Your original home town.

[Dave 123]

Ellesmere Port.

It always had an ‘image’ of being an industrial dump, but I can remember as a teenager thinking that it put a lot of food on a lot of tables for a good 40 mile radius.

It’s a Liverpool overspill town that’s amalgamated 8-10 villages. Some areas are desirable, others less so.

20 years ago the outlet village appeared. I’m not sure it did any direct good for the town centre, but it creates lots of traffic for shoppers to sit in!

It would be easy to call it a dump, but it isn’t. It has its down sides but there are plus points.

There is plenty of green space, geographically close to connections, within easy reach of 3 national parks.

The industry has passed it’s heyday which has positive and negative effects.

I’ve not been back for a couple of years, I’m not sure I’m going any time soon. It’s not rural south Devon, but it’s not all bad.

 

[GetFatty]

I left Nelson in Lancashire in 1991. It was heading downhill then and hasn’t changed. There’s a cou of decent pubs on the outskirts but little else to tempt me back

 

[MichaelW2]

Ive been back to Diss a couple of times. Nothing much has changed. The person selling chips at the market is the grandson of the lady who served me in 1970s. The bookshop and ironmongers still survive.

 

[Cerdic]

I grew up on the Isle of Wight. Nothing ever changes there…

 

[Blue Hills]

Still in my original hometown so it can't be that bad.

sell Lancaster to me monty.
Despite being lancastrian only ever been 2 or 3 times (lumpy stuff in the way)
My dim memories are that it seemed curiously modest for a county town
(apologies if I've given yorkshire folks an opportunity to jump in with sarkiness)

 

[Blue Hills]

I lived two roads away from Bob Hope, the 'American' TV & film star, but never knew him.

surely he was long gone by then?

 

[Blue Hills]

I left Nelson in Lancashire in 1991. It was heading downhill then and hasn’t changed. There’s a cou of decent pubs on the outskirts but little else to tempt me back

Nelson of course had an incredible number of cotton mills for a place of such a size and the cotton business was declining 100 years ago.

oh - which are the pubs?

 

[cookiemonster]

Born in Aberdeen and moved to Speyside when I was about 10. Moved back to Aberdeen to go to Uni, then London for my Masters then Helsinki and now Hong Kong.

 

[OldShep]

sell Lancaster to me monty.
Despite being lancastrian only ever been 2 or 3 times (lumpy stuff in the way)
My dim memories are that it seemed curiously modest for a county town
(apologies if I've given yorkshire folks an opportunity to jump in with sarkines)

If Monty can’t sell it to you I could try.
Had a number of family holidays in the area. Number one son went to uni there and is still there 20 yrs later.
If I had to live in a city, if I had to live in England, Lancaster would be my number one choice.

 

[Sittingduck]

Solihull, nice by the standards of the general area but glad I left it in 95 and never moved back, nor will I. Actually popped into the town centre a week ago, after visiting family. The main square isn’t the same with no Woolies and now the M&S has been shut down. Killed any character and everybody goes to what I consider to be a new shopping mall but in actuality it was built in the early nineties. In my head it is always new, showing my age I suppose.

 

[Blue Hills]

If Monty can’t sell it to you I could try.
Had a number of family holidays in the area. Number one son went to uni there and is still there 20 yrs later.
If I had to live in a city, if I had to live in England, Lancaster would be my number one choice.

can you say more?
what's so good/nice about it?

(One or two schoolmates went to Lancaster uni - I gather a lot of the students used to live in Morecambe - cheap rentals - that sounded pretty unappealing of a winter to me)

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Haven’t really been back apart from school reunion about 18 years ago. Just seems really congested these days with nose to tail traffic. School had built on playing fields.

Sometimes I think childhood memories are best left undisturbed.

 

[PeteXXX]

surely he was long gone by then?

Yep.. That's why I never met him.

 

[byegad]

Birmingham.

Knew it was one of those southern places.

 

[byegad]

Middlesbrough was a dirty busy town in the 1950s, with prosperity slowly recovering after WWII. By the late 1960s things had boomed and it was already in decline. By the early 2000s, when Mam moved to Oldham to live with my sister is was a dump, the only work being related to dying industry or the new University.

It's a real measure of whether 'Levelling Up' will ever work. Middlesbrough was a pub and a few houses on an island in the Tees before the Railway came in the 1820s, with coal in Durham and iron ore in the Cleveland Hills it boomed after the Stockton to Darlington Railway had to move its terminus further East to get deeper water for the larger ships. First Iron, then Steel and then Chemicals provided jobs for life and the town was known as 'The Infant Hercules' for its prosperity and growth. Since then no real effort has gone into providing work for a largely static population.

I left in 1969 swearing I'd never live in a large town ever again. I only ever went back to see my parents and since Mam moved out only into the outskirts where a Cousin still lives. You couldn't persuade me to move back for a gold watch and an extra pension.