Fleet Street

Pretty sure we have seen this one before but added due to its clarity - mods move if desired. However I think this shows the backs of properties on Fleet Street looking over to the clearance for Corporation Street in 1926. I have an idea the photographer may have been standing on the roof of a building, possibly in Conduit Yard?

Helen F, Your post 59, on the right, the large house you see before the Precinct, this side of the recess you can just see a little building, this was the Casino Cafe, a temp building. Like all the other buildings it had a limited time, but it did open till 9pm, and was a great meeting place for young people to meet on that side of town.

On the second morning after the Blitz (Sat) I stood at the top of Smithford Street up to my knees in rubble. Looking down the street there were twisted iron girders across the street, one had torn a house in half. Two decades after, I often wondered, was the Casino Cafe the house that had been torn in two? After the rescuers came the army to sift and sort out the rubble and clear it. Of course, being a child there was a lot I didn't understand, but the soldiers unearthed a few bits of pages of singed material that had funny writing on it, and some kind of inlaid badge. My dad didn't know. I asked someone, it had been something called a visitors book of the King's Head. I threw it on the ground and a soldier shovelled it into the lorry with the rubble.

A similar shot probably taken at the same time of post#53 at the junction where Fleet Street met Smithford Street - just looking slightly further west at bomb damage -

Great photo. The advertising board below H Bass's offers "Palmistry and Clairvoyance"!