A Walk Around Newham, East London in 1991

We’re off on a walk round the east London Borough of Newham. Taken by Peter Marshall, these photographs may include some taken on or close to the borough boundary with some content from neighbouring boroughs. “These images are scanned from postcard-size enprints made when the films were developed,” says Peter. “Some show colour casts, unsharpness and other defects not present on the negatives.”

 

Newham is home to West Ham United football club, poverty it remains one of the most economically deprived boroughs in the UK –  the site for the 2012 Olympics Games and the disaster at Ronan Point tower, part of which collapsed on 16 May 1968, the day, according to essayist Jonathan Meades, modern architecture died.

In 2019, the BBC reported that Newham had the highest rate of tuberculosis in the UK at 107 per 100000 population, which was higher than Rwanda (69) and Iraq (45) according to WHO figures from 2013. Located east of the minted City of London money mills and north of the River Thames, Newham is not yet on the tourist trail. But it might be. The suited and busy fly in and out of City Airport, a single runway trammelled between two former docks. They look down now and see new, anaemic high rise apartment blocks heading east waiting for the money to move in.

 

Via: Peter Marshall.