Oxford Street, London 1970

A wonderfully detailed snapshot of western Oxford Street as it looked in 1970. In the foreground, a Ford Zephyr (registration RHK 870D) moves past a Route 73 Routemaster heading for King’s Cross, while shoppers stream along the pavement on what appears to be a bright autumn afternoon.

On the right stands the distinctive corner block of the Mount Royal Hotel, perched above a busy Littlewoods store at street level. Just short of the Park Street/Portman Street junction is a Ravel shoe shop, and a little further back a branch of Richard Shops, the hugely popular young women’s fashion chain that once appeared on high streets up and down Britain. In the far distance, the sun catches the top of Marble Arch at the western end of the street.

Across on the left is the long 1960s parade that has since been completely redeveloped. Visible here are The Golden Egg, one of the era’s most ubiquitous – and gloriously unhealthy – greasy-spoon restaurant chains, and Hepworths, the long-standing menswear retailer that would, in the 1980s, be transformed into Next. Further along is an Alfred Marks Bureau, the well-known employment agency (no relation to the actor Alfred Marks), and beside it The Souk, adding to the West End’s eclectic mix of shops.

The scene is classic Oxford Street of the period: crowded pavements, red buses, neon shop signs and a powerful sense of a West End at its mid-century peak.