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Englands Most Depressing Towns


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HOLA441
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HOLA442

Quicker to list those that arent depressing.

Bath. Every single other town seems to have been ruined by various degrees of architectural vandalism 1950-present.

Edinburgh, probably nicest large town/city, although i havent been since they built that awful parliament thing.

Also have a soft spot for Derby, three indoor markets, a lot less pretentious a place than neighbouring nottingham, although few seem to agree with that.

On the other hand, when darkness falls, most town (centres) are quite enjoyable for at least a day a week. When the leaden skies and grey concrete are less visible.

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Gloucester is the unwashed drunk in an otherwise beautiful county. It should be shipped down the Severn to somewhere more appropriate, like South Wales.

+1

Stroud's got some nice buildings but always feels like it's on it's uppers.

Cinderford's a blot on the Forest of Dean as well.

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Heanor - shudder

Newton Abbot - dead.

Sheffield

Hull

Northolt/Rayners Lane - Just a bloody awful place.

Peckham

Welyn Garden City

Milton Keynes - nothing available without a car.

Warrington

Brentwood

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I am pretty sure that no one has mentioned Sunny Slough, or Warsaw at it was affectionately known a couple of years ago.

For those of you who would like to spend a depressing day there, you van visit the lovely sink estates of Britwell, Manor Park and the lovely Romanian town of Chalvey :unsure:

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HOLA4410
The most depressing town in the whole of Great Britain is .... Glossop.

I was born there and everytime I drive through it I have to keep my speed down.

Dreadful, grey bleak place.

Did you wear a full face crash helmet too? :rolleyes:

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HOLA4411
Why has no-one mentioned Middlesbrough?

I spent a scary week there one night.

www.chavtowns.co.uk - essential reading!

Ha, yes, central Middlesborough appears to be the only place in the UK sliding into full scale Detoit type abandonment...

http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&...6&encType=1

At least Burnley seems to attract some deluded BTLers to do up the terraces every so often.

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Guest X-QUORK
Guys, what are Derby and Bristol like? I was considering a job with Rolls Royce and they operate in these two places.

Derby's a bit of a dump, but it has some seriously nice countryside nearby. Bristol's come up in the world in a sort of urban facelift kind of way, but still pretty rough around the edges. I understand Clifton is a nice part of town. It's only a couple of hours from surfing country, or an hour from the Welsh mountains, so like Derby, plenty to do outdoors.

For me, it would be Bristol.

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HOLA4415
Is London a town? Always depresses me when I visit.

Yes i hate that place i was brought up in Newcastle and was taught to hate cockneys, unfortunately these indigenous folk have all pretty much been replaced in the last 20 years.

But ive also just lived in Newcastle after leaving there 20 years ago and what a depressing place it is, with all manner of angry fcukers telling you how people from Newcastle are these fun warm and friendly people, yet they despise anyone born on the wrong side of a river.

But the winner has to be Slough.

PS Today I was offered a 3 year contract in Rayong, Thailands oil sector, this view will be what i am waking up to.

wpRayong04.jpg

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I nominate Skelmersdale for the title!

There's a wonderful description of it here.

From when I worked there:

  • The whole town is designed around roundabouts and dual carriageways. No, seriously, there's nowhere that you can walk to.
  • The dual carriageways were thoughtfully designed with earth mounds on either side which hide the houses from the road and cut down on noise. The locals then nicked all the road signs from the roundabouts, so that out-of-towners would get lost in a maze of bland, identical dual carriageways.
  • Other towns in West Lancs quip that Skem was designed to take the worst tenants of neighbouring Liverpool and Wigan. I won't comment :P
  • I toyed with the idea of moving there (that was before I knew the place). Visited one place where the landlady was wonderfully honest: "Watch out for the neighbours dog, it bit the previous tenants".
  • The shopping centre at the centre of town is grim... but to be fair, a cr***y shopping centre seems to be at heart of most British towns these days ;)
  • There's a shopping centre, an Asda. a swimming pool, a library, a couple of newsagents/corner shops and a couple of pubs. Absolutely nothing else.
  • The whole place feels like a council estate. I'm not sure if any of the new town was privately built.
  • It's the second largest town in the northwest with no train station. Good luck if you don't own a car, or are under 18.
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Leicester

Northampton (already mentioned, but was a very nice country market town making boots and shoes until the 1960's, and ruined by the development board)

All the "A6" towns namely Rothwell, Kettering, and Desborough with the possible exception of Market Harborough.

Not sure where I would choose to live. Its why I'll stay in the London area as there is a buzz and always something to see.

Whats wrong with Romford? I quite like it :ph34r:

Not sure London boroughs should count!

Forgot to mention another sh1t town..

Corby!

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Yes i hate that place i was brought up in Newcastle and was taught to hate cockneys, unfortunately these indigenous folk have all pretty much been replaced in the last 20 years.

But ive also just lived in Newcastle after leaving there 20 years ago and what a depressing place it is, with all manner of angry fcukers telling you how people from Newcastle are these fun warm and friendly people, yet they despise anyone born on the wrong side of a river.

But the winner has to be Slough.

PS Today I was offered a 3 year contract in Rayong, Thailands oil sector, this view will be what i am waking up to.

wpRayong04.jpg

Yeah, take the job and go for it! ;)

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Bristol certainly shouldn't be on the list, although the south and east can be pretty grim.

My home town Ipswich should get a mention. Think it was one of the top 10 in craptowns book. Ipswich is chaville.

Lived in Slough once and never found it that bad if you stayed away from certain estates.

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Guest X-QUORK
PS Today I was offered a 3 year contract in Rayong, Thailands oil sector, this view will be what i am waking up to.

wpRayong04.jpg

Just make sure you keep an eye on the horizon.

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HOLA4422

England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland - AVOID:

Banbury

Cardiff

Battersea

Preston (nice people though)

Most of Bristol

WestonSM

Penarth

Chepstow (despite castle)

Cinderford

Derby

Brighton (esp Lewes Road and Westdene)

Lincoln (deeeply depressing)

Commuterville, S E England

Sheerness

Most places in between Edinburgh and Glasgow

Bangor, Co. Down

Larne, Co. Antrim

Mullingar

Dingle

Waterford

Portrush

Antrim town

Newry

Killarney

Most of South Wales

Actually, I could be here all day

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If you want to read something really hearbreaking, I can suggest "Britain's Lost Cities" by Gavin Stamp, which chronicles, along with photos, the destruction wreaked on our cities in the 1960s.

Someone mentioned Coventry above, so here is a sample of Stamp on COventry:

With its three tall and magnificent church spires and a wealth of old gabled houses, Coventry had been a real medieval city, sometimes described as the 'English Nuremberg'. JB Preistley visited in 1933 and found that: "It is genuinely old and picturesque: the Cathedral of St Michael's, St Mary's Hall, Ford and Bablake Hospitals, Butcher Row and old Palace Yard. You peep around the corner and see half-timbered and gabled houses that would do for the second act of the Meistersinger. In fact you could stage the Meistersinger – or film it – in Coventry. I knew it was an old place – for wasn't there Lady Godiva? – but I was surprised to find out how much of the past, in soaring stone and carved wood, remained in the city."

"During the night of 14 November 1940, in the first 'major raid' suffered by Britain, the centre of the ancient City of Coventry was destroyed. Guided by the X-Gerat navigation system, over four hundred German bombers dropped some 30,000 incendiary bombs and over 500 tons of high explosives on the city. Communications collapsed as the city burned. Almost six hundred people were killed that night and some 60,000 houses destroyed or damaged…. Although the Royal Air Force would later inflict much greater loss of life and destruction on German cities, sudden devastation on this scale was unprecedented. German radio broadcasts coined a new verb to describe it: Koventrieren – to Coventrate."

"British propaganda was quick to exploit this catastrophe to emphasise German ruthlessness and barbarism and to make Coventry into a symbol of British resilience. Photographs of the ruins of the ancient Cathedral were published around the world, and it was insisted that it would rise again, just as the city itself would be replanned and rebuilt, better than before."

"But the story of the destruction of Coventry is not so simple or straightforward. … severe as the damage was, a large number of ancient buildings survived the war – only to be destroyed in the cause of replanning the city. But what is most shocking is that the finest streets of old Coventry, filled with picturesque half-timbered houses, had been swept away before the outbreak of war – destroyed not by the Luftwaffe but by the City Engineer. Even without the second world war, old Coventry would probably have been planned out of existence anyway."

"In one respect, Coventry had been ready for the attacks… the vision of 'Coventry of Tomorrow' was exhibited in May 1940 – before the bombing started. [City engineer] Gibson later recalled that "we used to watch from the roof to see which buildings were blazing and then dash downstairs to check how much easier it would be to put our plans into action."

"The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings had estimated that 120 timber houses had survived the war.. two thirds of these would disappear over the next few years as the city engineer pressed forward with his plans…. A few buildings were retained, but removed from their original sites and moved to Spon Street as a sanitised and inauthentic historic quarter."

"Today, whatever integrity the post-war building ever had has been undermined by subsequent undistinguished alterations and replacements. Coventry has been more transformed in the 20th century than any other city in Britain, both in terms of its buildings and street pattern. The three medieval spires may still stand, but otherwise the appearance of England's Nuremberg can only be appreciated in old photographs."

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HOLA4424

Bristol is great if you live within walking distance of the waterfront for instance S. Bristol, unless you are rich then Clifton / Redland.
Bristol is nice in parts, but reely-reely grim in parts, see! Traffic is terrible and the standard of driving is as bad as I've come across anywhere.
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