel aghast

at my helplessness to lift their occupants

out of their existing poverty and squalor.

Oh, the cruelty and wickedness of this society today.

Like Dr Cooper before him, Salter embraced politics,

first for Bermondsey Council and then as a Labour Member of Parliament.

Ada was also a politician and became the Mayor of Bermondsey.

The Salters were part of a political movement

that dominated the politics of the early 20th century.

It could be called municipal socialism.

They were intent on creating a new Bermondsey,

a place with decent homes and green spaces,

and they were intent on eliminating the diseases of poverty.

People used to talk endlessly about the trees,

which I believe Dr Salter...had trees planted.

Apparently, we were told as kids,

it was one of the first areas in London that had trees, you know,

working-class area, I suppose.

Working with the council, the Salters were responsible for planting

more than 10,000 trees throughout the Borough of Bermondsey.

Reverdy Road became tree-lined.

Alfred said of this venture,

"The trees not only add to the beauty of the neighbourhood

"all through the spring, summer and autumn,

"but the green matter of the leaves is purifying the atmosphere

"and helping to make Bermondsey a more healthy place."

The Salters' life of self-sacrifice gave hope to many.

Through their efforts, both medically and socially,

Bermondsey became a better place.

The Salters, working with the council,

had an ideological as well as a practical agenda.

They wanted to demonstrate that they could build a local socialist republic in south London,

even if it would be at odds with national government.

The council built libraries, baths and parks.

And their public health policies

included building the first solarium

to combat tuberculosis in Britain.

Those suffering more severe cases of TB

were sent to sanitaria in the Swiss Alps -

an unusual use of local authority money in the 1920s.

That's one good thing he did. The solarium -

we called it the solarium - is still there.

Take the welfare.

They used to have all the babies there

and weigh them there and whatever,

and all my children went to get orange juice

and stuff like that there.

But they really looked after you in them days.

Dr Salter did. I think he was a good man. I really do.

You would go to the solarium, you were given spoonfuls of malt,

I remember, tablespoons of malt.

It was a great place, I think.

It had a strange atmosphere about it, a strange smell, I remember.

A kind of medical smell.

The solarium offered artificial sunshine

to thousands of Bermondsey people.

Real sunshine was to be found in the summer in the fields of Kent.

There was a long-established tradition

that each year, families would escape the grime of south London

and spend weeks picking hops for the beer trade.

'Hop-picking is round again, and the family is setting out on its pilgrimage

'to the green fields of Kent. It's a thrill for the kids.

'New things to see, new games to play,

'new kids to meet and swap things with.

'It's a break for Mum. Still plenty of work to do,

'but she doesn't mind that when there's a change of scene and air to do it in.'

The popular perception is of chirpy Cockneys having a lark in the hop fields,

getting fresh air and having a grand old time.

It's seen a distant rural paradise,

a taste of the simple joys of the countryside.

But Bermondsey Council was having none of that.

They produced their own film, a piece of propaganda

attempting to deter people from going to Kent to be exploited

by the brewing industry.

Families went down to the Kent hop fields,

and it was regarded as a working holiday.

You know, families didn't have much money, and that's what you did.

When I was down there, my memory is of my mother with a long brush

trying to paint the back of my throat

and me trying to throw up.

My mother was arguing with the farmer,

demanding that he phone the local doctor.

My mother spoke to him on the phone, and he got in his car

and drove straight down to Kent and gathered me up from my mother

and brought us back. I remember being carried out of the house

into an ambulance in a bright red blanket.

I had contracted diphtheria,

which is a membrane growing over your throat.

It sort of like suffocates you or strangles you.

Apparently, my mother told me later,

they told them that there was no hope,

that I was going to die that night.

And then in the morning, the doctor said to her,

"It's a miracle he's still alive.

"But we don't know how or what's happening."

And, as you see, I survived.

So that was a miracle, really, for which I'm grateful.

Today, summer holidays are spent further afield than Kent,

but there are still hops growing in Reverdy Road,

a reminder of how the street's working-class families

used to spend their summers.

The tradition of Christian doctors continued

when William Mumford joined the Reverdy practice.

He originally intended to be a foreign missionary but wrote in his diary,

"After I had been in Bermondsey for two years,

"I felt very much that this foreign work wasn't the call after all.

"I felt increasingly that I wanted to be as good a Christian doctor as I could be,

"working among ordinary people."

I had two children when I came to live here.

And did you have more children while you were living here?

Yes, I had two more.

And Dr Mumford came to me.

The midwife delivered it, but he had to come and check on everything,

make sure everything was all right. A nice man.

He wasn't tall. A nice spoken man.

I think they all are, aren't they? They all had college education.

Didn't in those days, do you know what I mean?

Only the rich got anywhere in those days, didn't they?

The lady over the road, as I say,

her mother lived downstairs, she lived upstairs,

and she had a baby over there in there at the same time

I had my baby upstairs here.

And we were holding our babies up, showing each other our babies.

Up at the windows, you know,

talking to each other across from the bedroom.

AIR-RAID SIREN WAILS

The Blitz started on the 7th of September, 1940.

The nearby docks, the railway and local industry

all made Bermondsey a prime target for the Luftwaffe.

The second bomb to fall in the Blitz fell at the end of Reverdy Road.

Subsequently, five houses on the street

were destroyed by a German bomb.

Dr Mumford, still at Reverdy Road, wrote in his diary,

"The populace of Bermondsey dropped from about 120,000

"to 20,000 during the war.

"But we kept the practice going.

"Several of our Reverdy Road residents had direct experience of being bombed."

The air-raid siren had gone, and we ended up sheltering in a school.

Then suddenly... they dropped a bomb on the school.

Then all we could see was sky.

See, all the debris had fallen on us,

and the man my mother was talking to was standing there dead.

All my family stood up and not a scratch on us.

Yet all the people were dead, and pieces of bodies,

and all the debris all round us.

And we stood up off that floor, shook the dust off -

what we could shake off -

and not a scratch on any of us.

It was exciting for kids, in some way.

I mean, I was playing tin can copper -

you know, a can with two sticks and you throw a ball - with Wally Betts in Reverdy Road.

We threw the ball, it hit the can, and the siren went.

So I ran one way, picked up the can and sticks,

and he ran the other way and picked up the ball. We shouted, "See you later, see you at the all-clear."

We both ran home. When the all-clear went, we came out and resumed.

There is a gap on Reverdy Road, a hole where houses used to stand.

One night during the Blitz, those houses were destroyed

by a German bomb. At the time, each house was fully occupied.

Remarkably, nobody was killed.

Keith McLaren was two years old and living at number 12 with his parents

when the bomb dropped.

Well, this was a house that we lived in

when I lived with my mother and father, obviously,

as a baby and a very small child.

Bombed out

and then moved just across the road behind us to number 17.

In Bermondsey, the fashion was for families to live close together.

Keith's grandparents lived at number 17.

Two-year-old Keith and his parents moved in with them.

Today, it's occupied by New Zealander Isolde Sommerfeldt.

The people who lived in the house opposite,

when they were bombed out, they came and lived here.

And that's going to be amazing to meet them.

They kind of felt that safe just moving across the road,

so that'll be interesting to see what they have to say.

It feels very strange to be standing in an empty space

where I used to live.

Keith grew up at number 17, living with both his parents and grandparents.

Eventually he got married to Maureen, and they had a son called Kevin.

They moved from Reverdy Road to Kent in 1965.

Today, all three of them are coming back

to see the house they once lived in.

How little it's changed!

We've just gone back in time, quite honestly.

We really have.

-Eh, Kevin?

-Yeah.

It's just the same. It's a childhood memory for me,

but it looks exactly the same.

Exactly.

Was it what you would have called a working-class street?

Yes. Definitely.

But it was always a nice road.

Yeah, it was.

Wow!

SHE LAUGHS

This is different.

-It's so different.

-It is.

-So different.

We said, as soon as we come in, we don't remember it being as narrow.

It seems very narrow our there.

It does.

This was two rooms.

This door was just like this. Obviously, this was the wall.

And this... But it looks smaller!

It does, doesn't it!

Well, in this room, at one time, we had a small snooker table,

a dartboard and a football game.

SHE LAUGHS

And I don't know how it all got in there! In that area there!

It was me mum and dad who lived downstairs.

When we got married, we lived upstairs.

That's nice, so you were all together.

And before that, before that,

my nan and grandad lived upstairs,

so when I was younger, it was Mum and Dad down here, and me,

and Nan and Grandad upstairs.

Here, I always had a funny feeling.

The sense of foreboding, shall we say?

And if Keith's mum was out and Keith's dad were out,

I was petrified.

-Oh, dear!

-You didn't want to know that, did you?!

Kevin, when he was about five or six,

Keith's dad was looking after him, and he wanted something,

one of his toys,

and he came up here and he saw somebody,

who shouted at him to go away,

and he just literally laid down and put his hands over his head.

He told me, but I never, ever said to him what I felt all the time.

Right.

I don't feel it now.

I think there are a lot of stories like this down this street.

Yes, this is what we've heard since.

-Maybe they're just moving around, finding a home.

-Yes.

More than a million homes were damaged in London during the Blitz.

Given how close Reverdy Road is to the prime targets of the railway and the docks,

it was fortunate that so few houses were destroyed.

Across the whole of Bermondsey, the council felt the Blitz damage

was an opportunity to continue the slum clearance

that had been one of the passions of Alfred Salter.

In 1930, in the House of Commons, he'd said,

"We intend, over the next 20 years, steadily and systematically

"to purchase the whole of the house property

"and rebuild the borough from end to end."

Unfortunately, he didn't get to see the post-war rebuilding work,

as he died in 1945.

In Bermondsey, Alfred Salter is still held in high regard,

and in 1991, a statue called Dr Salter's Dream

was unveiled by the Thames.

It shows Alfred and his daughter, Joyce, and her favourite cat.

In the post-war period, Reverdy Road was still fairly comfortable

and ever so slightly up-market, despite having rudimentary sanitary arrangements.

I had a bath hanging out in the garden on a hook on the wall.

Tin bath.

And every...Friday, I think it was,

all the saucepans would be put on the gas stove

to boil the water with, and I'd have a bath then.

But we never went in the bath one after another.

We all had our own bath water. Some families, you shared the bath water.

My mum wouldn't have that.

Bathroom, no. We used to get the... what's its name, bath.

You know, tin bath. Put it in front of the fire.

And by the time the last person got in it...

it was really black!

Keith's mum and dad had the bath in the kitchen

with a cover over the top,

but we used to go to my mum and dad's for a bath!

And before that up Bermondsey Baths as well.

Did you?

Not me! Something was a bit awkward with Keith's mum and dad,

to have a bath downstairs in their kitchen!

SHE LAUGHS

So what was the rent?

26 shillings.

A week?

We paid a pound for upstairs,

and your mum and dad paid six shillings at the time.

Personal hygiene became quite the thing towards the end of the 1950s.

People wanted running water and bathrooms.

The move towards cleanliness was given a boost by the 1957 Rent Act.

It abolished rent controls

but imposed certain new obligations on landlords.

Why did your father decide to sell in 1960?

From what I've heard, it was all to do with the new regulations

that were coming in with regards to bathrooms being put into the houses.

Basically, Dad couldn't afford to do this, into that quantity of housing.

And so he had no option but to put the estate up for sale.

The West Estate comprises 797 houses,

26 shops, 14 sites,

6 factories, etc!

And the total income after deduction of rates

is £43,000 per year.

It's being sold by auction.

I remember reading in the South London Press that a mystery buyer

had bought West Estate, and nobody knew who it was,

then it turned out he was acting on behalf of the council,

and this caused an absolute uproar amongst the developers,

cos they said it was cheating.

I could never understand why it was cheating, but...

the council said they bought the estate to prevent the developers coming in

and all the problems that would cause.

Bermondsey Council knew this was housing stock worth keeping.

One change for the existing community was that the system

of subletting parts of houses to family members and friends

by informal word-of-mouth was now frowned upon.

Everybody who lived in the street would have one of their family

living in the street or letting rooms upstairs to them,

which kept the family close.

It was only when the houses broke up and the council then moved us

to the Setchell Estate or the Bonamy Estate that it broke the families up.

There was a fervour to modernise public housing,

from the planning of it to the way it was allocated.

It was supposed to be done without fear or favour,

but in Bermondsey, there was a distinct tendency towards keeping local housing for local people.

If you wanted a council house, you'd go round the town hall.

Given that...lots of people moved out of Bermondsey anyway

during the war,

and there had been lots of empty properties at the end of the war,

you know, you had a fair chance.

To you, you are the top priority, obviously, but to us...

'As you got to the counter, they asked

'what your connection was with Bermondsey.

'If you had none - reject. Next. It went like that.'

There was a policy to keep Bermondsey for Bermondsey people?

Definitely. Absolutely sure of that.

And I think Robert Mellish, the MP, he was accused of that.

They said it was pure parochialism, you know, outsiders were kept out.

I absolutely believe that, yeah.

I absolutely believe it was right, by the way.

Everybody in Bermondsey would agree with that policy,

and I'm sure it was true.

You didn't have many coloured people here, not many immigrant families.

It was that policy, you know.

So whereas, like, Peckham and Southwark, it was all immigrants,

here was a sea of white faces, you know,

because it was the policy of the council.

Not because they were black but because they were outsiders,

you know, not part of Bermondsey.

We were insular people.

My grandmother, for example,

had never been out of Bermondsey.

She'd never been over Tower Bridge even, you know.

She'd never been through Rotherhithe Tunnel.

Why would she want to go there? She was happy here, you know!

It wasn't a paradise, but you know what I mean - people belong.

People were more parochial in those days, I suppose.

The isolation of Bermondsey was dealt a blow

when a Conservative government decided to reorganise London local authorities.

The Borough of Bermondsey was swallowed up by a neighbour in 1965.

Southwark took over then, Ted Heath merged us with Southwark,

and the housing list went up from 70 to 70,000,

you know, which was, by any measure, a disaster.

We'd lost our insularity, if you like.

In 1980, public housing policy changed forever.

A radical Conservative government decided that

every council tenant should be given the right to own their own house.

Legislation was introduced, giving people the right to buy

from the local authority, and at a knockdown price.

The Belgravia of Bermondsey looked like a good investment.

I bought this one.

Do you mind me asking how much you paid for it?

Do you want me to tell you?

Yeah.

-In confidence.

-OK.

You could scrub it.

Some people like to go into a house

and, as it is, they want to put their own mark on it.

Do it as they want. So...

I just leave it as it is.

I'm happy here.

And we put in the register - the right to buy thing -

I think it was 14,000, 14,600, or something like that.

I can see social objections and the reasons for them,

because council housing is moving into private ownership.

Soon there'll be no council houses. I can understand that.

But then you're in individual living in a society

where you've got to look after yourself.

Nobody else will, so we looked after ourselves by buying it, you know.

My sister, who lives down here across the road,

she bought hers, and it was at such a low price.

But, erm...I was on carer's money,

which was about £55, £60 a week.

Looking after me son and me mum and dad.

And I couldn't afford it.

And they never had a lot of money. And we wasn't rich enough.

It was just a shame.

House prices have continued to rise,

and so the character of Reverdy Road has changed.

Only 40% of the houses are still owned by the council.

Reverdy Road there. And here's Southwark Park Road.

Younger people are moving in -

professional people attracted by the proximity to central London and the City.

People like Stacey Cox.

When I pulled up with a moving van on day one, the neighbours

across the street came across to welcome me to the neighbourhood

and as soon as they heard the accent, they said, "Why did you move here?"

But also I thought this area was supposed to be

an up-and-coming neighbourhood.

They were redeveloping Bermondsey Street, Bermondsey Square.

And of course it's close to central London.

We're just on the border of Zone 1, Zone 2,

so it's easy for me to get into work.

Across the road from Stacey's one-bedroom flat is number 62.

The tenant recently died, and the council have put the house up for auction.

Stacey wants to upgrade.

TOILET FLUSHES

The toilet flushes.

This is a really large bathroom, actually.

This paper reminds me of the paper in my flat across the street

when I bought it.

Nice and dark.

As you can see, the curtains don't match at all.

It just really makes this room feel almost like a cave.

We want it as a family home.

And our objective is to go and bid on Monday.

There's old pieces of paper under here.

I could find all kinds of good things under these floorboards.

Something about the BBC. It is saying,

"If this is entertainment on a grand scale, then the BBC might as well pack in."

Hey!

Basically, after I buy this property, I'm going to have to do

a full search to see what I want to save before the builders come in,

because it will all then go in the skip, won't it?

I feel quite sad sometimes when I see some of the elderly people

who I know around here, because once they go, you know

that those houses, cos they're not owned by the council now,

they saved up and bought their houses and cherished them,

they'll go to the estate agents, and that's when things are really going to change.

It's down to whether you can afford it now.

The properties for sale in these areas is way beyond...

I mean, my children...and we're talking about ten years ago,

my children could not buy anywhere in Bermondsey.

Most of my friends and families have children

-that have all had to move out of Bermondsey. Forced out.

-That make you sad?

That makes me very sad, yeah.

The West family sold the estate in 1960.

Emma brought her son, the ninth James West,

to see what the family once owned and to meet some of their former tenants.

-Hello!

-Hello.

-How are you?

-Good, thank you. How are you?

Hello, I'm Emma. And this is James.

Hello, James.

And they brought you some cakes. My girls have made some cakes.

-Hello. Tracy?

-Hello!

-Hi. Emma. Good to meet you.

-Hi.

-Emma. Nice to meet you. You're Mike.

-Pleased to meet you.

-And this is James.

-Come in.

-Thank you.

Wow, this looks incredible!

I hear you've got lots to tell me. I'm fascinated.

It's always been a business premises.

Please tell me about that.

Way back, it was a moneylenders, I do know that,

because the little window in the front there, in the front gateway,

-they used to lend the money out through the window.

-Oh, OK!

That's pretty amazing.

So would this have been the original loo? Sorry.

Don't open it, please!

No, no, no.

The reason I'm interested in it - I'm not going to look in, don't panic -

is because one of the main reasons our family sold up

was because all the bathrooms were outside,

and we couldn't afford to put them all inside.

-Really?

-Yeah, in the '60s.

So what else is in this house's history?

During the war, the 1939 war, right, he had a haulage contract business.

And he used to have horses - big grey horses out there in the yard.

-They were lovely.

-Where did you keep the horses, Elsie?

-Where did he keep them?

-Mm.

-In the backyard!

It's got a story to tell, hasn't it?

It's fantastic what you've done.

It's just not like living in London in any of these houses, is it?

Well, totally. It's so... Again, it's so very quiet.

-Exactly what I've being saying all day.

-Down this road.

It is huge!

James can touch him - I'm not very good at stuff like that.

What kind of lizard is it?

-A bearded dragon.

-I'll be daring. OK.

How do you feel about coming back to your family history, then?

I'm totally overwhelmed, if you want me to be honest.

It's fantastic. I love where you live.

-Yeah, so do we.

-It's fab.

I know it's a really cliched thing to say - I feel like I'm coming home.

It's left a lasting impression that will never be forgotten,

and I think I was saying to Mark earlier,

it makes me want to sell up our flat where we live in London at the minute,

cos my husband works in the City, and actually buy a house down here

and come back.

-Seriously?

-Yeah, I really mean that.

-You'd seriously buy a house in Reverdy Road?

-Yeah, I would in this area. Come back to the West Estate.

I feel really strongly about it. It's twitched something in me.

Lot 12 is 62 Reverdy Road in Southwark SE1. Freehold.

Two floor, end-of-terrace house.

Selling this by order of the London Borough of Southwark.

Where shall we start the bidding?

Reverdy Road and the surrounding streets are now highly desirable,

and the cash-strapped council are selling them off as soon as they become vacant.

Stacey wants to buy number 62 and raise a family there,

but she's competing against a roomful of property developers.

At £319,000, selling for the first time.

319,000 for the second time.

Third, last time.

Sold. £319,000.

Stacey didn't have the financial muscle

and lost the house to a property investor -

somebody who sees a quick profit in a Victorian house

rather than a permanent part of the community.

Number 62 Reverdy Road was home to three families in 1891.

By 1911, it was home to one family, headed by a police officer, James Lowder.

Now it's been bought from the council by a property developer.

After renovation, it will sell for close to half a million pounds.

One house costing more than all 797 houses together

when the council bought them in 1960.

In my younger days, these properties were not wanted at all.

Everybody wanted to get out of the old houses and get into the new places,

and now it's completely circled again.

If you was to offer anybody a flat or one of these houses,

I would've said 99.9 would jump at one of these houses.

Bermondsey is quite chic now, and all is changing on Reverdy Road.

Prices have gone up, and people with money and interior design plans are moving in.

Gentrification has finally arrived.

If Booth came to Reverdy Road today, he might upgrade it from pink

perhaps to red or even yellow, and if he took a stroll by the river,

which used to be blue and black, meaning poor and semi-criminal,

he'd certainly upgrade it.

Today this is an area of swanky apartments and business developments.

Even so, not all the criminals have left.

This was the statue of Dr Salter,

and you can see where it was fixed to the seat,

and recently some thieves came and stole it.

Local people have got together to form some association

to either try and recover the statue, which I think is highly unlikely,

or get a new one commissioned.

Alfred has no doubt been melted down,

but at least his daughter and cat were spared

and have been taken into protective custody.

The surgery on Reverdy Road closed in 1994.

Max Gammon is the last in a long line of doctors who have lived here

and served the people of Bermondsey.

I do believe it is the end of an era.

I'm the last of a line, really,

and so I'm very satisfied - and very privileged -

to have been the last doctor to live in this house.

All nice people. They really are.

Yeah.

No, if I chose to live anywhere, it'd be down this street.

Yeah.

Next week, we go to Arnold Circus.

It's like walking into, I don't know, somewhere so different.

A Victorian model village in the heart of the East End.

And you would get six of the best if you misbehaved.

It hurt. Left marks on your buttocks, as most of us never wore underpants!

A haven in the heart of the city.

Home, sweet home. Hello, Mum. Hello, Dad.

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the Open University has produced a free guidebook.

Go to...

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