Back In My Day

Back In My Day If you grew up in Britain, this page is for you 🇬🇧 Daily memories from the 60s, 70s & 80s. Follow & share yours!

You knew it before you saw it. That faint little chime drifting over the rooftops, getting louder down the street, and s...
14/10/2026

You knew it before you saw it. That faint little chime drifting over the rooftops, getting louder down the street, and suddenly the whole road was in motion.

Shoes off, coins grabbed from the mantelpiece, out the gate at a sprint. The van would park at the corner with its little hatch swung open and the menu of dreams stuck to the side in faded pictures.

Then came the serious business: a 99 with a Flake for the birthday money crowd, a Screwball with the bubblegum at the bottom for the rest of us. A Zoom if you were feeling fancy. And the eternal debate that no one ever resolved — is it "Mister Whippy" or "Mr Whippy"?

Nobody queued politely. You pressed your face up near the hatch, counted your coppers twice, and prayed the whippy swirl didn’t flop over before you got home.

Photo: Calreyn88, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

What was your order — 99, Screwball, Zoom, or something else entirely?

A handful of green, glossy conkers, still split inside their prickly shells, tumbled across a pile of crunchy autumn lea...
12/10/2026

A handful of green, glossy conkers, still split inside their prickly shells, tumbled across a pile of crunchy autumn leaves — the prize we'd pocket after school on a Saturday in October. We'd thread them on string, swing hard, and count: none-er, one-er, two-er… until one shell finally cracked. It was all thrill, bruised thumbs, and playground bragging rights right after the World Conker Championships in Ashton (held 2026-10-11). Do you remember what you'd do to make yours harder — vinegar soak, baking, nail varnish, or just sheer luck?
Photo: Solipsist, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Seventy-five years ago this summer, this stretch of the South Bank looked like the future had arrived early. 🇬🇧The Festi...
03/10/2026

Seventy-five years ago this summer, this stretch of the South Bank looked like the future had arrived early. 🇬🇧

The Festival of Britain opened in May 1951 on a derelict, bomb-scarred patch of Lambeth riverside — and for five glorious months it became the most talked-about place in the country. Nearly 8.5 million visitors came to see the Dome of Discovery, then the largest dome in the world, and the Skylon, a 300-foot cigar of steel and aluminium held aloft on cables as if it were floating in mid-air.

It was Britain showing itself what it could still do, just six years after the war — a real tonic for a rationed, weary nation. Families arrived by train, wandered the gleaming pavilions, sat by the fountains and gawped at television sets, jet engines and some of the very first computers ever shown to the public.

And then, almost overnight, it was gone. A new government ordered the whole thing pulled down, the Skylon sold for scrap — legend says bits of it ended up as ashtrays. Only the Royal Festival Hall survived, still standing on that same stretch of river today.

This photograph, taken during that festival summer, shows the crowds, the fountains and Whitehall shimmering across the Thames.

Photo: Ben Brooksbank, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Were you there in 1951 — or did your mum and dad tell you all about it?

Piccadilly Circus, 1949 — and look at the middle of the picture. That's Eros in there, somewhere.The winged statue that ...
03/10/2026

Piccadilly Circus, 1949 — and look at the middle of the picture. That's Eros in there, somewhere.

The winged statue that had watched over the Circus for decades was wrapped up and hidden away behind scaffolding and advertising hoardings when the Blitz came — taken down for safekeeping in 1941, and kept out of sight while London endured the blackout years. When this photograph was taken, four years after the war ended, ration books were still in every housewife's handbag and pennies were counted twice. Eros would have to wait a little longer for his homecoming.

But London carried on around him, as it always did. The Regent Palace Hotel doing brisk trade, Lyons tea shops full of office girls on their lunch hour, double-deckers and trolleybuses rattling down Shaftesbury Avenue — and those glorious painted adverts blooming across the buildings like flowers after a storm. Bovril! After six years of darkness, a splash of colour on the skyline felt like luxury itself.

They say you don't miss something till it's gone. Do you remember Eros boxed up like this — or did he come back to his pedestal just in time for you?

Photo: Chalmers Butterfield, CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons

🛍️ Carnaby Street, 1968 — when London dressed the world.Look closely and you can see the sign of the man who started it ...
02/10/2026

🛍️ Carnaby Street, 1968 — when London dressed the world.

Look closely and you can see the sign of the man who started it all: JOHN STEPHEN, in bold letters above his boutique. A decade earlier, this young Glaswegian had painted a little menswear shop canary yellow, filled it with short runs of clothes that changed week to week, and called it His Clothes. Within ten years he owned fifteen shops on this one street — and the world called him the King of Carnaby Street.

By the time this photograph was taken, in 1968, this narrow three-block lane behind Regent Street had become the centre of the universe for anyone under 25. Boutiques with names like Lord John, Take 6, Gear and Lady Jane crammed shoulder to shoulder, pop records blared from every doorway, and teenagers packed the pavements — flares, paisley, velvet and pointy boots, as you can see right here. In April 1966, Time magazine put the street on its cover and told the world that nothing summed up swinging London better.

Five years after this busy day, in 1973, the Greater London Council pedestrianised the street — but in '68, the black cabs still squeezed through the crowds.

Did you ever brave the Carnaby Street crowds in the Sixties — and what did you bring home? 👇

Photo: H. Grobe, CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

🐴 "Any old iron! Any old rags!"You heard him before you saw him — the clop of the horse's hooves, the cart rumbling over...
02/10/2026

🐴 "Any old iron! Any old rags!"

You heard him before you saw him — the clop of the horse's hooves, the cart rumbling over the tarmac, and that long, musical cry rolling down the street like it had all the time in the world.

Then the doors opened up and down the road. Out came everyone's cast-offs: worn-out jumpers, old curtains, a pair of dad's dead shoes, a kettle that had finally given up. The horse would stand there patiently at the kerb, munching at a nosebag, while the rag-and-bone man heaved your bundle onto the cart.

And if you were the kid who'd carried the rags down yourself? There might be something in it for you — a goldfish in a jam jar, a balloon, a handful of sweets for your trouble. Steptoe and Son made them famous on the telly, but on your street he was just the rag-and-bone man, and he knew your name.

By the time this was taken in Streatham in 1985, they were nearly gone — the horse and cart giving way to vans and megaphones. But that cry? It still echoes somewhere down the street.

Do you remember the rag-and-bone man on your road — and what did you swap him? 👇

Photo: Tony Rees, CC BY-SA via Wikimedia Commons

🏗️ 28th September 1892 — and the most famous bridge in London is barely half-built.This is Tower Bridge mid-construction...
01/10/2026

🏗️ 28th September 1892 — and the most famous bridge in London is barely half-built.This is Tower Bridge mid-construction, just under two years before it opened. Look closely and you can see the great steel skeleton rising out of the Thames, swaddled in timber scaffolding, with workmen's barges nosing around the half-finished piers below. The high-level walkways — those famous blue-and-white footbridges — are only just taking shape.It took eight years to build. Work began in 1886 to a design by Sir Horace Jones, and when the Prince of Wales declared it open on 30 June 1894, huge crowds packed both banks of the river to watch. London had never seen anything like it — a bridge that could split clean in two to let the tall ships through, yet dressed up in Gothic stone to sit comfortably beside the Tower of London.Over 130 years on, those bascules are still lifting for passing ships, exactly as the Victorians planned it. Imagine telling the men who bolted that steel together that their handiwork would become one of the most photographed landmarks on earth.Do you remember your first walk across Tower Bridge — or the first time you saw the bascules lift? 👇Photo: Unknown photographer, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

🏭 Battersea Power Station — back when those four chimneys meant something else entirely.This is March 2005, taken from C...
01/10/2026

🏭 Battersea Power Station — back when those four chimneys meant something else entirely.

This is March 2005, taken from Chelsea Bridge. The great brick cathedral of power had been silent for over twenty years by then — decommissioned in 1983, left to the pigeons and the planning applications, every grand scheme to save it falling apart one by one.

It hadn't always been a ruin. Built in two halves between 1929 and 1955, it powered a fifth of London at its peak — over a million tonnes of coal a year came up the Thames on flat-bottomed colliers to feed it. Giles Gilbert Scott, the man behind the red phone box, gave it that brick-temple look. In 1939, a panel of celebrities voted it their second-favourite modern building in Britain.

And then there was the pig. In December 1976, Pink Floyd floated a giant inflatable pig between the chimneys for the Animals album cover — it broke loose, drifted into Heathrow's flight path, and had police helicopters chasing it over Kent.

Today it's shops, restaurants, Apple offices and a tube station. But for a generation of Londoners, this was the view: four chimneys standing empty against the sky, waiting.

Do you remember when Battersea Power Station was just... standing there, empty? 👇

Photo: John Smitten, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

🌫️ December 1952 — and London simply vanished.For five days, from the 5th to the 9th, a thick yellow smog settled over t...
30/09/2026

🌫️ December 1952 — and London simply vanished.

For five days, from the 5th to the 9th, a thick yellow smog settled over the capital and refused to budge. This is Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square, all but swallowed by it — the great "pea-souper" at its absolute worst.

It wasn't just the weather. A freezing snap had Londoners piling extra coal onto their fires, the power stations were belching out smoke, and with not a breath of wind, the filthy mix just sat there, trapped over the city. Buses ground to a halt, theatres cancelled performances because the audience couldn't see the stage, and people shuffled along streets where you could barely see your own feet.

The toll was dreadful — 4,000 deaths in the weeks that followed, with modern estimates putting it nearer 12,000. But those five days changed Britain for good: the shock led directly to the Clean Air Act of 1956, and the pea-soupers that had choked London for a century finally began to clear.

Do you remember older relatives talking about the great smog — or the smell of coal smoke on a winter morning? 👇

Photo: N T Stobbs, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

🍎 Covent Garden, 1940 — and wartime or not, the market is still going strong.By the time this photo was taken, the marke...
30/09/2026

🍎 Covent Garden, 1940 — and wartime or not, the market is still going strong.

By the time this photo was taken, the market had been feeding London for nearly 300 years. A charter granted in 1670 turned this corner of Westminster into the capital's larder — porters hauling crates of cabbages through the night, buyers haggling at dawn, flowers piled high before the morning rush.

Through the Blitz it never stopped. Market workers kept turning up through the blackout, kept the stalls stacked, and kept London fed while the city was being bombed around them.

It all stayed right here until 1974, when the fruit, veg and flower market moved out to Nine Elms — and the old halls became the shops, cafés and street performers we know today.

Hard to imagine the Piazza smelling of cauliflower and coal smoke now, isn't it? 👇

Photo: Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

Address

4277 The Green Street Address: Industrial Estate Apartment/Flat: Flat 15
Cardiff
WL87TT

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Back In My Day posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share

Category