Tower block life
London university halls of residence
In the 70s, some people thought living 10 storeys up was 'street'. They'd obviously never been to South Woodford, as Trevor from north London can testify...
...at some point in the last year, (or so the barmaid in the non-RIP local pub, the George, told me) the three towers of the London University halls of residence in South Woodford were pulled down. In their place, there is a pile of rubble bearing more of a resemblance to the Great Pyramid than future landfill. This is currently what people will see as they drive past my former place of residence (from October 1973 to February 1974).
Midlands lad
The three 'halls' were my first experience of London living when I moved here from the Midlands. Being London-naive in the extreme, I had visions of sophisticated and mildly debauched settings somewhere like Camden Town or Ladbrook Grove (which I assumed were 'just down the road a-piece') which whould aid my transfomation from provincial chrysalis into urban butterfly. Imagine my moroseness when I found that no-one seemed to have heard of South Woodford and, in fact, it was, in the parlance of the day, 'nowheresville'.
I found myself on the 10th floor of Beaumont Hall (the next one down the windswept bluff was Creech Hall, the other's name has been erased from my ageing circuitry). Three years later it was considered extremely 'street' to live in a tower block, but somehow I doubt if the tastemakers had been to Beaumont or Creech Hall.
A journey to my friend's room in Creech would take 15 to 20 minutes, as he also lived on floor 10, even though, as the no doubt scrofular NE London crow flies, the distance was probably only about 100 yards.
Tired of London...
I hated everything about living there, felt as if I had been cheated of a 'proper' London experience, and p.o'd ASAP. In fact, I left Queen Mary College (whom the halls belonged to) and also London itself to lick my wounds. I returned 10 years later, and am still here.
However, in my occasional drives with my famuily up the M11, I would always note the continuing presence of these three sentinals, presiding spirits over the carbon monoxide pastures of the gateway to the NE corridor. Although my memory of the environs of the Halls of Residence are appropriately indistinct, the size and spectacle of this stretch of the North Circular is what shocked me on returning to it after a gap of 20 years.
It seems perfect for London RIP, as these 60s monoliths are not particularly fondly remembered by me (I wonder what others who lived there thought?) but their absence was immediately registered. When the new Nicholson's comes out, and their cartological existence is erased, I wonder in what way, if any, they will be remembered.
