The potential in sights is less obvious, but we’ve had a live experiment recently near home in north London, as neighbouring roads were transformed for two days to serve as the backdrop for a scene from a TV series to be called “Guerilla”, set in 1971. The Victorian terraces provided the right starting point, but a lot of effort went into turning the shops back into how they would have looked at the time.
Different signs went up above the doorways – simpler and more homely. The one for the garage stuck to the same words – Mountgrove Garage, MOT, Tyres, Servicing, Bodywork – and at first I thought it had only been changed because London phone numbers are longer these days, until someone else pointed out that the website wouldn’t have been there either! More subtly, today’s design is more modern in ways you know when you see it – a slightly sharper font, with smaller lettering, and a cleaner look.
Bigger changes had been made to create a 1970s grocers store, with the goods displayed on shelves in the shop window. Some of the produce is still around – tinned fruit hasn’t changed much, and Whitworth’s still sell demerara sugar, albeit in snazzier bags – but the packets of Lux and Omo washing powder, biscuits, and tinned vegetables were all a step back in time. Outside, there was advertising for tobacco, and vending machines selling cigarettes and bubble gum, which you don’t see these days.
More important than the details, however, was the overall effect. Walking along the film set took me back to the local shops in Castle Bromwich where I first lived: the grocer’s, the butcher’s, the baker’s – no, not the candlestick maker – and with it a world of different shopping patterns, different approaches to meals, less choice but maybe a more personal service.
This was probably a one-off experience for us, unless the area becomes popular as a film set. And there are permanent opportunities to go back in time at places like the Black Country Museum, Blists Hill Victorian Town in Shropshire, and Beamish. But more fun, I reckon – and one of the themes that will run through this blog – is to look around a bit harder to see what is still with us from the past, the sign painted on the wall, or the unusual street name that tells you who used to trade there. What would the travellers from the 1970s, or the 1570s, have actually seen that we can still see? And what would they have seen instead?
To make the point, there is at least one sign locally which the film-makers didn’t need to cover up and recreate, but could just leave in place: one for a builders’ merchants store, which is now a beauty parlour. I’ll be drawing on more such survivals in future blogs.