Hetty (Sylvia Syms), a young woman in the slum tenements of 1930s London, caught between her future and her family. Her younger brother Tommy (Melvyn Hayes) is drifting into a life of crime, overseen by local thug Wilkie (Herbert Lom), who rules over the neighbourhood with an iron fist. Meanwhile, Hetty’s mother Jess (Joan Miller) is herself encouraging Hetty to marry Wilkie as a way out of poverty. Torn between trying to get away from crime and looking after her family, worlds begin to collide for Hetty.

Pitched between a crime thriller and the stark realism that would come to define much of the classic British cinema of the 1960s, No Trees in the Street is an overlooked high point in the career of director J. Lee Thompson (Cape Fear, The Guns of Navarone) and star Sylvia Syms (Ice Cold in Alex, Victim).