When did the London gentrification start?

cells

Interesting question in another thread. I think Late 1990s

The demographic falls in London after ww2 started to slowly reverse around the 1980s and the right to buy was introduced. Both were important changes going from contraction to expansion

In the 1990s council house building started to fall away which was a very important factor in starting to dilute the very high numbers of council homes in certain boroughs and areas and moved away from council estates to mixed estates. Some places eg Hackney were over 50% council homes which depressed the whole borough as it hoovered up poorer people from all over London and rUK.


So I have those three factors as the big changes, reversal of population decline. Introduction of Right To Buy and big drop in council house building all fitting together towards the late 1990s as the start of the 'gentrification' of London

HornetSaver

The factors all add up.

How those factors point towards it being New Labour's fault mystify me somewhat. Make no mistake, more things that are broken in the country are Labour's fault than not, but I wouldn't necessarily add this one to the list.

vivatifosi

I think it was before that. Probably mid 1980s.

Already by that time, Notting Hill, which was traditionally an immigrant area, was being gentrified. You also have massive clearance of buildings in the docks for the creation of Canary Wharf. Those first Docklands houses, even back then were c £100-120k for waterfront. The old docker families said that they'd never be able to afford them and were having their right to a waterfront access removed. There were protests at the time.

This was also the time that "early adopters" were moving into the more edgy areas, e.g. Brixton, a few years after the riots, and the nicer parts of Hackney.

It was also at this time that the flow of people out of London and its falling population was truly reversed.

This was also the time of deregulation... The Big Bang deregulation of finance happened in 1986, followed by the smaller bangs, essentially deregulation of the services... law, accountancy, etc.

This led to a massive growth in commercial property in London. If you look at the city, there are very few commercial buildings standing today that date from before this time. It was also the time when construction of big buildings with large floor plates started. Broadgate was an example of a really big development at the time.

So you would get a bank or financial company (and later the business services companies) that previously had a representative office with a handful of staff, suddenly occupying a 10,000 square m trading floor.

These jobs were well paid, plus there were far more of them than before. Consequently there was a draw for recruitment... from the Essex traders on the floor to people from other parts of the UK and continental Europe and beyond.

Initially there was some slack in a market that was marked by years of people moving out, but this was taken up reasonably quickly, hence the move out to gentrification started.

Generali

1960s Chelsea when the arty mob moved in.

michaels

I reckon it was the rebuilding after the blitz....no hang on, actually it was the slum removal after the great fire of 1666

vivatifosi

Chelsea on Thames was definitely gentrified as early as the 1600s. I've been researching a wealthy chap who had a home there. By using his private boat to travel up and down the Thames rather than travelling through town, it was much easier to avoid the vagabonds and ruffians.

He was also an MP. I bet he had a duck house, even then.

Generali

vivatifosi wrote: »

Chelsea on Thames was definitely gentrified as early as the 1600s. I've been researching a wealthy chap who had a home there. By using his private boat to travel up and down the Thames rather than travelling through town, it was much easier to avoid the vagabonds and ruffians.

He was also an MP. I bet he had a duck house, even then.

By 1945 it had definitely gone downhill. Ol' Ma Generali had a friend that was a struggling artist in the early 60s that lived in a cheap flat in Chelsea.

vivatifosi

Generali wrote: »

By 1945 it had definitely gone downhill. Ol' Ma Generali had a friend that was a struggling artist in the early 60s that lived in a cheap flat in Chelsea.

At the end of the,war and into the sixties, my great aunt owned a pair of those lovely An Fab houses in Holland Park. She was comfortably well off, as opposed to the rolling in it, that you would have to be to own just a flat in one today.

missbiggles1

Gentrification was certainly spreading in the 70s when I lived in London, with Fulham being described as "west Chelsea" and Finchley becoming "west Hampstead".

worldtraveller

Generali wrote: »

By 1945 it had definitely gone downhill. Ol' Ma Generali had a friend that was a struggling artist in the early 60s that lived in a cheap flat in Chelsea.

Interesting! 'Ol' Ma' worldtraveller was a student at Chelsea School of Art in the early 1950's and had a flat in Chelsea.

Generali

worldtraveller wrote: »

Interesting! 'Ol' Ma' worldtraveller was a student at Chelsea School of Art in the early 1950's and had a flat in Chelsea.

I wonder if there's a connection. I just found out that a mate from uni and a very old work colleague from a Saturday job I had as a kid in a shop are now friends despite have apparently nothing at all in common geographically, socially or interests.

I once went on holiday to Yugoslavia (which dates it) and all the English kids in the hotel formed a sort of gang. Two of the girls were from Portsmouth and it was obvious they were getting on particularly well. It turned out that their mothers had been besties as kids and then moved away from Pompey and lost touch. Each had married and returned to the area and lived 2 streets apart