In Search Of Val Perrin’s Brick Lane
In recent days, the weather in London has been bright but yesterday offered a suitably occluded sky to set out with my camera in search of Val Perrin’s Brick Lane and below you can see my photographs beneath Val’s shots from 1972, revealing forty years of change in Spitalfields.
Brick Lane 1972
Brick Lane 2015
Cheshire St 1972
Cheshire St 2015
Cheshire St 1972
Cheshire St 2015
Brick Lane 1972
Brick Lane 2015
Cheshire St 1972
Cheshire St 2015
Brick Lane 1972
Brick Lane 2015
St Matthew’s Row & The Carpenters’ Arms 1972
St Matthew’s Row & The Carpenters’ Arms 2015
St Matthew’s Row 1972
St Matthew’s Row 2015
Sclater St 1972
Sclater St 2015
Corbett Place from Hanbury St 1972
Corbett Place from Hanbury St 2015
Bacon St 1972
Bacon St 2015
Code St & Shoreditch Station 1972
Code St & Shoreditch Station 2015
Pedley St Bridge 1972
Pedley St Bridge 2015
1972 Photographs copyright © Val Perrin
You may also like to take a look at
One can achieve a similar (though not as effective, and sometimes limited) result without leaving the house by having two windows open on your computer, with one open to Spitalfields Life, and the other on Googlemaps street view.
Good to see how it is now, and that it has not changed too much over the years. It all looks cleaner and better kept, but a lot of the atmosphere has gone! Happy New Year to you all! Valerie
Some things will never change — and graffiti make things not necessarily better in some cases…
Love & Peace
ACHIM
Brilliant! You did a terrific job. Usually those comparisons don’t work at all but these are marvellous.
Fascinating stuff, less people around but times move on. Not sure all the places are any better now, though.
Great combination of photographs.
I love stuff like this. This was particularly well done. Thanks for making the effort and posting.
Difficult to fathom that in 1972 the Overground didn’t exist and the former East London Line served Shoreditch during the rush hour only. And, Covent Garden station was closed on Sundays!
Good detective work and interesting comparisons, not always the ones you’d expect. Perhaps you should photograph the same spots every five years.
Curious the way that lampposts come and go. I’d have expected that these – or at least their sites – would be pretty much a constant in the streetscape.
Well done – excellent detective work linking my photos of the street scenes in 1972 with the views today. Interesting to compare what has changed and what remains. I must go back and see the area again myself !
Wonderful detective work. But it’s sad to see how few people there are in the modern shots – and none of those robust characters that define some of the earlier photos, just fleeting cyclists and solitary walkers with their heads down and shoulders to the wind. Have we lost the wonderful East End way of living in public – the buskers, the markets, chatting in the street? I do hope not; the characters are as much the East End as any of the built heritage.