Then:




Now, exactly the same spot:

Opposite corner of that same crossroads:

Then:




Now:

Is that one of those spoof Ladybird books or is it a real original?

Very apt drawing though - car park added, road widened, even health and safety fence added to the bridge! Attractive as it is.

At least they didn't demolish the original house and replace it with a bland 1970s building like with the Scott Arms in the first post.

It's real. I would never repost images from one of those horrible smartarse hipster creations.

There was another one showing a beauty spot ruined by cars, but I couldn't find it online. I'll take a photo when I get back to my storage place in 2 weeks' time when everyone has forgotten about it.

Is that tree deliberately scary-looking?

Yes, I wondered that myself.

Butterfield wrote:

Opposite corner of that same crossroads:

Then:




Now:

It’s hard to weigh up which is worse. What do they have against trees there?

Anyway, Ladybird should be ashamed of giving children this kind of fairytale misinformation dressed up as fact. This is how people end up as adults primed to swallow all kinds of overly simplified nonsense by peddlers of sh*te.

There was a need to travel far, and many did. What is true that it wasn’t required often. There was no need for 100 mile commutes for all but a tiny handful of people (hence staging posts, fresh horses, and coaching inns).

But many people did cross oceans and continents at least once in their lives, and all surviving records show a significant number of people marrying or dying in a place were not from there. Roughly the same as now basically.

cosmictanya wrote:

There was a need to travel far, and many did. What is true that it wasn’t required often. There was no need for 100 mile commutes for all but a tiny handful of people (hence staging posts, fresh horses, and coaching inns).

I agree. You only need to read Dickens or Austen to know that people travelled long distances using horse-based infrastructure. Not just upper class people either, you'd have poor travellers 'outside' on the coach roof.

I found a London-Glasgow stagecoach schedule online and some of the staging posts were oddly familiar - Newport Pagnell, Knutsford...

Fangirl Three wrote:

cosmictanya wrote:

There was a need to travel far, and many did. What is true that it wasn’t required often. There was no need for 100 mile commutes for all but a tiny handful of people (hence staging posts, fresh horses, and coaching inns).

I agree. You only need to read Dickens or Austen to know that people travelled long distances using horse-based infrastructure. Not just upper class people either, you'd have poor travellers 'outside' on the coach roof.

I found a London-Glasgow stagecoach schedule online and some of the staging posts were oddly familiar - Newport Pagnell, Knutsford...

Yes, it’s very interesting.

I remember a book I had when I was a child about movement of people in pre industrial Europe. It was extensive. Not just limited to soldiers and seafarers, and there was never a period where it wasn’t happening. From Africans in Scotland and whole communities of Spaniards in Tudor London (plus something like 3,000 Flemish refugees in a population of 200,000 as well as efforts of the city fathers to reduce the Moorish [Arab] population) to poor rural people simply moving from the West Country to the east. There were fascinating pieces on the Scottish communities in 16th century France, 17th century Poland-Lithuania, and 18th century Russia - Lermontov stands out - one of Russia’s great romantic poets, originating from the Learmonth family of Fife.

I was looking at a line of my own family tree a few years ago, based around the floral nurseries in what became South Kensington to furnish what developed into Covent Garden. The records are available as far back as the 16th and 17th centuries - virtually every generation there was someone marrying in from further south and west, which makes sense because growing seasons differ across the country. If someone from Somerset had the produce ready a month early, up they’d come to sell it, and as would happen now, love would blossom while on business, and they would marry in to a Middlesex family. All happening in pre railway days, by the non rich.

This is actually how I discovered - on a different line - a plantation slave given the name Sarah, listed only as from West Africa, was a great times however many grandmother of mine. She’d met the Englishman she married in Barbados, been freed, and moved to London. Within a couple of generations, the descendants would’ve been indistinguishable from a fully white family.

Dudley opera house circa 1933 (burnt down in 1936):



Dudley Odeon, built 1938 (pictured some time in the '60s or early '70s when it were an bingo hall):





Dudley Odeon (delomished) :

Oh yes. Its demolition had been talked about for years, but I didn't know it had finally been demolished until a few weeks ago when I drove past and there was a big empty space.

Right to the end you could still just about see where the letters of HIPPODROME used to be, from before it got turned into a bingo hall.

2015






2022

One does notice on Google Street View when you compare dates, a LOT of people have paved over their front gardens in the last 10 years or so for more drive space. That is good in terms of getting cars off the road but terrible when it comes to the kerb appeal of houses, and the destruction of lovely front gardens that previous generations were so proud of.

While I agree in general, and hate to see it, it’s hard to say anything of value or beauty was lost at St Kenelms Close.

Well, aside from the basic, intrinsic and generally dead-eyed failure of genteel civic pleasantness, it's also bad for the environment and significantly increases the chances of localised flooding when the weather's all round and generally tipping it down.

Even the Sun's gone in in sympathy.

I for two pray that God may bless that tiny, modest and pleasant micro-plot of St Kenelm's Close and, perhap', let it rise again.

As He did his Son.

It’s interesting to zoom around the street - it’s not just that property that’s degraded, and the verge at the end of the road isn’t too great in comparison either - 2015 doesn’t seem that long ago. Of course it’s really another world - the UK has declined very significantly in those years. Pleasantries like flowers and cut grass are a memory. People in those places had more of a hand in doing it to themselves than anyone else did. My sympathy is with the bees and the butterflies.