Lambeth Local

In 1974 Lambeth Local was published by Lambeth Council and delivered door to door across the Borough



It was in that "slum housing" in Rushcroft Road that I lived at the time.
Leases for flats there now sell for £1/4 Million.
They comprised late Victorian Mansion flats (1903/4/5) on 4 floors and mostly with 2 flats per floor.
The density was about as high as any in London at the time (and still must be) and there was no chance that anybody was going to achieve an increase in housing through redevelopment.
The community was extremely close nit, partly because of the density and partly because of the nature of private tenancy that fostered letting by recommendation. This continually reinforced the existing community.
In one block out of 8 flats, 7 were of the same family. Each evening I would see the slim granny in her carpet slippers who shuffled down the street and across to her daughter’s flat to baby-sit.
Many of the flats had regulated tenancies from which the returns to the freeholder were extremely limited and in consequence the landlords were glad to off-load them on the Council one by one.
The Council then used Rushcroft Road as a sink-estate and dumped a transient population there of tenants that they did not want in flats that they wanted to keep.
The flat above me was let to a prostitute who professed to me that she had burnt her way out of the previous 20 flats that she had been in. Her boyfriend was wanted for armed robbery and so worried was he about being caught that he generally did not stop but merely slowed down, as he drove past, in order that he could be heard as he yelled up at my neighbour.
This was my introduction to Council housing.
Eventually she moved out . . . . following a fire. Water from the fire damaged the decorations to half my flat and, in particular my kitchen ceiling.
I was re-housed in Islington when it was realised that the Acro prop holding up the floor above my kitchen ceiling was standing on a floor that was little better than the one it was holding up.