My Eltham ………… half a century ago

Now, for all of us who left Eltham, and pretty much never really went back finding pictures of the place in the year we left can be bitter sweet.

On the one hand there are those warm nostalgic memories which are dashed by the changes, which just don’t fit with how you remember the place.

In my case it was the Eltham of the 1960s when I was growing up, attending Crown Woods and discovering the joys and pains of my first girlfriends.

And so when I left for Manchester in 1969 I rather thought the place would still be the same when I came back, which for a while it was, but in my absence, they moved the railway station, obliterated the old bus terminus, replaced Wilcox’s with a McDonald’s and over time closed most of the pubs I took my first illicit pints in.

Along the way they even destroyed the small shopping precinct which held the old Midland Bank, where I opened my first bank account.

All of those lost haunts bounced back today when I came across a series of pictures of the High Street from 1970.

The quality isn’t wonderful, but they are my Eltham, frozen in time, and gone for ever.

They come from Man & Town which was a pack of educational source material aimed at getting kids to look at original historical and contemporary documents.

The idea was rather than tell kids what to think, the documents with a set of briefing notes were aimed at getting them to make judgements about past events and present situations.

The packs were produced by Jackdaw Publications and were very popular in the 1970s, and in the way these things go I bet there will be people who remember using them.

In the case of Man & Town the challenge was to trace how towns develop and the decisions town planners might make to manage change.

Not all the documents were about our High Street but enough were, and interestingly mirrored a real exercise by the planners in the Council who were looking at how Eltham could be changed.

And that is it.

I have chosen just three pictures from the High Street collection, and I leave you to wander back the half century.

Leaving me just to say I did go looking for Jackdaw to ask permission to reproduce the images.

Copyright and seeking permission is important to me, having seen my own stuff lifted and paraded across the internet. 

But after an exhaustive search I am not sure they still exist.  There is what I think is an American company with the same name but they do not appear to be connected to the UK company.

Back copies of many of the packs are still available and command prices between £10 and £20.

Location; Eltham High Street

Pictures; Eltham in 1970, from Man & Town No. 80, courtesy of Jackdaw Publications