1960 Swindon

[Dozno9]

Just found this online and my word Swindon has grown/changed in the past 50 years.

[dave_bambers_right_sock]

A brilliant find, enjoyed watching that

[Peter Gibbons]

Enjoyed that, and great music 

Was that the CG floodlights seen from the top of the college?

[Dostoyevsky]

That will make for good viewing. Will light up a cohiba on Friday night and nurse a large Laphraiog with a bowl of chipsticks and savour the footage. I really like reminisces like this. Thanks for the link 

[Pete]

Thanks, great find

[Reg Smeeton]

 What a find....utterly wonderful  

 Despite the continued desecration of the Town by the Borough Council, my first thoughts are that many of the best bits picked out in this are just about intact. OK, they may be the playgrounds of flashers, junkies and alkys, but what do expect in the post-Thatcher dystopia?

 Shame that the kiddys paddling pool and fountain at Coate has gone...also the Power Station was rather fine, but they have a finite shelf life, so inevitable.

The train round the loop ...brilliant. Opportunity lost there, for some kind of light railway/tram system to have been developed, rather than complete reliance on roads.

Newport Street, another downside....I was looking at old pics on that Flickr site recently, and essentially it was a quiet rustic back street full of olde thatched buildings with the school and a couple more pubs. Could possibly have been renovted into something interesting, but no, one side was bulldozed for road widening, along with the Mason's Arms which was on the end of the Corn Exchange.

I'm pretty sure what they said used to be the King of Prussia, wasn't, but hey ho.

The floodlights were visible from Lawns, they were built in 1960...remember them going up....well exciting.

[Arriba]

Really enjoyed that but it really highlights what a shithole Britain and Swindon has become.
First footage i've seen of a train going along the line of what is now the cycle path to old town. What a disgrace that was killing the railways in the 60's. Also the grass neatly cut and the roads nice and tidy compared the the knee high grass verges, pot holes and litter strewn streets now in the same places.
People dressed smartly and it just looks a decent place to be back then.

If the greedy society we have today 50 years later is progress then I just cannot see how. The standards look to have gone backwards to me from that footage.

[Bewster]

have you got the link to the website so I can email it to my dad ?

[sheepshagger]

I imagine the 60's was Thatchers fault as well Arriba

[jayohaitchenn]

have you got the link to the website so I can email it to my dad ?

hxxp://vimeo.com/4140360

replace xx with tt in the above.

[Bewster]

hxxp://vimeo.com/4140360

replace xx with tt in the above.

ta

[Reg Smeeton]

I imagine the 60's was Thatchers fault as well Arriba

The civic pride that Arriba alludes to in his post, came about because local councils had much more power back then. Hence they could achieve a lot in parks and leisure facilities. Local councils tended to be stuffed with trade unionists and Methodists. The Metodists in particular, wished to see healthy, happy people; children with something to aspire to, as a goal of their Christian faith.

Thatcher hated localism, and started the drive to strip Councils of their power through the notorious rate capping...a process which her accolytes like Gove have been happy to carry on.

This led inexorably to the Poll Tax...where in Thatcher's eyes a duke paid the same as a dustman...as I recall my tax trebled if not quadrupled overnight...simply there was no way I could pay, as was the case with thousands of others. many refuseniks were either threatened with or put in prison, I was quite happy to be a martyr, but fortunately the system collapsed, the Tories saw sense and got rid of Thatcher, before she could completely ruin the country.

The Scots, were used as a guinea pig for this...Cameron may find when he campaigns for retaining the UK, that memories of this will make his job harder.

[BruceChatwin]

Victorian Swindon was where it was at.

[url width=488 height=640]http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3467/3822226769_d9f981e035_z.jpg[/url]

Extrapolating from what it looked like then to what it looked like in that video to what it looks like now I dread to imagine what sort of dystopian nightmare awaits our descendants 100 years from now.

[sheepshagger]

Flippin heck Reg I was only joking

[jonny72]

I imagine the 60's was Thatchers fault as well Arriba

Arriba won't be happy until we've gone 100% communist. Don't know who he'll blame for everything then though.