BBC archive of old London programmes

Your guide to London's culture and transport news and events taking place across the city.

It’s a boring Bank Holiday, so what better than to watch a load of old BBC programmes about London’s buses, buildings and tube tunnels?

I was trawling the iPlayer archives the other night and found one programme and then found that it’s part of a collection that has been put online.

So, you might want to see the efforts to save/gentrify Spitalfields in 1985, or see the sights and sounds of London along the 31 bus route — also in 1985.

How about a much longer version of a clip I highlighted last year about the construction of the Victoria Line, with stiff “open university” presenter, and a disregard for Health & Safety that would make builders today cringe in horror.

Smoking, in the tunnel boring machine? Shocking!

More from 1985, the people who live in Soho. From 1975, Kenneth Williams talks about Bloomsbury, or a look at the Black Cab driver in 1996.

All quite wonderful stuff, slow, easy listening heritage.

Click here.

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One comment

Ed says:

5 May 2014 at 2:36 pm

Could do with more programmes like this being produced nowadays. What is documented today will of course be heritage for “tomorrow”. The recent “The Route Masters: Running London’s Roads” series on BBC 2 was quite good …be interesting to look back on in say 25-30years time.