How times change

I love Deco too, Anne! I do admit there is a case of rose-tinted spectacles is us looking back retrospectively and not 'of the time.' Think we've mentioned it on here before but I know my mum's partner Tony told me that he remembers his grandfather saying of the Butcher Row area that by the mid-30's that whole section was considered to be a rat-infested slum. The 'new' precinct post-war must have seemed so futuristic compared to those who would've known the pre-war/30's city centre. It dated so quickly though - that's why I do have some consideration today to those that say some of the 60s/70s brutalist architecture should be saved as 'tomorrow', it will also be seen to be of the era.

Yes, Neil. I am sure if we had a time machine to take us back to some of these places just for a few minutes, we would soon be happy with what we have got. The Precinct was my ideal as a teenager in the 60's but I am afraid I did not look much at the buildings, just what was in the windows, clothes and shoes, and the Locarno on a Friday night. Loved the convenient lay out and the handy buses in Broadgate. Yet I also think back to Varney's cafe in Sandy Lane and wonder why all the staff of the EMEB did not go down with food poisoning after the sausage batches, but we accepted it, you would look in there now and refuse to step inside.

It would be good to go back: but only with a digital camera!!!

There is no way that I would want to go back to an outside toilet that had a candle on a box to stop the cistern freezing up during the winter months!!!

My grandparents' house in Newcombe Road still had, and they were using, an outside loo, right up until 1980-or-so!

The secret to good architecture is aesthetics, which don't actually age. The problem with a lot of the 60/70s architecture was that it wasn't good looking when it was built, it was just novel. A concrete slab is fundamentally ugly. Modern architecture does the same thing that that era was trying to achieve of clean lines and simplicity but often gets a pleasing result. Art Deco reached for the same aim and was mostly successful because of the fine details that went AWOL in the post war era. Minimalist has to put the wow back in some other way than just being minimal. A good example where pre war design got it wrong was the Boots on the corner of the market. Trinity Street on the other hand looked ok, but the new tower block at the bottom adds the wow factor. It enhances the appearance of a cruise ship which Art Deco was supposed to emulate.

How times have changed since my number 17 post. Today my 55 ltr tank costs only £70.95 to fill !

Hi. When Pam & I decided to start saving for the deposit on our home, two years before our wedding, we decided that our six cylinder gas guzzler had to go. It did 18miles to the gallon, a full tank cost £4-10shillings. Our home that we bought cost £3,100. We had saved enough to put £1100 down, over 1/3 depisite. Today that deposit would be £90,000.