A mechanic’s old photos of a high street have shed light on the area in better times, when it was a thriving thoroughfare full of shoppers and life.

Rod Milroy, 60, is an MOT inspector for Cain Motors in Sansom Road, Leytonstone, but used to work at the busy Leytonstone Motors, in High Road, after growing up there in the 1960s.

He lived above Fish Brothers Jewellers with his parents from the age of 11, when they moved down from Scotland to work at the shop.

He said: “When we moved in I thought it was London city. It was a great place, I had never seen so many people before.

“It used to be so jammed with shoppers you couldn’t walk down the high street in a straight line.”

There were tea shops, fisheries, butchers, a Woolworths and a British Home Stores along the road, with easy connections from Stratford and Epping via the trams, later replaced by the trolley buses, which had big arms connecting them to electric wires overhead.

Mr Milroy said: “When it rained those arms used to spark and flash, it looked fantastic. The place had a lot of character.”

Two of the biggest attractions were the Bearman’s department store and the Rialto Cinema, where the mechanic saw The Birds, the latest film by Alfred Hitchcock, who also grew up in the area.

Amateur historian David Boote, of the Leyton and Leytonstone Historical Society, said the big department store brought shoppers from all over east London to Leytonstone in its heydays.

He added: “Bearman’s spearheaded the growth along the street. People went to Bearman’s and the other shops and had a day out, they used the tea shops and spent time looking around.

“It was a social occasion. You met friends and relations and spent quality time with them.”

He believes High Road came to define Leytonstone for many locals.

The historian said: “It gave the place its identity. What’s around your house and home was much more important that it is now.”

Mr Boote is more optimistic than Mr Milroy, who believes Waltham Forest Council’s parking restrictions and one-way system sparked a steady decline in shopping there about 10 years ago, which spelt the end for the garage at which he worked.

The historian feels that with the introduction of the E11 Market every Saturday between 10am and 5pm, businesses are slowly recovering from a low point in the 1980s when people shunned the high street in favour of big shopping centres.

He said: “Markets and other stalls are offering quite specialist jewellery and items people do like. Hopefully they’ll bring people back.

“Leytonstone is slowly improving every year. It’s been clawing itself steadily up since the ‘80s.”