I remember seeing a movie set in London in the mid-Fifties, and there was still unrepaired devastation. If all the damage has since been repaired, which street or neighborhood was the last to be fixed up?
I can’t speak for London, but I did come across this article not long ago, relating to the National Picture Theatre in Kingston upon Hull.
It is said to be the last surviving ruin of a blitzed civilian building left standing in Britain.
Given the price of real estate in London I’d be shocked if there was still a scrap of land that had been left derelict for 70 years.
I was born in South-East London and have a lot of family there and I was never aware of any land still bombed out (eighties onwards). I remember the huge amount of derelict land in the Docklands and the redevelpoment, but that was due to the closure of the docks.
Not London, but in Alan Garner’s famous fantasy novel Elidor written in 1965 and set in contemporary Manchester, he describes whole streets of empty bombed out houses where the children find a gateway to another world.
The Blitz is why there’s so many modern buildings located next to very old ones in London. Conversely, Paris has more uniform architecture because the city was surrendered before it was razed.
I think there was a Time Team episode about a block of flats, maybe several blocks, destroyed during the Blitz. It hadn’t at the time of the show been rebuilt, intentionally I believe, to serve as a reminder. I’ll see if I can find the show. The dig didn’t turn up much but several of the former residents were interviewed.
^
Were’nt blocks of flats a post war thing, mainly to house the people who had been bombed out?
The lawyer in the OP might want to check out Grays Inn. It was bombed quite heavily during the war and the building were rebuilt in the same style (but with 50’s interiors, which makes them bloody awful from inside). You can still see damage in some parts. but they have to point it out to you.
No, there’s lots of pre-war blocks of flats in London. They were constructing them from the late Victorianperiod onwards. Here’sa block of flats from around the turn of the twentieth century. Here’s one from the 1930s.
There were, it’s true, lots more following postwar reconstruction.
You’re presumably thinking of their special programme about the Shoreditch Park excavations.
Some of the City churches, such as St Dunstan-in-the-East and Christ Church Greyfriars, were left as ruins and converted into small parks. The City had had too many parish churches anyway, so this was an opportunity to rationalise things.
[QUOTE=beowulff]
The Victoria and Albert Museum still has bomb damage visible.
[/QUOTE]
Quite a few public buildings have minor bomb damage deliberately left unrestored. The most obvious example would be the Churchill arch in the Palace of Westminster.
Not London - but I was in Coventry Cathedral recently. A very moving place dedicated to reconciliation.
In the City of London itself (the square mile in the centre of Greater London), there’s Christ Church Greyfriars. Only the tower was left standing after the blitz, and now the rest of the church is a public garden. (I visited the ruined church earlier this year.)
Yup, but there are still plenty of bullet holes and pockmarks on buildings left from that period - the Germans didn’t surrender it without a token fight. And, well, the Germans might not have bombed the place… but the Allies did. Hence why the western suburbs have changed from working class, heavy industry in the 40s to office high-rises in the 60s. Explosive gentrification 
Across the street from my old house was an ‘allotment’ which was actually where a few houses were destroyed in the war and they let it grow over.
Outside my current house is a large actual allotment, which grew from the WW2 victory gardens. It started out as people using the exposed soil in a 1940s bomb crater and they gradually tore up more paving stones to enlarge it and make it more regularly shaped.
Again, not London, but there is also Charles Church in Plymouth:
And why Coventry is a mess of concrete, it was largely rebuilt cheaply in the 50s and 60s.
We’ve got one like that in Southampton:
[QUOTE=Coventry City Fans]
In our Coventry homes,
We speak with an accent exceedingly rare,
You want a cathedral we’ve got one to spare,
In our Coventry homes…
[/QUOTE]
Birmingham, too. Though to be honest it’s hard to see why they bothered rebuilding in a lot of places.
Many thanks to you all. Good to know.
I understand they’re still finding and removing unexploded ordnance. Hey, did Lt Brian Ash ever marry Susan Mount? BTW, I thought she was ever so hot in “To Sir, With Love”.