London Neighbourhoods 3: Streatham

In 2002, BBC Radio 4 listeners voted Streatham High Road the worst street in Britain. Choking traffic, run-down shop fronts and violent crime were listed among its charms and the nation’s eyes rolled as its stereotypes of South London were upheld. I didn’t know this when I arrived in late 2007, although I was hardly bowled over at first. I wrote the place off as rather dowdy, full of traffic sounds and fumes, signifying very little. “It’s London’s answer to Sidwell Street” I remember telling my parents, referring to an unloved street in blitz-affected Exeter for which I nevertheless have a soft spot.

With time I put down the shallow kind of roots that are all a mid-20’s Londoner is typically capable of. I made friends with a Sri Lankan Tamil who ran a newsagent and urged me to get hitched – “Girlfriend life is happy life” were his exact words. I fell briefly in lust with an incompetent Afghan fruit-seller called Jihad before transferring my (ever unrequited) affections to an astonishingly beautiful Iraqi Kurd in an off-licence. I bought mushrooms from an old English couple at the Streatham Fruiterers, stationery from a lonely Ghanaian girl called Ekuya and jars of baby octopus at the Mediterranean Food Centre on the corner of Wyatt Park Road. I would occasionally have a Full English at the Café Vivaldi (Turkish-run, of course – you’d never catch English people serving an English breakfast in London) where a frumpy customer told me how she filled her days riding buses and making up jokes. “Dowdy” was upgraded to “Family-friendly community feeling” and traffic fumes were superseded in significance by pride at living – until 2010 – on the (self-proclaimed) longest High Street in Europe.

While the verdigris shoots of gentrification were in evidence – new bars and cafés continually sprouted up round Streatham Hill station – nothing prepared me for the discovery, from an ex-colleague, that decades ago Streatham had been the Knightsbridge of South London. The nation’s first supermarket (part of the Express Dairies group) opened in the early fifties, followed (unbelievable as it now seems) by the first large Waitrose. Internet nostalgia forums buzz with accounts of the Locarno nightclub that is apparently where Come Dancing (pre-Strictly) and Miss World were first filmed.

The epicentre of this douceur de vivre, however, was Pratt’s, a drapers-turned-department store that became part of the John Lewis partnership. A thriving café scene sprung up around Pratt’s, and wealthy residents (“lots of Jews” a hairdresser told me in a conspiratorial whisper) lived in the gorgeous red brick apartment blocks that line the street.

What happened next is one of those sad stories of urban decay. People moved out to Croydon and Sutton, the traffic volume picked up and everything spiralled downhill. Pratt’s closed in 1990 – I don’t know the full story but the hairdresser blamed Lambeth Council and told me with tears in her eyes about the death of the café life. Lambeth Council planners have since told me that, when consulting on the Streatham Masterplan, dozens of older Streathamites wrote in to say that all they cared about was bringing back Pratt’s. But Pratt’s is gone forever: even the building was demolished and replaced with a half-hearted attempt at architectural “sympathy” now occupied by an Argos, a Lidl and a Peacocks.

Today, though, Streatham seems to be on the up. On the stretch north of Streatham Hill station small boutiques and restaurants (including the marvellous Tapas Bar 61) hold their own among the chicken shops and betting shops. On nearby Leigham Court Road, Fish Tale, a fishmongers-cum-deli has been serving fresh octopus and walnut oil for the past five years. If that’s not to your taste you can brunch on Eggs Benedict in fancy new café-bars and then come back for White Russians in the evening, and if you want to really settle in, a rash of Estate Agents has sprung up to serve your needs.

Further down the road is something I’ve never come across before: a chain halal butchers. This is no scrappy open fronted affair with tinny Bollywood and a little Lebara phone stall at the front, such as are two a penny in Brixton and Peckham. Tariq Halal Meats is brightly lit, spotless and resounds with piped Qur’anic recitation. The man I spoke to in there (in Urdu, as he seemed unused to English) told me this outlet was only five months old, but that there are others in Ilford, Hounslow, Fulham and elsewhere. Lamb’s feet go for 70p, and there are also tastefully displayed delicacies such as ginger-and-lime chicken and smoked guinea fowl.

What struck me on my most recent visit to Streatham was how there seemed to be more of everything. More Polski sklep (Polish shops) including Bartek Express, which appears to be modelled on Tesco Express, even down to the font used for “express” on the sign, although the chicken gizzards and kielbasa inside suggest otherwise. More Somali restaurants on the “Little Mogadishu” stretch down the hill towards Streatham Station, which also has dahabshiil money transfer outlets and the Al Jazeera East African café. More fairtrade organic latte joints, such as Brooks and Gao, decked out according to the unwritten handbook of gentrification – rustic wooden tables, water in a mismatched liquor bottles, sugar in old Japanese tins and a goodish amount of exposed brick.

Meanwhile, the great Lusophone march south from its Stockwell epicentre is in rude health judging by the number of Portuguese and Brazilian shops now open. In one of these I met a lovely girl from São Tomé and Príncipe, who told me that the shop is actually owned by an Indian man with no apparent Portuguese connections whatsoever. Clearly a market worth tapping into, then.

There are still plenty of pawn shops and nasty pubs, and the traffic still roars past, but for every relic there is something new. A ghost of Pratt’s has risen up in the form of Pratts and Paynes, a newish member of the mostly-South London-based Antic group of pubs which serve good beer and better sausage rolls. The Hideaway Jazz venue, meanwhile receives rave reviews and might one day occupy the same space in Streathamites’ hearts as the Locarno did. Down towards Streatham Common (which in my view is one of London’s most enticing open spaces) the most blatant urban renewal of all comes in the form of a Tesco of mind-blowing proportions. It is hard to see this new “hub” (which also includes 250 flats, a leisure centre and a replacement for the much-loved old Ice Rink, another lost Streatham Gem) turning into a new Pratt’s, but who knows what this part of Streatham might look like in a decade’s time?