The Lansbury Estate, Poplar, in One Wish Too Many

Here's a Children's Film Foundation film from 1956, called One Wish Too Many. It was filmed in the Lansbury Estate, designed by Frederick Gibberd for the 1951 Festival of Britain.

It's a lovely bit of Eden-era wish fulfilment, somewhere between Ealing's Passport to Pimlico and E. Nesbit's The Enchanted Castle. In it a small boy finds a magic marble, and it grants his wishes. What start as modest requests soon get out of control, and when he wishes for a huge steamroller then the whole of the bombed city is soon under threat. It's got many great shots of poor old corrugated iron postwar London before the building boom took hold, and lots of beautiful footage of Chrisp Street Market, the Lansbury estate and the Festival of Britain legacy. It's silly, sweet and worth a skip through at the very least. Especially if Poplar Harca, the managing agents, get their way and Lansbury is changed beyond all recognition.