THIS is no scene from Victorian London—this was going on down the East End just yesterday! These ladies were shopping’ down a real East End street-market off Bethnal Green’s Columbia Road

By Else Kvist

THIS is no scene from Victorian London—this was going on in the cockney East End just yesterday!

These ladies and gentlemen were shopping’ down a real East End street-market off Bethnal Green’s famous Columbia Road.

Hidden out of sight are cameras recording a scene for a Hovis TV commercial to be screened next month.

Film producers couldn’t believe their luck when they stumbled across tiny Ezra-street, off Columbia-road, with its cobbles and Victorian terraced cottages and quaint shops.

The street hasn’t changed since the 1880s—even Hitler’s bombs couldn’t demolish it during the Blitz.

The 1880s were recreated with actors on Thursday afternoon to promote a new range of rolls in the commercial being transmitted on June 5, the East London Advertiser has discovered.

A Victorian-clad woman with her hair tied up under her hat was smelling fresh soap by a market stall while another passed by carrying a rattan shopping basket.

VICTORIAN BOOZER

Men with bicycle handle’ mustaches and bowler hats and toppers were strolling to the Royal Oak pub—a genuine Victorian East End boozer that still pulls an old fashioned pint today.

Hovis has become famous for its period ads. Its 1973 commercial with a small boy pushing a bike laden with loaves up a steep cobbled street to the sound of Dvorak’s New World Symphony was voted best advert of all time,’ filmed by Ridley Scott who is now a leading Hollywood movie director.

The original Hovis wheatgerm loaf was developed in 1886 by Richard Stoney Smith, 20 years after the Advertiser newspaper first appeared in East London.