Rose
‘it was one big community it really was’
Rose has lived in the Area for many years. She shares with us her experiences coming to Silvertown and making her life there.
On moving to Silvertown,
"when he said that he lived in Silvertown I said, well nobody lives there do they? It’s the docks and he said ‘owh there’s a lot of people live that Silvertown and that’s…he brought me over here, it was noisy, there were hundreds of people walking up and down and because there were factories all the way along from north Woolwich right up to Canning Town was one factory after another plus the docks so it’s a very noisy place and, I mean people complain about the airport but it’s nowhere near as noisy as it was when the docks and the factories were all going.
On the local activities
'Well there were lots of pubs, lots, they all had music on Saturday, Friday nights, Saturday nights, there was the Tate institute, um they had dances there and er, there were lots of shops along here, so many things that have all gone now and it was a much, it was a much livelier place and there were community centres and again they had music at the weekends and so people made their life really within Silvertown and north Woolwich and my husband never really wanted to go beyond Silvertown or North Woolwich'
On the people
"Oh they were good, there were a lot of good people around here, they were in the main, English and Irish um, we had, three of four um Caribbean families round here um, and a couple of Asian families in north Woolwich but in the main east London people and Irish people that settled here and er, yes, everyone knew everybody and er, there wasn’t, you could walk along albert road and you knew every single person coming along by first name, that’s what it was like,'