Can you remember when your town was vibrant?

We have loads of Londoners move here, buy all the houses, push all the prices up, then open shops selling Artisan bumf that no one needs. Is there anywhere like that over there, where the rich has bought up the cheap houses, pushing the natives out? ( not just the Aboriginies).

 

Nearly everywhere, lets of little boutiques selling garbage that only tourists buy.

 

No,where is safe from them!

 

Sounds like our place. Problem is, there’s no ‘real’ shops here that you can buy essential stuff in. It’s all charity shops and hairdressers. We do have an Iceland, where Woolworths was…I hear Woolworths may be starting up again…

 

This is our local village, absolutely dead, only the cities are vibrant..

I grew up on a housing estate(leeds) we had a centre (like mall) this had everything inside, woolies, coop, cafe, market, pubs, every shop you could imagine, then tesco came...



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I remember singing "Brentford Nylons"* to Brentford fans when they were still down in the lower leagues.

* One for the over 50's..............

 

What's the name of the village ? Thanks

 

Ashbourne Derbyshire in my youth was a hive of pub activity and very busy shops catering for everything .
It had the most pubs of any other town in Derbyshire mainly because of all the brew houses which catered for passing coach and horse traffic .
It was a major stop for Birmingham to Manchester loads of coach houses with it being smack on half way .
But the coming of the railway put pay to all of that literally over night , hence the reason for so many boozers .

Shops did start to go from the old nucleus of the town as Sainsburys came big then came the shopping development outside of the town ..a Halfords ,Homebase ,Marks and Sparks ,Pound Shop , Majestic Wine . So you can see the damage that did to the old town , but it is just surviving .

A good few reasons for the pub night life going to nothing from very very busy ,like the good old days when it took quite a while to get served your drink due to the volume of folk .
1 alcohol started to increase rapidly ,
2 The smoking ban did damage ...but that is understandable .
3 Youngsters started to go to uni on mass and not undertaking apprentices as all my lot did apart from the very few .
That kept us all socialising together in the town night life and it was great and busy .
But the uni student leave the town and socialise at the university they end up at, and quite often find there partner and never to return .
4 Then the dreaded Covid knocked everything smack on the head . I think to this day people have got used to not going out
There are signs of revival but uncomfortably slow .
There is talk of a bypass of the town due to heavy HGV's coming back and forth from all the local limestone quarries as well as tourist traffic passing through .

The big debate as to wether that will kill the town or improve it is of concern ,particularly the shop owners .
Time will tell .

 

One of the deadest towns I have visited trying and failing to find a pub for a meal was Warminster, which has a very effective bypass.

 

Everyone has left for fear of being abducted by aliens in flying saucers

 

Lot of UFOs in Warminster

 

Warminster was always a bit of squaddie town, when I worked there for the MOD building tanks there were pubs you definitely did not go into and the MOD police had big sticks.

Had a nice boating lake though

 

Much the same in some Army pubs in Hampshire. The tables are actually screwed to the floor.

 

When I went to Portsmouth in 1981 to visit a student friend, we ended up having to be careful of the MOD police wandering the streets waiting to beat up naval types having too much of a good time..


Our "village" is still fairly lively, featuring 3 pubs, 6 restaurants, four takeaways., three cafes. three yacht clubs. Two Coop stores, post office, pharmacy, several rando gift shops.. boat builders, boat sales, marine engines and electronics dealers and installers...

The rather rich come here from far and wide and spend money on sailing and eating and drinking giving many of the inhabitants a good living..
And the crews of the boats and the day visitor tourists keep the other places going ..

Oh and we have a major manufacturer of contact lenses and an aerospace manufacturing plant, and a marine oil terminal.

Its probably why thousands of houses are being built in the general area as the money is round here..

 

Exactly why folks are worried . that said the town is so congested some say it puts people off stopping and spending .
A big issue is there is a dangerous air pollution rate one of the worst in Derbyshire apparently , because the town is set in a valley with very close together buildings .
There is no other way for HGV to get to the many limestone quarries the detour is miles out , and the amount of road tax they pay on an artic they say we will go where ever we want .
There has been three occasions where HGV's have had brake failure coming down Buxton hill and ended up on there side in the market place , one was carrying cassette tapes which then caught fire but was put out rapidly by the local fire crew which is not stationed far away .
No one was killed on that occasion apart from two old Bristol cars that were parked up got flattened .

Another one was a 4 wheel dodge local haulier carrying hot tarmac ...brakes failed and ended up in the Smiths Tavern which is directly at the bottom of the hill spread hot tar all over the pavement and the cab was inside the pub .
Sadly it was 4.15 and children from school were walking back through the town and one girl got her legs burnt from the hot tar as it collided into the pub .
If you ever visit Ashbourne and stand in the market place today the dangers come to mind when watching volume of heavy traffic coming through . Fortunately trucks now have excellent brakes these days nothing like the past when it used to happen .