Britain after the Blitz: Fascinating pictures from the age of austerity show children playing amid the ruins more than a decade on from the end of the war




Black and white photos of 1950s and 1960s Chelsea show the now immaculate borough in complete disarray.



More than a decade on from the blitz, children still played among rubble and derelict sites as the country struggled to refind its feet.



Renowned Kensington photographer John Bignell cast his forensic eye over the desolate district, which would one day resurrect itself as the most expensive in the country.



Boys make a den out of planks, bricks and a fallen tree behind a block of studio flats in Chelsea in 1950. The 1885-built Wentworth Studios on Manresa Road miraculously survived the German bombs of 1940-1941. They would soon be surrounded by fresh housing to accommodate for the growing population and dramatic loss of homes

'Sabateurs': Playful lads in 1960 take to the mangled coupe with a metal implement. With parking spaces nothing like the precious commodity they are now, these children were free to play and climb all day on the long-abandoned vehicle

Children playing on Dovehouse Green. Now one of the country's most sleek and slick boroughs, Chelsea had its fair share of post-war clean up to deal with. The swathes of children who had no modern day gadgets to entertain them would make their own games in abandoned gardens

A broken down car acts as a play thing for two boys who appear in one image climbing on the collapsed coupe.



And with health and safety laws a phenomenon of the distant future, another shot captures three children lifting metal poles double their size in an abandoned work site.

Groups would flock to demolition sites to make dens and run around with nothing like a TV to keep them occupied.

No health and safety: These children look delighted heaving around metal poles on a rubble-ridden work site. Topless with soft shoes, they are an image of the bygone era. Photographer John Bignell was keen to capture the essence of post-war life in the capital

Water play: This spot of the Thames by Battersea Bridge is where the likes of Bear Grylls, Damian Hirst and Nick Cave moor their house boats. 24-hour security is now in place to prevent people from walking by the quirky homes - but in the early 1950s children could climb on the floating bits of broken boats

Tide out: Boys took advantage of the low tide to run around London's sandy banks. With some of the capital's greatest landmarks downstream, the children are happy enough splashing rocks by the geese and boats

Following the Blitz, London was facing a housing crisis with a growing population and dramatic loss of homes.



The borough's first attempt at high-rise flats, just after the country's first block went up in Holborn, was astonishingly unmanned and open to anybody considering the scale of the project.

