Neandra Etienne on the late actor’s local legacy

David Bailey with actor Terence Stamp in an art gallery — David Bailey with actor Terence Stamp at Bailey’s Stardust Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery (Credit – Andrew Baker). The image above has been selected for an upcoming exhibition at the Tower Gallery.

Actor Terence Stamp, who died on 10 August aged 87, was a global superstar, but he was born and raised in London’s East End and had fond memories of war and peace during his childhood years in Bow and Plaistow.

Terence was an Academy Award nominee, but he never forgot his attachment to East London, as he recalls in a 2003 article for the publication celebrating the 25th anniversary of Newham Bookshop.

“1941 saw my mother and me, along with Granny Kate, aunts Julie and Maude abandon the bomb-struck Canal Road, Bow,” he wrote. The family moved further east to Plaistow. “603 Barking Road to be precise,” he wrote, ”a few doors past Bates for Bikes, where the great Reg Harris was rumoured to have been sighted.

“The Plaistow of the early 1940s was a manicured middle class affair hardly prepared for the influx of cockney hoards unaccustomed to inside lavatories and bathrooms. Yours truly had, it seemed, hardly adjusted to these luxuries, when Ethel, my mum, newly with child (brother Chris), moved us out from Granny Perrott’s drum, with its running hot water and mysterious cellar, into 124 Chadwin Road, with neither of the above.

“Nevertheless, with its proximity to Beckton Park (where seven winds blew), its lido, its library, its speedway, it was to become my cultural springboard to undreamed of horizons.

“Tollgate Primary welcomed me at five, with magic parquet floors, acres of playing field and communal showers for the underprivileged such as myself. Nowadays it is sadly underfunded.

“Aged eleven, after a miraculous scholarship pass and outfitted in a blazer with a badge, I joined the happy few admitted to the architectural perfection that was Plaistow Grammar School. Over the years its perfect symmetry and proportion was added to, tampered with and barred up like a borstal.

“Yet I confess the education of my spirit was forged at other locations, the great picture palaces: Boleyn Odeon, Saturday morning pictures, sixpence; East Ham Granada, with intermission organ; the Green Gate, Laurel and Hardy; and the old Grand where I saw my very first film, Beau Geste with Gary Cooper.

“I saved the best for last – Fair Bairn House Boys Club, a marble-floored palace for fun, taste, skill and learning; the earned camaraderie of fellow spivs and drones who unknowingly ignited that spark for life and set me aflame from then until now.”

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