Only one of the original Boundary Street blocks has been demolished. Streatley Buildings (below) stood on the eastern side of Swanfield Street, opposite Taplow and Sunbury Buildings. It was one of the very earliest blocks to be completed in the 1890s and showed none of the flamboyance of the rest of the estate. It would also turn out to be the least salubrious of the tenements, with a bad damp problem and an inconvenient arrangement of rooms, passageways and external corridor access. By the time it was condemned, in 1969, there were still very few bathrooms in the flats. In addition, the balconies were judged to be structurally unsafe.

A letter from the London County Council architects’/property division, dated 22 April 1896, on the naming of the Estate’s buildings, stated that “the names…are suggested by the villages on the Thames between London and Oxford and they occur to me to offer the advantage of being terse, euphemistic and unfamiliar in London street nomenclature”. Streatley is a beautiful Berkshire village eight miles from Reading.

Streatley Buildings was unusual in the 1890s for have a female caretaker, Mrs Kilbey, appointed by the London County Council, who were impressed by her supervision of another large block, in Spitalfields. Mrs Kilbey was not overpaid for her role, at just 12 shillings a week; but she eventually got a raise, to 20s a week, plus her rent-free tiny living quarters.

 
 Pictures of Streatley Buildings, and the rest of the Estate, can be found in box 28.75 BOU at the London Metropolitan Archives, 40 Northampton Road, London EC1. Tel: 020 7332 3820 www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/things-to-do/visiting-the-city/archives-and-city-history/london-metropolitan-archives/visitor-information/Pages/default.aspx