| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? 17:00 - May 9 with 2065 views | Joey_Joe_Joe_Junior |
Was having a beer last night locally and a bar tender was telling me this area was literally a war zone thirty years ago. Gentrification does seem to push the problem areas further out.
Obviously a bit of a different scale out here in terms of safety/violence but just got me thinking. London surely had some very dodgy areas back in the day? I know Kings X has gone from a bit shady to a Tech Hub. Where else would you be be going for brunch in between strollers this weekend where you might have been mugged years ago? I only lived in the city 15 years ago in the SW and it was almost annoyingly trendy everywhere. Not that you ever want to be near crime but a bit of grit makes city life more real sometimes.
Don't think I have ever fairly unsafe in London (which is obviously a good thing) but I do remember there being some fairly rough estates though even in the West.
Incredible there was over 2k murders in NYC alone in 1990 and in those same Brooklyn streets you can't buy an apartment for under $1.5M now! |  | | |  |
| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 17:28 - May 9 with 1804 views | vapour_trail |
King’s Cross was dodgy as fck in the early 90s and was essentially pimps pushers and prostitutes as the great s-express tune went.
Shoreditch when I started working there in 2000 was a dump though never dangerous. It is absolutely unrecognisable now, and whilst a lot smarter and more expensive, utterly boring by comparison. |  |
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| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 17:29 - May 9 with 1798 views | Oldsmoker |
I have found London menacing at times especially in the 70's and 80's.
I would go to pubs hosting a live punk band in the most deprived areas but it was car to pub door and then back to car - barely experiencing the gritty underworld. Standing at a London bus stop late at night not knowing if a bus was coming and being a main road it had lots of foot traffic so it was scary.
For real trouble I found the northern cities way more scary. A southern accent was treated as suspicious and that 5'4" bloke (I'm 6'4") would always start something. |  |
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| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 17:42 - May 9 with 1749 views | Joey_Joe_Joe_Junior |
| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 17:28 - May 9 by vapour_trail |
King’s Cross was dodgy as fck in the early 90s and was essentially pimps pushers and prostitutes as the great s-express tune went.
Shoreditch when I started working there in 2000 was a dump though never dangerous. It is absolutely unrecognisable now, and whilst a lot smarter and more expensive, utterly boring by comparison. |
I guess Shoreditch by Geography was always going to be a place that was going to change.
I wonder how many people wish they had brought a house in Clapham in the early 90s! | | | |
| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 17:55 - May 9 with 1706 views | DJR |
I lived in south London in the 80s and 90s, and Peckham had a bit of a reputation but I visited it, played football there and travelled through it a lot on the bus, and never found it particularly threatening, despite the occasional signs asking for witnesses to a murder.
Stonebridge Park in north west London, where I also played football, also had a bit of a reputation.
As it is, the borough in London with by far and away the most crime is Westminster, no doubt because of the numbers who visit it. |  | | |
| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 17:55 - May 9 with 1702 views | Oldsmoker |
| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 17:42 - May 9 by Joey_Joe_Joe_Junior |
I guess Shoreditch by Geography was always going to be a place that was going to change.
I wonder how many people wish they had brought a house in Clapham in the early 90s! |
Very few. Have you been to Clapham? | |
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| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 18:10 - May 9 with 1622 views | BanksterDebtSlave |
| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 17:55 - May 9 by DJR |
I lived in south London in the 80s and 90s, and Peckham had a bit of a reputation but I visited it, played football there and travelled through it a lot on the bus, and never found it particularly threatening, despite the occasional signs asking for witnesses to a murder.
Stonebridge Park in north west London, where I also played football, also had a bit of a reputation.
As it is, the borough in London with by far and away the most crime is Westminster, no doubt because of the numbers who visit it. |
Peckham? Don't you mean Nunhead! |  |
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| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 18:19 - May 9 with 1591 views | Churchman |
Peckham, Camberwell, New Cross wasn’t the best.
Even ambulance crews and fire engines needed an extra person in the wagon if you visited North Peckham Estate or the locals would torch it. On one occasion we went there with police, bailiffs, locksmith and co and a group gathered each end of the balcony we were on. I thought we were going over into the nets that contained filled nappies, dog dirt, contents of dustbins. Even my always carried iron bar didn’t give me a load of confidence.
You’d pay the little Cerise Rd car park man a little ‘Christmas Box’ and that way there was a good chance you’d have a car when you retuned. Everyone knew where to buy a gun in Camberwell just as you knew which pubs to go in and which to not go in unless you wanted an unpleasant day.
On my first day there, walking out of Peckham Rye station somebody had just been stabbed in the gut in McDonalds when I passed it.
An interesting place to work. It was ok when you got to know it and knew ‘the rules’. |  | | |
| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 18:36 - May 9 with 1529 views | ghostofescobar |
Everywhere, other than those “posh” areas, such as Kensington, Chelsea, predominantly west London. Some of the burbs were ok, parts of Enfield as an example. I don’t remember going anywhere else and thinking “this is posh”. It was predominantly rough. I’d say, in general terms, closer to the centre of London has got a bit better, outer London has got a bit worse. Maybe that’s too generalised. |  |
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| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 18:37 - May 9 with 1522 views | UB9Blue |
Harlesden, Hayes, West Drayton and White City were all fairly awful and in fairness, they haven't improved.
Vauxhall and Elephant & Castle were 'intersting' places during the day and didn't improve at night |  | | |
| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 18:38 - May 9 with 1523 views | BloomBlue |
Outer London was often ougher than inner. Kidbrooke, for example had a terrible reputation, it often felt like a war zone. Cars turned on their side, burnt out, left in the road for months was normal. Even the Met police would only travel around in 4 or more. It was hard to find a property that didn't have metals bars on the windows or doors. Muggings, beatings was the norm. But like a lot of places in London, it became slightly trendy and now you have Kidbrooke village.
Often the easiest way of identifying which were really rough is look at the size of the flats in an area, if they're large that normally meant it was really rough. Meaning the only way of attracting new people into an area is offer more square footage for their money when they rebuilt. A good example of that is the Barbican. It was one of the roughest areas in 60/70s, then when they built the estate they deliberately built the flats much larger than normal as they knew it was the only way of attracting people.
Islington had a lot of rough areas in the 90s, but strangely when Blair became PM, (he was living in one of the nicer Islington areas), lots of people suddenly thought, oh Islington let's have a look there. Resulting in properties people couldn't give away, almost over night were worth 100s of thousands.
But overall Tower Hamlets and Newham probably had the roughest areas in the 90s and in many ways still do. |  | | |
| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 19:16 - May 9 with 1426 views | jontysnut |
| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 18:36 - May 9 by ghostofescobar |
Everywhere, other than those “posh” areas, such as Kensington, Chelsea, predominantly west London. Some of the burbs were ok, parts of Enfield as an example. I don’t remember going anywhere else and thinking “this is posh”. It was predominantly rough. I’d say, in general terms, closer to the centre of London has got a bit better, outer London has got a bit worse. Maybe that’s too generalised. |
I was a social security visiting officer around the Elephant, Old Kent Road, Bermondsey in the 80s. Places like the Silwood estate could be intimidating but I never felt especially threatened. I don't want to come across all Faragey, but back then it was pretty much a white working class area - with an endless supply of dodgy geezers. That said, I don't think I was ever very far from a row. |  | | |
| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 19:35 - May 9 with 1387 views | DJR |
| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 18:19 - May 9 by Churchman |
Peckham, Camberwell, New Cross wasn’t the best.
Even ambulance crews and fire engines needed an extra person in the wagon if you visited North Peckham Estate or the locals would torch it. On one occasion we went there with police, bailiffs, locksmith and co and a group gathered each end of the balcony we were on. I thought we were going over into the nets that contained filled nappies, dog dirt, contents of dustbins. Even my always carried iron bar didn’t give me a load of confidence.
You’d pay the little Cerise Rd car park man a little ‘Christmas Box’ and that way there was a good chance you’d have a car when you retuned. Everyone knew where to buy a gun in Camberwell just as you knew which pubs to go in and which to not go in unless you wanted an unpleasant day.
On my first day there, walking out of Peckham Rye station somebody had just been stabbed in the gut in McDonalds when I passed it.
An interesting place to work. It was ok when you got to know it and knew ‘the rules’. |
I played Sunday football in the early 90s for an Irish pub team off the Walworth Road, and one of the team lived in the equally notorious Aylesbury Estate in Walworth to the north of Burgess Park.
With a couple of young kids, he said it was an awful place to live with crime and drugs rife, and he subsequently decided to return to Ireland.
It was the place where Tony Blair made his first speech but that had no effect because the place is in process of being demolished and redeveloped.
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/tony-blair-aylesbury-estate-south-london-crime-420365 | | | |
| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 19:49 - May 9 with 1331 views | thebooks |
I lived in Hackney in the 90s, in Clapton. Its reputation was “rough” but tbh I never had any problems there – in fact, it was the place I most enjoyed living in during my whole life.
Nowhere’s “rough” really – it’s often a way of labelling poorer/less white people, and most areas have had a mix of people. The house I shared was owned by a headteacher who’d lived in the area since the 1970s.
All in all, it’s better being able to live in central(ish) London than it becoming sanitised and gentrified. |  | | |
| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 20:25 - May 9 with 1238 views | TractorWood |
There is a well known story of a City law firm trying to break America. It ended up selling a brown stone in Brooklyn for more profit than it made in 10 years trying to break the Manhanttan legal market. |  |
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| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 20:58 - May 9 with 1085 views | Churchman |
| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 19:35 - May 9 by DJR |
I played Sunday football in the early 90s for an Irish pub team off the Walworth Road, and one of the team lived in the equally notorious Aylesbury Estate in Walworth to the north of Burgess Park.
With a couple of young kids, he said it was an awful place to live with crime and drugs rife, and he subsequently decided to return to Ireland.
It was the place where Tony Blair made his first speech but that had no effect because the place is in process of being demolished and redeveloped.
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/tony-blair-aylesbury-estate-south-london-crime-420365 |
Yep, I knew the Aylesbury estate and Walworth. All part of our area. Rough as hell. | | | |
| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 21:08 - May 9 with 1055 views | Pendejo |
| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 18:38 - May 9 by BloomBlue |
Outer London was often ougher than inner. Kidbrooke, for example had a terrible reputation, it often felt like a war zone. Cars turned on their side, burnt out, left in the road for months was normal. Even the Met police would only travel around in 4 or more. It was hard to find a property that didn't have metals bars on the windows or doors. Muggings, beatings was the norm. But like a lot of places in London, it became slightly trendy and now you have Kidbrooke village.
Often the easiest way of identifying which were really rough is look at the size of the flats in an area, if they're large that normally meant it was really rough. Meaning the only way of attracting new people into an area is offer more square footage for their money when they rebuilt. A good example of that is the Barbican. It was one of the roughest areas in 60/70s, then when they built the estate they deliberately built the flats much larger than normal as they knew it was the only way of attracting people.
Islington had a lot of rough areas in the 90s, but strangely when Blair became PM, (he was living in one of the nicer Islington areas), lots of people suddenly thought, oh Islington let's have a look there. Resulting in properties people couldn't give away, almost over night were worth 100s of thousands.
But overall Tower Hamlets and Newham probably had the roughest areas in the 90s and in many ways still do. |
An old friend of mine lives in Oz he messaged me last year to say he'd got talking to a guy from Kidbrook who said it was rough and asked my opinion...
I said yes it was, that rough that they bulldozed the place |  |
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| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 21:34 - May 9 with 977 views | Lord_Lucan |
| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 18:37 - May 9 by UB9Blue |
Harlesden, Hayes, West Drayton and White City were all fairly awful and in fairness, they haven't improved.
Vauxhall and Elephant & Castle were 'intersting' places during the day and didn't improve at night |
Sorry UB9 but I can see no instance where you can compare Hayes and West Drayton with the likes of Deptford and New Cross.
West Drayton, ha. Do you remember that pub / club next to the canal? Naughties. |  |
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| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 21:39 - May 9 with 968 views | Pendejo |
What does "rough" actually mean?
I live on a still predominantly council estate in SE London, with a bad rep, so bad Donal MacIntyre visited it for his "Street Crime Live" programme years ago. And I'm told Ross Kemp also visited.
Yet my family and I haven't had a problem, ok suffered a bit of car crime, but not much else... Tho there has been 4 or 5 murders in the area, plus shots fired at the local co-op, oh and one of our neighbours turned out to be the South London night stalker...
When I was a kid there were areas around Lewisham / Catford had street signs warning about muggings.
Let's face it any area where there's groups of males gathered together can be intimidating e.g. Ellenbrook shops, near Belstead Arms, and that's not a council estate | |
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| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 23:13 - May 9 with 824 views | StNeotsBlue |
Kings Cross area as mentioned was rough as, had many a good drink in The Duke of York happily missing trains home.
A few years ago, after QPR away, headed to Camden to meet some mates from other clubs in town that day had a few then ended up a few bus stops away in Chalk Farm (80's riots) in our mid 40's at the time and we were the eldest in the pub by a mile and also the only non hipsters who all seemed to be wearing silly hats and even dafter facial hair.
A few of my more aged pals said there were a few pubs in Kilburn that were to be avoided unless you were known to the Irish provos. [Post edited 9 May 23:16]
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| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 08:47 - May 10 with 459 views | DJR |
| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 23:13 - May 9 by StNeotsBlue |
Kings Cross area as mentioned was rough as, had many a good drink in The Duke of York happily missing trains home.
A few years ago, after QPR away, headed to Camden to meet some mates from other clubs in town that day had a few then ended up a few bus stops away in Chalk Farm (80's riots) in our mid 40's at the time and we were the eldest in the pub by a mile and also the only non hipsters who all seemed to be wearing silly hats and even dafter facial hair.
A few of my more aged pals said there were a few pubs in Kilburn that were to be avoided unless you were known to the Irish provos. [Post edited 9 May 23:16]
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Back in the 1980s I played for a football team in the London Legal League. The games were played after worked on astroturf pitches at various locations in London.
After the game we would always go for a drink at a pub near where we had played, and I remember going to what turned out to be two Irish pubs in Kilburn. I suppose we stood out a bit like a sore thumb because we all changed back into our suits after the games.
The first pub was very large and I didn't sense we got a hostile reaction. But we weren't asked to contribute to the collection made as the pub was closing. There was no indication what the collection was for but with people chipping in fivers and tenners, we assumed (perhaps wrongly) that it was a collection for the provos.
The second pub was much smaller and we got a distinctly hostile reaction when we walked in. Nevertheless, we stayed for a couple of drinks and ,whilst we were treated with suspicion (perhaps they thought it was a new MI5 tactic), we didn't get any actual hassle. [Post edited 10 May 9:19]
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| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 09:47 - May 10 with 389 views | leitrimblue |
| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 08:47 - May 10 by DJR |
Back in the 1980s I played for a football team in the London Legal League. The games were played after worked on astroturf pitches at various locations in London.
After the game we would always go for a drink at a pub near where we had played, and I remember going to what turned out to be two Irish pubs in Kilburn. I suppose we stood out a bit like a sore thumb because we all changed back into our suits after the games.
The first pub was very large and I didn't sense we got a hostile reaction. But we weren't asked to contribute to the collection made as the pub was closing. There was no indication what the collection was for but with people chipping in fivers and tenners, we assumed (perhaps wrongly) that it was a collection for the provos.
The second pub was much smaller and we got a distinctly hostile reaction when we walked in. Nevertheless, we stayed for a couple of drinks and ,whilst we were treated with suspicion (perhaps they thought it was a new MI5 tactic), we didn't get any actual hassle. [Post edited 10 May 9:19]
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Had a gun pulled on me in a Republican bar in Donegal 20 years ago.
The Isle of Dogs was a bit of a sh1tehole/rough in the 80,s an 90,s. No idea what it's like now. |  | | |
| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 10:59 - May 10 with 272 views | WeWereZombies |
When I moved to Wealdstone in the mid 1980s I was looking forward to sampling the local pub scene but the one around the corner closed at nine thirty every night due to a pool table thrown over the bar incident the previous year. |  |
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| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 11:43 - May 10 with 201 views | giant_stow |
| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 18:38 - May 9 by BloomBlue |
Outer London was often ougher than inner. Kidbrooke, for example had a terrible reputation, it often felt like a war zone. Cars turned on their side, burnt out, left in the road for months was normal. Even the Met police would only travel around in 4 or more. It was hard to find a property that didn't have metals bars on the windows or doors. Muggings, beatings was the norm. But like a lot of places in London, it became slightly trendy and now you have Kidbrooke village.
Often the easiest way of identifying which were really rough is look at the size of the flats in an area, if they're large that normally meant it was really rough. Meaning the only way of attracting new people into an area is offer more square footage for their money when they rebuilt. A good example of that is the Barbican. It was one of the roughest areas in 60/70s, then when they built the estate they deliberately built the flats much larger than normal as they knew it was the only way of attracting people.
Islington had a lot of rough areas in the 90s, but strangely when Blair became PM, (he was living in one of the nicer Islington areas), lots of people suddenly thought, oh Islington let's have a look there. Resulting in properties people couldn't give away, almost over night were worth 100s of thousands.
But overall Tower Hamlets and Newham probably had the roughest areas in the 90s and in many ways still do. |
I was brought up in Islington through the 80s and 90s, just round the corner from Tone's house in Barnsbury.
While you're right that there was and still are rough areas, the gentrification started much earlier than you say. My mum and dad were probably in the first wave of that buying a Georgian townhouse for something like 40-odd grand in the early 70s. Those places now for £3m+, I'm told. The funny thing is, that same road still has loads of converted council flats in it - the council picked the houses up cheap in the 70s and tuned them into flats, cos no one else wanted them.
I'm told that when my Mum and Dad bought, my Cardiff Grandad asked my mum why she was willingly going to live in a slum.
Anyway, back to the Op Hackney has seen the greatest, fastest change in my lifetime. It was a bit of sh1thole for years, but these days is highly desirable, to the point that bods that can't afford Hackney, now move to my neck of the woods, Walthamstow.
Walthamstow is currently mid gentrification: ever more posh accents knocking about, but still space for people with less money. Quite a bit of gang violence. [Post edited 10 May 11:46]
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| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 11:44 - May 10 with 191 views | Lord_Lucan |
| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 09:47 - May 10 by leitrimblue |
Had a gun pulled on me in a Republican bar in Donegal 20 years ago.
The Isle of Dogs was a bit of a sh1tehole/rough in the 80,s an 90,s. No idea what it's like now. |
I dodged three pipe bombs in Ballycastle on the eve of The Llamas Fair and I was standing next to a huge car bomb most of the morning on the day of the fair.
All planted by The Red Hand.
https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/new-bomb-fear-in-ballycastle/28330060.ht | |
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| Older London blues. What areas of London were rough in the 90s? on 11:59 - May 10 with 137 views | turtle2 |
i wouldnt go anywhere in London - compared to the 90's London is an absolute hell hole - its totally unsafe and thousands of people are moving out - lived there in the 1990's - it was a joy ..... now overcrowded with immigration out of control and totally unsafe - take a word of advice and stay out | | | |
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