About Vintage Stuff

The aim of Vintage Stuff is to display some of the ephemera that I have collected, often inadvertently, over the years. I am now deliberately seeking out interesting old adverts, screen shots, leaflets, obscure record covers, picture postcards and illustrations; anything that catches my eye, in fact. They will be mainly, but not exclusively of UK origin (so many vintage blogs appear to be American) and almost always a scan from something that I actually have in my collection, rather than off the net. If you do re-blog, please acknowledge the source. Further stuff, mainly photographs, can be found on my Flickr pages, via the Benny Hill record cover.

Tuesday 1 October 2013

Dockland cricket

This interesting picture appeared in London - Work & Play, published by Batsford in 1950 and is credited to Fox Photo's. It shows children playing cricket in Alpha Road, Millwall, using improvised packing cases and bits of wood while the grown-ups look on. I love the sheer incongruity of seeing ships looming above terraced houses, once a common enough sight in Liverpool, Glasgow and elsewhere.

Alpha Road was apparently renamed Alpha Grove at some point, and still exists, although everything around it has been rebuilt, either because of bomb damage or post-war redevelopment. In my 1950s A-Z, it is already down as Alpha Grove, which then stretched up to Millwall South Dock, where the Union Castle Line ship is berthed. There was also a railway line, tantalisingly behind that tall fence......


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