For a fairly short period last year the London Borough of Newham had a museum, when the pop-up People’s Museum & Gallery Of Newham took over the old Labour Party offices on Stratford High St during the Games. Today, it’s completely bereft once again but what the borough does have is an online substitute – the Newham Story – a huge digitised archive of historical material containing copies of documents, photographs, interviews and discussions about the area’s past.
To provide a example of how fascinating this treasure trove of material can be, here’s a short photographic journey around the central Stratford area, contrasting the old photographs found on the Newham Story with what you’ll see today using Google’s Streetview:
Finally here’s the most dramatic transformation, which indicates how many changes this particular area of London has gone through over the years. The following views show exactly the same spot from the 1920s, 1970s and 2012. The first picture is of the elegant 1905 West Ham High School For Girls, which like the Trade School behind it was obliterated by high explosive bombs and parachute mines during the Blitz. With pressure on land for new buildings being largely absent in the decades following the war the site lay empty for years – the ‘Pyramid’ finally appeared in 1976. Intended to be the first of three ultra-modern council offices, this ziggurat contained the Housing and Finance departments – due to poor design it was deemed unsuitable and knocked down only 22 years later in 1998. Today the site is occupied by the local supermarket and carpark.
The Newham Story contains information on all of the areas of the borough, so you can satisfy your curiosity about places as far flung as Canning Town and West Ham. Check it out here.
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