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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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Uploaded on October 1, 2013
Taken circa 1950