1930s' pictures reveal the eerie alleys and lost buildings of London

 

 

These atmospheric images show buildings, alleys and streets from the rapidly-disappearing London of the 1930s - cloaked in darkness. They were collated by a pair of photographers called John Morrison and Harold Burdekin for a book called London Night, which was published in 1934. They show the capital as it was before smog, before the Blitz changed the face of the city forever, and before the brutalist concrete monoliths of post-war rebuilding. They used newly-emerging night photography techniques to capture London's unique atmosphere. It was a city of alleys lit by dim lamps, stark contrasts of light and dark and looming, oppressive architecture. The cinematic photos are once again in the limelight after they were posted on The Library Time Machine, a blog run by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Library Service. Vintage enthusiasts and photography bloggers across the UK have delighted in the newly-emerged, dramatic and beautiful images.   Spooky: Light streams through a gate in these images capturing the London of a bygone era Light and dark: A lantern hangs in a doorway and a park's lights blaze in the surrounding darkness. Above, an ominous aerial shot of a gateway and pillars cast shadows in a blaze of light Stark: The photos make extensive use of the glaring contrast of streetlights in the London mist and gloom   Coliseum Cinema, Harringay, London. 1930. Located on Green Lanes, Harringay, London. This is a postcard view from around 1930. Postcard copyright Hornsey Historical Society 1991. Photograph courtesy of Dick Whetstone. Part of the Coliseum Cinema can be seen on the left. The large building on the corner in the centre of the scene is the Salisbury Hotel. It opened in 1899 and was designed by architect John Cathes Hill. As well as having many bedrooms, the hotel also had a large ballroom and a billiard room. It remains open today, but only the bar is in public use. Today, the view is little changed apart from the demolished Coliseum Cinema, which now has a block of flats on the site and of course the trams have long gone and the traffic is heavy in this main shopping street. Stoll Theatre, London. Located at 22 Kingsway, London, WC2 This was built as the London Opera House by Oscar Hammerstein. The architect was Bertie Crewe and it seated 2,440. It opened on 11th November 1911 and this photograph was taken just a short while before its opening. (note the scaffold and work being carried out to complete the decorations on the top right of the building). In April 1917 it became the Stoll Picture Theatre and screened films until September 1940. After a short period of closure, it re-opened as the Stoll Theatre for live stage shows. Closed in August 1957, it was demolished and an office block was built on the site, which contains a basement theatre which opened as the Royalty Theatre. Today it is operating as the Peacock Theatre. The Regent Cinema, Castle Street, Bristol. Memories of Bristol Cinema. The ornate interior of The Regent, Castle Street. Bristol BS1 (now Castle Park). When this theatre was opened on Monday 30 July 1928 it was described as 'a place of high-class entertainment, not just a cinema'. The opening night programme (which changed weekly) featured the silent film The Magic Flame (starring Robert Colman and Vilma Blanky), a troupe of nine called The Regent Girls, Graham and Douglas (the Inseparable Dancers) and Mademoiselle Rita Colere (continental soprano singer), all supported by The Regent Orchestra, a twenty-two-piece symphony orchestra. In addition, there was a Wurlitzer organ which would rise from beneath the stage. On the opening day the manager was E.A. Barry and the organist Frank Matthews. The architect of the building was W.H. Watkins who designed several Bristol cinemas, including The News Theatre in Peter Street Castle Park Bristol. The main entrance in Castle Street opened into a spacious Crush Hall (this eliminated queues outside the building and allowed 1,000 people to wait in comfort and under cover) with wide staircases giving easy access to the Tea Lounge and auditorium, the latter with an impressive domed roof. The decoration was generally on Roman lines, being very grand and palatial and enhanced by the predominant colours of ivory, Titian reds, purple and gold. There were 2,014 seats and standing room for 212 at the back of the stalls. The entrance to the stalls was in Peter Street, between Smarts and St Peter's Church, and had its own Crush Hall. The Tea Lounge was 120ft long and customers were admitted even if not seeing the film. The Regent Special Tea was served on a dainty tray and could be consumed while watching the film. The floor area of the stage was about 2,000ft and had adjacent dressing rooms, making the venue suitable for various forms of entertainment. When first opened there were continuous programmes from 2.00 p.m. to 10.30 p.m. and the admission price for the front circle (the most expensive seats) was two shillings (10p) this was reduced for matinees and increased for Saturday evenings and Bank Holidays. The first talking film shown was The Donovan Affair on 19 August 1929. By the late 1930s the programme involved two films, newsreel and music taking an average of three and a half hours to complete. In 1940 the manager was G.A. Foster, who replaced H. Davids in October 1938, and who was in turn transferred to the Ritz in Bedminster. The days of the Regent being Bristol's premier cinema were short-lived as, following the blitz on 24 November 1940, it was severely damaged. (Fortunately this was a Sunday night and it was closed - the following week was to have been the cinema's first Sunday opening and casualties may have been catastrophic). However, the structure was far from totally destroyed and the basic layout of the building still remained intact five years later. Aerial shots show walls remaining, but minus the roof this appearing to be the building's weak point. The building was of concrete and steel construction, but the dome appears to have been easily broken and fire bombs penetrated and quickly consumed the plush interior fittings. In the 1950s the remains were temporarily repaired and used as offices called Underwood House. Demolition of this building and eventual clearance of the site commenced in August 1963. Could the Regent have been restored to its original splendour? Interior fittings were relatively easy to replace, but it was probably the repair of the roof, which would have been both difficult and costly, which caused problems. While the proprietors appeared keen to re-open the Regent, post-war building restrictions were in place and the council wanted a range of public buildings (including a new museum and art gallery) to occupy the area, so it was not clear if a cinema would fit in with these plans. The general uncertainty of the time meant decisions could not be made and, as time went by, thoughts of rebuilding the Regent ebbed away. It took nearly twenty-five years to clear the site and when today's Castle Park was designed how appropriate it would have been if the council had included some form of memorial (for example, a grass amphitheatre) on the site of what was probably Bristol's greatest cinema. London Pre-War Street Scene This extract comes from Claude Friese-Greene's 'The Open Road' - originally filmed in 1925/6 and now re-edited and digitally restored by the BFI National Archive. Britain seen in colour for the first time was heralded as a great technical advance for the cinema audience - now we can view a much improved image, but one which still stays true to the principles of the colour process. The rather haphazard journey from Land's End to John O'Groats creates a series of moving picture postcards. Look out for shots containing the component colours - red and blue-green - such as when a little girl in a red coat and hat walks among peacocks in the grounds of a castle, and three girls with red curly hair pose by the sea at Torquay. The car is a Vauxhall D-type - considered a sporty model at the time. A long-distance journey by car was a relatively new concept, with none of the amenities en route now taken for granted. The visit to a petrol station shows smoking on the forecourt: no health and safety issues back then! The travelogue ends with a series of recognisable London landmarks. Much remains the same - one major exception being the volume of traffic on the roads. Past: The images give historians an insight into a London that has been lost to time. The pictures come from a book called London Night published in 1934 and recently unearthed by library staff in the capital Metropolis: Some of the images are reminiscent of the films of German director Fritz Lang State-of-the-art: The two photographers who collated the images in 1934 used pioneering night photography techniques A team of rail enthusiasts who spent £700,000 restoring a steam engine to its former glory have unveiled the finished product after 20 years hard graft. The King Edward II, a Great Western Railway express locomotive, went on public show for the first time at Didcot Railway Centre, Oxon. It was saved from a scrapyard almost 30 years ago and required a legion of volunteers to work 50,000 hours to piece together its 65,000 parts. NOW: Crowds cheered as The King Edward II steamed into the Railway Centre at Didcot, Oxfordshire, 30 years after it was found on a scrap heap. They took it on as a rusting hulk in 1990 since when it has slowly been restored, having regularly run on lines from London Paddington to the west for over four decades. Hundreds of train buffs had their chance to see the engine steam in on the centre's demonstration line at the unveiling, next to the mainline Didcot Parkway station. Centre manager Roger Orchard said: 'Their dream of bringing a scrap locomotive back to running order has been realised after 20 years of hard work and dedication. 'Restoring King Edward II has become an obsession for some and in one or two cases has almost caused divorces, because it took over the men's lives and relationships suffered.' THEN: The King Edward II in its former glory in 1960 near Padington Station. It took 20 years of hard work to restore the machine Way back THEN: The King Edward II leaving Paddington Station in the 1930's. It was built in 1930 and withdrawn by British Railways in 1962. The Brunel Trust bought it in 1982 from a scrapyard at Barry, South Wales. Richard Croucher, the chairman of the Great Western Society, made a speech before the train was officially launched by Steve Davis, the director of the National Railway Museum at York. Mr Orchard added: 'King Edward II ran through some tape down by the turntable. We wouldn't have smashed a bottle of champagne on it, because the volunteers would get very upset if we chipped the paintwork.'  The locomotive was built in 1930 and withdrawn by British Railways in 1962. The Brunel Trust bought it in 1982 from a scrapyard at Barry, South Wales. The engine is one of the three survivors of the most powerful class of GWR locomotive, along with No 6024 King Edward I, based in Somerset, and the National Railway Museum's No 6000 King George V. American photographer Bruce Davidson took this 1960 photo entitled Girl Holding Kitten, but did not take the name of the girl, despite spending a couple of hours with her and a friend. In April 2011 he told the Guardian he was eager to trace her just one of 180 photographs that document London from 1930 - 1980 through the eyes of international photographers in a new exhibition at Tate Britain Blitz spirit: A woman rescues board games from the wreckage of her home during the German bombing raids (left) and the front cover of the new book (right)   Portrait of a city: From Victorian sergeants to the New Romantics, the fascinating pictures that chart the changing face of London. As English author Samuel Johnson once said: 'By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show.' It is a view captured gloriously in a new book which charts the history of the capital from the 19th century to the present day in a series of iconic images. Constantly evolving, yet always unmistakeably London, the pictures take the reader on a journey through the capital's changing landscapes from the taverns of the Victorian era to the Houses of Parliament, the psychedelia of The Beatles to the new romanticism of the 80s and beyond. They feature in London: Portrait Of A City, published by Taschen, which describes the book as a tribute to the 'bulldog spirit of the people that have stayed constant' throughout that time. Here is a selection of photographs that appear in the fascinating book. Dapper chaps: This picture of recruiting sergeants outside the Mitre & Dove in King Street, London, in 1877 features in a new book charting the history of London from the Victorian era to the present day Iconic symbol of London: The official opening of Tower Bridge on June 30, 1894 at a ceremony led by the then Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII, and his wife, The Princess of Wales Evocative: A woman cuts a solitary figure in the middle of Trafalgar Square at night in a photograph taken in 1910 Hustle and bustle: A trader on a horse and trap outside Long Acre in Covent Garden circa 1930. The publishers say the new book, London: Portrait Of A City, is a tribute to the 'bulldog spirit' of the capital's inhabitants. As the world's cameras turn towards London for the Olympics, Tate Britain is glancing back to show how the capital changed between 1930 and 1980. The 180 photographs in the exhibition, opening the same day as Danny Boyle's £27m opening ceremony is set the dazzle the globe, were taken entirely by international photographers casting an eye over the London they encountered on their worldwide travels. Works by legendary names such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Irving Penn and Bruce Davidson will spend the summer in Tate Britain's Linbury Gallery in a chronologically-arranged show depicting a vibrant city's transformation from a place yet to know the horrors of the second world war to the time of Margaret Thatcher. Another London: International Photographers Capture City Life 1930-1980 opens at Tate Britain on Friday July 27 and runs until Sunday September 16. This 1966 photo by Milon Novotny captures a toothless top-hatted man among crockery during trading at Middlesex Market Wolfgang Suschitzky, 1942, From St Paul's: the eastwards view from St Paul's cathedral towards Tower Bridge shows post-Blitz London, with the rubble from the Luftwaffe's sustained bombing campaign largely cleared so traffic can again make its way through. The 1940s view from the cathedral gives a clear sight-line to the Monument to 1666's Great Fire of London, which can be seen to the left of Tower Bridge.   American photographer Al Vandenberg moved to London in the early 1960s. This untitled photo shows three youths stood next to an advert for a shop on Archway Road. Markéta Luskacová moved to London from Prague in 1970. This 1979 shot, called Cafe on Bethnal Green Road, shows customers in flat caps and big coats in the east end. People Round A Fire, Spitalfields market is another Markéta Luskacová work capturing east London life Lutz Dille, Untitled, 1961: the German-born photographer travelled widely, moving to Canada in 1958 before settling in Europe and setting up home in Wales Another exhibition entry by Lutz Dille, also listed as Untitled, 1961 shows a gentleman in top and tails smoking a cigarette as he holds his gloves and cane outside a branch of the old Midland Bank. An Evening Standard news stand can be spotted next to the flower stall behind him Lutz Dille, Untitled, 1962. The photographer snaps two young men in another example of the street photography exemplified by the Tate Britain exhibition Suschitzky's Festival of Britain from 1951 gives exhibition visitors a glance at how the government tried to boost British morale after WWII Wolfgang Suschitzky caught this shop Paddington's Bishopsgate Road in 1934. Cinema adverts propped up outside promote local screenings A couple caught on film by Ghanain photographer James Barnor, Untitled #11. Barnor moved to the UK to teach at the Medway College of Art, Kent - now part of the University of the Creative Arts. Suschitzky's New Monument station shows a horse and cart sharing the road with cars and cyclists - a far cry from the area these days Elliot Erwitt's Bus Stop, London from 1962 captures a rainy day The white stuff: A milk bar in Bear Street, central London c.1936. Milk bars grew in popularity during the 1930s, when public health became an important social issue, as they sold exotic milk-based drinks for adults Bright futures on the horizon: Nannies looking after their charges beside the Serpentine in Hyde Park in 1938 Power structure: A man looks across the River Thames towards Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament in 1939 on the eve of the Second World War   Letting off steam: Crowds flock to Battersea Funfair, which was opened in 1951 as part of the Festival of Britain, a national exhibition held give Britons a feeling of recovery in the aftermath of the war Psychedelic: The Beatles' Apple store on the corner of Paddington Street and Baker Street in 1967. The shop was one of the first business ventures made by the band's fledgling Apple Corps Bobby on the job: A policeman directs traffic near St St Paul's Cathedral in front of an inconic London Routemaster bus in the 1960s Trading stories: The Punch Tavern on Fleet Street in 1969, a classic hang-out for journalists whether it be in between editions or at the end of the working week Dollybird days: Actress Charlotte Rampling in circa 1967 before she shot to fame in Luchino Visconti's 1969 film The Damned Time for a shift half? Gentlemen congregate outside the Good Mixer pub in Camden Town in 1971 New Romantics: A girl poses up against the iconic image of the London Tube map in 1981