The 1980s were a time of significant change across London. The city had been in decline since the end of the 2nd World War. Not only having to deal with extensive bomb damage, but also with the loss of a significant amount of industry, including the closure of all the London Docks (with the exception of Tilbury), the docks having been the drivers of much of London’s growth during the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries.

There were large areas of derelict industrial land, including the extensive land in east London covered by the old docks. Much of the city’s 19th century housing stock was also in poor condition. A significant decline in population since 1939 had reduced demand, bomb damage had not been fully repaired, and buildings had been left derelict or had been poorly maintained.

The 1980s were the decade when the old London was disappearing, a new London was starting to emerge, and 40 years later, after significant demographic and population changes, considerable rebuilding, including the transformation of places such as the Isle of Dogs, Vauxhall etc. the almost exponential rise in house prices, change to a fully service based industrial model, changes to the way the city is governed etc. London is a very different place to the city that was disappearing in the 1980s.

We can see these changes in photos of individual places, and I will be featuring a number of these during the coming year, photos taken by my father on walks across the city, starting with the Boleyn Pet Stores at the junction of Boleyn Road and Bradbury Street in Dalston:

The same view today:

The London Picture Archive has a view of the pet stores in 1970, confirming that the business had been open for some years, but also showing that the building had decayed significantly during the 1970s and first half of the 1980s (this embedded image will probably not appear in email versions of this post. Go to the website by clicking here to see the image in the post):

By the mid 1980s, whilst the pet store was still open, the rest of the building appears unoccupied, the windows to the upper floor are broken, and the first floor is probably the home of some of the city’s pigeons.

In the 1970s and 1980s, this level of dereliction was quite common across many of the city’s street.

What the photo also shows is the benefit of random walking through the city. My father took many of these photos on random street walks, setting off to a specific area, then a random wander around the streets, particularly the side streets, and it is an approach which I have continued.

To get to the site of the Boleyn Pet Stores, I took the Windrush Line to Dalston Junction, crossed Kingsland High Street, headed north, where after a very short distance is Boleyn Road, and not far along is the junction with Bradbury Street. The location of the old pet stores is shown in the following map (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

In each post on 1980s location I will cover a different aspect of how the city has changed, and for this post I will look at overall population.

The London Data Store is a wonderful, free resource provided by the Greater London Authority. The website provides access to a wealth of data about the city, and to look at how population has changed. i used data from the London Data Store Historical Census Population data set to create the following graph which shows the population of Greater London:

The graph starts in 1801, where there is a population of just over one million.

During the 19th and first half of the 20th century, the population of the wider city continues rising at a rapid rate to reach a peak of 8.6 million in 1939.

For the previous 140 years London had industrialised, the large east London docks had been built, the City’s role in trade and finance expanded rapidly, government, West End entertainments, fruit, vegetable, fish, meat markets etc. there was hardly an aspect of life in London that had not expanded rapidly during this time.

The Second World War brought an end to the expansion of population. The loss to bombing of considerable amounts of housing, migration to new towns orbiting the city, the loss of industry, closure of the docks, all contributed to the decline in population, which reached a low of around 6.5 million in the 1980s.

By the end of the decade, a small increase heralded a change to London’s fortunes, which was visible in the 1991 Census data.

For the following decades, population would rise rapidly, returning to 1939 levels in the early 2020s, a change mainly driven by inward migration.

The rise in population increased demand for housing, which can be seen both in the rapid rise in the price of housing across the city, but also by the renovation, or demolition and rebuild, of almost any available space across the city, and as an example, the site of the Boleyn Pet Stores is now occupied by a new Nisa supermarket at ground level, within a new building of four floors rather than the previous three, allowing three floors of apartments to be built.

A change that can be seen across London, as well as the renovation of buildings of the type shown in the 1986 photo, which now sell at a price which must have seen unimaginable 40 years ago.

After finding the site of the Boleyn Pet Stores, I had a wander around the local streets, and found the following within a very small area, firstly this lovely, almost Gothic, building in Boleyn Road:

The building was built as the St. Mark’s Mission House, later the Cholmeley Boys Club, as still recorded above the door to the right:

The Mission House was built at the end of the 19th century, and was built as a result of the rapid rise in population in Dalston, along with the poverty and poor housing conditions to be found in the area.

In the Islington News and Hornsey Gazette on the 11th of June, 1898, we find one of the justifications during one of the fund raising bazaars for the Mission House (St. Marks, Dalston is on the eastern side of Kingsland High Street):

“As to the object of the bazaar, it might be a revelation to some of them to be told that there are over 8,000 people on the other side of Kingsland Hight-street in the parish of St. Mark’s, who have no room of suitable size wherein work in connection with the church might be carried on. Kingsland High-street acts as a sort of stone wall or barrier between the two sections of the parish, and the people on the other side of it will not cross over to them. Hence it became necessary for them to go to the 8,000 people living on the other side of the intersecting thoroughfare”.

The Arch Deacon of London was also at the fund raising bazaar and added that “Wherever a parish is intersected by a great thoroughfare, it was as if a river flowed between its two divisions”.

Interesting how major roads through a city can act as “a sort of stone wall or barrier” between the people on either side. Kingsland High Street is also now the A10, and is still a busy road through the district.

The foundation stone of the Mission Hall was laid when: “The Lord Mayor (who was accompanied by Miss Davies) and the Sheriffs of London paid a State visit to Kingsland yesterday afternoon, and laid the foundation stone of the new mission buildings of St. Mark’s Church, Dalston, which are to cost £3,600”:

Opposite the location of Boleyn Pet Stores is St. Jude Street, and along the street is an example of what can be achieved when buildings are renovated rather than demolished:

And at the end of St. Jude Street, at the junction with King Henry’s Walk is the Railway Tavern:

The first references I can find to the Railway Tavern are from the 1860s, when the pub was an operating business, so it must have been built somewhere around the mid 19th century, however it is a very different architectural style to the buildings to the left, and the two small, two storey houses to the right, which are up against the tall, flat wall of the pub. The buildings on either side all pre-date the Railway Tavern.

If such a building was planned today, there would probably be an outcry about how the design was not fit for its surroundings.

The Railway Tavern was named after the nearby North London Railway, and was close to Mildmay Park station in Mildmay Grove.

The station is shown on the 1927 edition of the Railway Clearing House, Official Railway Map of London:

The station closed in 1934, however the way the rail tracks part to provide space for the centre platform that was once between the tracks can still be seen on Google maps, at the following link:

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5484962,-0.0825652,242m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDQwMS4wIKXMDSoJLDEwMjExNDU1SAFQAw%3D%3D

The transformation from the Boleyn Pet Stores to the new Nisa supermarket and apartments is indicative of how much of London has transformed over the last 40 years, and the same applies to the streets close to the old pet stores, where as well as new builds, the majority of the surviving pre-war and 19th century houses have been really well restored.

I will be looking at more places, contrasting the 1980s with the 2020s, and the trends that have changed London in more posts throughout the year.

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