James Gray: From Church Street to Mount Zion Place, 21 August 1960. These houses are to be demolished in due course; this will let in air and light to the backs of the cottages in Crown Gardens, which happily are to be preserved. Kew Street is of uncertain age. Kew Place (now part of Church Street), the five houses of which were built in 1818, preceded it. Kew Street probably followed in the 1820s or 1830s. jgc_31_104
2019: The same vista today is unrecognisable; even the end house of North Gardens, visible in the distance in the 1960 image, is now obscured by new houses. James Gray’s prediction was correct and one has to assume that the removal of the houses on the east side of Kew Street was welcomed by the residents of the little houses in Crown Gardens, whose rears can now be seen beyond the foliage on the sloping grassy bank which constitutes the back gardens afforded by the demolition. The houses of Kew Street were built back to back hard up against those in Crown Gardens. The two rows coexisted in this way for over 100 years. Of the houses that ran along Church Street between these two streets, only one now remains, at the end of Crown Gardens. (Photographer: Mathia Davies)