I loved this story in yesterday's edition of The Observer. It tells how Fasset Square in Hackney was used as the original location for the BBC Eastenders soap opera.
Fasset Square is just round the corner from where I spent my years as a teenager. In fact for about a year I used to deliver papers in the square. Then it was a comparitively quiet area of Hackney with one side dominated by the German Hospital. Soon after it began to change and at one point seemed to be getting fairly rough.
Times have changed now and it has been "gentrified". Way back in the seventies I actually viewed a house there with a view to buying, but the Lord took me to Smethwick. I think it was on the market for about £10,000.
Fassett Square was almost demolished. In the late 1960s there was an absolutely daft idea to build a "North Cross" motorway through the area. I had just been elected chair of the local Labour Party and we called a residents meeting of those living in Fasset Square, Navarino and Greenwood Roads. It was packed. The local members of the GLC and the council turned up and we could see that they were changed immediately from supporters of the scheme to firm opponents.
I suppose that is my minor contribution to the history of British soap operas.
By the way, I never watch the programme. I hate to see people bickering all the time.
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2 comments:
Hi David
Interested to read this as I have lived just round the corner from Fassett Square for the last 14 years - in Graham Road to be precise. Where did you live?
I suppose that the East End has always been in flux with wave after wave of immigrants coming and going.
Around us people moving in to rented accomodation are more and more British young and trendy, as opposed to Indian / Turkish / Russian as they were a few years ago. There are plenty of ultra-trendy coffee shops sprouting up nearby.
But the wide mix of races and cultures is part of Hackney's appeal to me and hope that continues.
Thanks Dave,
I just love Hackney and even in the seventies we noticed the first batches of "the trendies" moving in. One of the couples were young lawyers named Tony and Cherie. Nice couple, I often wander what happened to them after they moved to Islington?
I lived on Amhurst Road and used to work for the paper shop opposite the Samuel Lewis Trust Dwellings on Dalston Lane. I was Chair of the Dalston Ward Labour Party Branch and my second home was the Labour Party offices at 14a Graham Road.....and I spent many an hour in the Queen Elizabeth discussing politics with the two Trot factions vying for dominance of our Young Socialist branch.
When I retire I shall mention all this in a short autobiography.
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