Olive Street

General view of Olive Street (named after a street called Vine Street!) showing the tenements,factory, police station and church.

 

View from the top of the street. The church is a table decoration that my parents had. Not in such good condition these days but nice to get use out of it.

Factory workers lining up at the start of the working day. In these days where industrial and residential tend to be separate the idea of a factory in the middle of a block of slums might seem strange. Back then it was normal.

The home of Cyrus Peabody, owner of the factory. The house is far older than the factory and the slums having been in the Peabody family for generations. In reality, it's an incense burner from Birmingham Christmas Market that was accidentally broken and no longer considered fit for display in the house!

View down the street giving a better view of the positions of the factory, Peabody's house and the police station. As it's vaguely American I suppose I should call it a station house.

View of the top of the street showing the vicar outside the church. Olive Street has been set up on the space previously occupied by Fairport harbour so the buildings behind the end of the road are from Fairport. Completely different neo-Lovecraftian places.

OK, the real life influences. In my childhood I lived in the Team Valley Gateshead, just off  Askew Road. Most of the elements of Olive Street are represented here - though I don't remember a police station. Likewise, there was no equivalent to the Peabody House. 

There was a factory  and a mission (Vine Street Mission - there is no way to describe Sister Winifred!). And English equivalents of New York slums - 2 up and 2 down, if you lived in the 'up' you had an outside loo down concrete steps and no rail. Concrete gets very slippery in the wet! 

There was a print works at the bottom of Askew Road that discharged into the River Team. Half a dozen pipes, each discharging a different colour waste dye. The discharged dyestuff streams didn't merge with each other so it was like a rainbow heading downstream towards the River Tyne. Late 50s/early 60s was a different world.