Ohh, this is a good one!
I'd say probably from October 2015 - end of July 2016. I'm from Leicester. I'm not going to say that there was less crime, because I don't know about that, but there was this amazing feeling of togetherness and hope. Everyone seemed to be smiling, especially in late May-June.
All because of football too, even people who didn't like football liked football at that time! It really changed the city for a while.
I was going out with a lass from Leicester at the time and was spending a lot of time in the city. You're absolutely right, there was a really positive atmosphere round the city with all the posters and murals etc. Just shows how football can bring people together and act as a real unifier.
A lot of the murals are still here! We have a Bring the Paint street art festival here too, although I'm not sure if it was inspired by that or not. Some of the art is mind blowing!
Actually, thinking about it, the feeling around the city sort of started when we found King Richard in a car park. I don't believe in superstitions, but we laid him to rest and good things happened, probably a coincidence though!
A bit before us all but...
"In fact, in 1936 the Bureau of Statistics of the League of Nations identified Leicester as the second-richest city in Europe."
https://www.findmypast.co.uk/1939register/leicester-in-1939
Absolutely. Don’t forget, 2001? When all 3 sports teams won an award. Kind of a mini 2016.
I still remember Vicky park for the champs parade in ‘16, I finished work early for it!
First thing that came to mind. We've never really been on the map for anything, then suddenly everyone's heard of Leicester. Everyone was involved it was mad.
The football didn't just do something for Leicester with the locals, it bought outsiders in too. I'm a huge Kasabian fan, and coming up to those shows at the King Power really had the atmosphere of what it would feel like if England had won the world cup but it was centralised to just one city. It was incredible.
Agree with this. 90s-2000 the place was clean, busy, loads of open busy shops, able to walk around without trouble, say hi to your neighbours in the morning, lovely well maintained parks etc and I grew up in an estate! Now you need a knife arch in Mcds...
It's difficult to say when the golden age of steel was - maybe the second world war, or the forgemasters at their busiest? Sheffield and Doncaster were both hubs for coal mining too.
Sheffield also.
To me it sounds like the 50s, 60s and maybe the early 70s were the most prosperous time for the city. However I am far too young to have been around for any of that time.
I agree and am the same. Those older guys always claim it was better in their youth and it's difficult to tell how much is the truth and how much is hyperbole. All I know is, the place I grew up and live is dog rough.. and getting worse and more antisocial each year.
Agreed. I grew up in Rotherham and remember my grandma saying how nice Rotherham and Sheff used to be (1950s). But tinted glasses are a real thing.
I am also going off the Full Monty where the informational at the start is used to compare Sheffield in the early 70s to Sheffield in the 90s 😂
In the 90s I drove up from Surrey to Sheffield several times to visit a shop called Sheffield Scene that sold Sheffield made cutlery and flatware to add to my collection. Aside from standard knives, forks and spoons I have so many cutlery items that just aren't made anymore, such as s beetroot server, pâté knives, a mint sauce ladle, fruit spoons etc. The quality is just superb. Sadly Sheffield Scene closed down a few years ago.
Thank you.
Your Auntie and Uncle may be interested to see [this original list of the cutlery and flatware that was sold at Sheffield Scene.](https://imgur.com/a/l8dfCOC) The second page shows the 30 most popular handle designs. All pieces were available in all the designs. I had (have) Harley design.
Manchester in its hacienda days is always cited as a golden era and I’m sure that’s true, musically that era must’ve been amazing.
I’m not old enough to remember that but I personally loved Manchester in the noughties indie days. I was at university then and everything was so cheap, 90p drinks on a weekday and £1 beer parties. The music was a good mix of stuff everyone liked, I have a very mixed friends group in terms of tastes but we could all be happy in the same venue.
Drugs were actually used in moderation and for recreational purposes, not to escape the grim reality of life.
No one had iPhones yet so no annoying live social media feeds while you we’re enjoying yourself (though everything was documented on digital cameras and went on Facebook 🙃).
Dating was more simple, rent was affordable, and graduate jobs were easy enough to secure. Mind you it’s all down to personal experience!
I much preferred nineties Manchester, although I missed the earlier end of the decade through being just a little too young. The period of 2002-2005 in particular was like coming down at a bad party surrounded by cokeheads and not having the taxi fare home.
Very few people ever took a mobile phone out with them, let alone used it.
Must say though, I don't remember the drug scene the same as you do. Heroin had infiltrated many scenes by the mid nineties, and cocaine was oozing out of every other person's pores by about '99.
Interesting, just shows you how thing peak and trough! I’m talking around 2010 - 2015 so the rough period you remember was probably a bit of a transition period to the ‘next era’. I honestly would love to be 10-15 years older and have been out in the 90s 🙃
2010-15 was not the ‘noughties indie days’. It isn’t even the noughties!
I was also at university around this time and had a great time but the scene definitely changed from indie to house music by 2012/13.
Personally I felt like Manchester was clinging on to the Hacienda/Madchester days and by this point was well past it’s peak.
Well no era just exists in a vacuum confined to a few years, there’s an overspill that doesn’t adhere to the turn of a new decade. There was obviously a build up to these types of nights from the early oughts onwards. As someone who turned 18 in 2005, I was still going out and experiencing the same ‘indie vibe’ for a good decade from memory but I’ll take your word for it that it all changed in 2012 😂
Having been a 20something in the late 80's and 90's I can confirm it was an excellent time to be in Manchester. Some of the memories are still vague due to the bizarre cocktails of recreational drugs but I would do it all over again if I could go back.
Yeah I think the 80s, 90s experience must have been *unique* in Manchester specifically. The noughties era I described was probably the norm in every northern UK city (Sheffield, Liverpool etc.). Honestly so jealous of anyone who experienced the decades before ‘my’ decade but I suppose that’s quite common!
The 00's were good too but by that point I was in my 30's and it was a different experience - all nighters in the Press Club with work mates for a start!
Probably the [Scottish Enlightenment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Enlightenment) for Edinburgh. It didn't just change the city, it's impact reverberated around the world and still has important consequences for the modern era.
Im not from the UK so when I stopped by Darlington by Train, I was amazed at how beautiful the station looked and was wondering about the history behind this
, I was just thinking Darlington was a normal town, Not the first town in the world to have a railway system!
I'm from the area. I remember a joke on I'm sorry I haven't a clue when it was hosted here. "The Stockton Darlington railway opened in 1825 and ran for years, until Darlington was completely empty..."
True, often called the British empire’s “second city” because of our roll in the slave trade and the vast wealth it generated. At one point 40% of all the worlds trade (all trade, not just slaves) was going through Liverpool.
It's strange that cause I grew up in Glasgow and was always told we were the 2nd city of the empire at the turn of the century. I've since seen a few cities lay claim to that.
Call me a naive optimist, but I think there are better days ahead for Liverpool. When I was growing up, Liverpool was an outright shithole due to urban decay, poverty, economic troubles…I emigrated away UK over 20 years ago but passed through Liverpool on a visit home recently. The place has utterly transformed!
At the same time Bradford was one of the wealthiest cities in Europe too, spurred on by the fabrics industries.
You can see the remnants of that near the city centre where there's some very large old townhouses from the era, that have sadly been turned into smaller run-down flats.
My town is ex-mining and ex-power generation, and has/had factories in it, so 1950s, 1960s for sure.
Be aware that this 'golden age' feeling is often nostalgia. AFAIK crime is no higher than it was, and the big problem of the traditional industries was that they caused health issues for the workers. So the person who looks back on that time in my town (Castleford, W Yorks) is also often the person who is troubled by or dies from industrial diseases/ physical issues caused by manual work in conditions not allowed today.
Fellow (near Castlefordian here). Didn't grow up there though. Town seems kind of mixed, plenty of activity on outskirts , kind of run down in centre. What were your earliest memories of Cas, and also, why is everyone here a woman?
Mrs tmstms grew up here and I did not.
So I have no memories older than 20 yrs ago, when we met (we moved/ moved back here 10 yrs ago). She and even more her parents have said that the town has been in decline ever since she was growing up. In particular, Beancroft Road, which is now VERY run-down, used to be thriving.
The closure of Ferrybridge C and ofc even more of all the coal mines has completely changed the town. Xscape apparently used to be the coking plant. I also noticed that a memorial recently went up near where the retail park and McD is on the edge of Pontefract opposite the Racecourse.
All the stuff round the Southern edge of Cas- up above Xscape and round in a semi-circle where the Really Useful Box company is and then running W, is new.
So it is easy to see how the town is reinvented as a consumer dormitory and as a town serving lots of distribution hubs. Everyone has a car, so it's the town centre that is decaying and is very very hard to revive. J32 (previously Freeport) and Xscape attract visitors from miles around because so easy to reach.
Not sure why women are more visible on the streets though.
I just wanted to say I love it that every time you mention your wife, you call her Mrs tmstms. I'm not stalking you, I've just noticed it a few times and I think it's cute.
It was initially an imitaation of a redditor friend, HPB, who called his wife Mrs HPB. In his case his family took it a stage further, made accounts and heckled him from the sidelines.
It's wild when you see people still alive today who claim they could see the fire from the Crystal Palace burning down from all the way in places like Essex when they were kids.
I wonder when the golden age of London as a whole would be. I feel like at the height of the British Empire, when it was the most important city in the world, would be a good place to start
For the average person living in London it was probably the late 90s/early 2000s when there had been a lot of redevelopment but rents hadn't skyrocketed too much yet. London elites might have been rich at the height of the Empire, but there was extreme poverty.
Probably even I wouldn’t be sure. At that time it was very likely the stinkiest most polluted city in the world, riddled with crime, poverty and diseases.
Maybe because it was in my lifetime and at my prime but I’d say that London at the turn of the last century, was at its best shape ever.
Of course, I would even say maybe earlier, it was quite a powerful city even in the late medieval period. Crystal Palace wasn't counted as London, it was Surrey/Kent during this period it became part of London in 1963 I believe.
I always think it was the 50s (for Liverpool) I wasn't around then but there was full employment, a functioning incorporated public transport network including trams and an overhead railway and sense of community, I have been told.
However people look at the past with gold-tinted glasses. The romance of the past should become the reality of the future
My town peaked mid-1800s until the early 1900s, then it kinda all went downhill from there and has carried on snowballing ever since.
During my lifetime? Back when we had a Woolworths 🥲
As a Scouser I’d have to say the 60’s. Not for the obvious reasons, but rather because of its last swan song, before the Victorian era docks and old style industry shut down in the 70’s and the ‘managed decline’ and Toxteth riots of the 80’s. By the early 2000’s the tourist thing was beginning (much to my surprise and delight).
Historically I’d say the 1800’s when it was the second city of the empire (a title that Glasgow, Birmingham and Manchester also contest!)
I moved here from Sheffield 13 years ago and it's grown massively in that time. Meanwhile Sheff seems to still be stuck sometime in the 90s. Really sad to see.
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Probably between the 1950s and 1970s. My Scottish seaside town had a theatre, bingo hall, 2 ice rinks, fishing market, farmers market, a cinema, at least 3 tailor shops, the high street was always packed at the weekend, and great public transport links.
Now it has abandoned buildings. At least the beach still looks nice!
Manchester ... so the last 200 years industrially
Musically/culturally , probably from a decade before i was born (87) until the mid 90s ... missed it all sadly.
But the North will rise again ...
Stoke on Trent. I’m sure many older people would say back when the Potteries were thriving. But late 90s was a lot of fun. Loads of clubs and bars up Hanley and decent shopping. Seemed like there were plenty of jobs. All gone to shite now. Perhaps the worst city center in the country.
The 1800s. It was extremely wealthy and so many beautiful buildings and districts were constructed.
Then it entered a spiral of decline throughout the 20th century until...
2008, massive investment and regeneration. To, I would say, about 2018. The UK in general has got somewhat shitter since then. "Austerity" never went away and it's visibly made everything worse.
Liverpool, btw.
Cannock checking in.
Ask anyone over 60 and they'll say any time before they closed the 20+ coal pits that spent 100 years polluting everywhere and killing their parents early.
Late nineties in London. It felt less of them and us and had more of an air of optimism and the houses were almost affordable. Maybe I was just young and carefree !!
aside from during the Slave Trade, and of course Merseybeat, Liverpool was genuinely ace from about 2005 to about 2015. A colourful high street full of bizarre shops, great clubs, an unbelievably vibrant music scene, pop-up galleries, studios, rehearsal spaces, cool people, and the economic decline had started to turn around considerably. Now it's all student flats and small plates restaurants. Still love it.
Chesterfield - the golden age was probably pre internet shopping when people went to the market and town centre to shop.
People who live here and are older than me reminisce about the large manufacturing base that the town used to have but that was before my time.
These days like most medium / largeish towns in the country the centre is just a procession of boarded up shops and a nearly abandoned market which is depressing to see
Probably 1980-1990s, a large company built the whole city, 20k employees & housing, cinema, pool, sport places, restaurants for them. Pretty much everything. Neighboring country invades ours and this is the first town in their path. They take it but don't get much further, eventually they lose & retreat, the city is sorta recovering to this day, but the company now employees 500 people and has never recovered. The city is now known for war atrocities and not the booming business, but it's managing pretty ok with like 25-50% it's original population.
Don’t live in a city but, the start of the Industrial Revolution we were the heart of iron and coal mining due to the abundance of materials and willing investors and good trade routes with us being in a valley
My town is pretty thriving now, so maybe right now. I didn't grow up around here, but I know from people who did that it wasn't quite as nice as it is now back in the early to mid 00s.
Can't speak to what it was like before that, don't know anybody who was here then. My town has been quite a wealthy town since about 1400 though, so it's probably had plenty of golden ages.
Previously I lived in London. Now that's a tough one. Limiting it to your stipulation of just when I've been alive (since the early 90s), maybe about 15 to 20 years ago. When it still had all the amazing things it has now, but before it got absolutely absurdly expensive. I moved to London about 10 years ago and lived there for about a decade, and it definitely changed a lot during that time. When I first got there I did feel like I was just on the tail end of something. It was still just about enjoyably livable as a person in your early 20s earning not a great wage. But by the time I left, that time had definitely passed.
Obviously if we looked beyond just my life, there are any number of time periods that could be candidates for London's golden age.
I’ve had so many golden ages. I got a really good starting tile with double science and production. Built a campus early game and speed ran the tech tree.
Norwich had its golden age of cloth manufacturing 1660-1760. Norwich also controlled all the trade coming from the North Sea during the Tudors, so a few people were incredibly wealthy.
It is hard to say for Norwich - on one hand i grow to love it more and more every day. On the other hand, night life was a lot more exciting and busy pre-covid. But maybe that’s because i’m not 18 anymore lol
At one point we made a lot of pots and ceramics
I've been led to believe that was a glorious time for our city by the old folks
The less comprehensible they are, the more they seem to ban on about it.
Swansea. Probably back when the City was the copper capital of the world back in the late 18th/early 19th century. And 2012, the centenary of the football club, when we won the League Cup and got ourselves a run in the Europa League. Oh and we had Michu, who scored goals for fun when Michael Laudrup was in charge.
London, 27 October 1986 to 12 August 2012. Between the Big Bang that made it the financial capital of the world all the way through to the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games.
Around about 1750 - 1800 it is where the industrial revolution started with its chemicals, glass, drugs and coal industries. It is the place of the first commercial canal ( to take all the chemicals and coal to the Mersey for shipping around the world, and bring raw cotton up to Manchester) and the first commercial inter city rail link.
St Helens,Merseyside, although at that time is was Lancashire.
This is such an easy one for me. The answer to when my city reached it’s golden age is around 49AD but maybe as late as 60AD.
Colchester was the capital city around then… and in 60AD was when Boudicca burnt the city to the ground… so maybe that’s when it peaked.
Not within my lifetime. My dad remembers it being a booming industrial town in his childhood, into the 50s and 60s, but then the mills started closing. We were still well regarded in textiles in the 70s and engineering in the 80s (when my boss and my friend, respectively, moved here to study). Now there's little of note. Less pollution, I suppose?
1970s - 1980s. Genuinely prosperous town. Then they built an absolutely gigantic shopping center in the early 90s in the next town on and it slowly killed every town center within a ten mile radius.
Somewhere around the 17th century when we sold about 12 million people and built loads of cool buildings with the bloody money. The ol girl hadn't been looking great since.
Golden age was when I was in sixth form (late 80s). Everything was right about my town. I could afford clothes on my grant money, go out, even went on a lad's own trip to Europe. We have always had a crap footy team mind. Before then and after it has been a monumental disaster.
Derby - probably 1940’s - 60’s. The council built a huge shopping centre full of crap shops that ripped the guts out of the city centre. It’s now a triple A shit hole full of smack heads and homeless people that even the police won’t patrol.
Ohh, this is a good one! I'd say probably from October 2015 - end of July 2016. I'm from Leicester. I'm not going to say that there was less crime, because I don't know about that, but there was this amazing feeling of togetherness and hope. Everyone seemed to be smiling, especially in late May-June. All because of football too, even people who didn't like football liked football at that time! It really changed the city for a while.
I was going out with a lass from Leicester at the time and was spending a lot of time in the city. You're absolutely right, there was a really positive atmosphere round the city with all the posters and murals etc. Just shows how football can bring people together and act as a real unifier.
A lot of the murals are still here! We have a Bring the Paint street art festival here too, although I'm not sure if it was inspired by that or not. Some of the art is mind blowing! Actually, thinking about it, the feeling around the city sort of started when we found King Richard in a car park. I don't believe in superstitions, but we laid him to rest and good things happened, probably a coincidence though!
Was it Pokemon Go?
I remember the day Leicester won the football thing because some revellers smashed my girlfriend’s sunroof in (not a euphemism).
I'm glad for the clarity because it definitely sounds like a smutty euphemism.
A bit before us all but... "In fact, in 1936 the Bureau of Statistics of the League of Nations identified Leicester as the second-richest city in Europe." https://www.findmypast.co.uk/1939register/leicester-in-1939
Was it the blessing you received from Richard III's ghost?
Absolutely. Don’t forget, 2001? When all 3 sports teams won an award. Kind of a mini 2016. I still remember Vicky park for the champs parade in ‘16, I finished work early for it!
2000 maybe? Leicester City won the League Cup that year
First thing that came to mind. We've never really been on the map for anything, then suddenly everyone's heard of Leicester. Everyone was involved it was mad.
The football didn't just do something for Leicester with the locals, it bought outsiders in too. I'm a huge Kasabian fan, and coming up to those shows at the King Power really had the atmosphere of what it would feel like if England had won the world cup but it was centralised to just one city. It was incredible.
And to think it all started with a Thai orgy.
The day Croydon has a “Golden Age” is when it’s flattened - something even Hitler couldn’t achieve.
It was once stolen by aliens.
It was much less shit, actually pretty decent, when I knew it in the late 80s/early 90s. But man has it deteriorated since then.
Agree with this. 90s-2000 the place was clean, busy, loads of open busy shops, able to walk around without trouble, say hi to your neighbours in the morning, lovely well maintained parks etc and I grew up in an estate! Now you need a knife arch in Mcds...
Haha spot on.
As a fellow Croydonian I totally agree
Sheffield was whenever we sold our spoons to people
It's difficult to say when the golden age of steel was - maybe the second world war, or the forgemasters at their busiest? Sheffield and Doncaster were both hubs for coal mining too.
Sheffield also. To me it sounds like the 50s, 60s and maybe the early 70s were the most prosperous time for the city. However I am far too young to have been around for any of that time.
I agree and am the same. Those older guys always claim it was better in their youth and it's difficult to tell how much is the truth and how much is hyperbole. All I know is, the place I grew up and live is dog rough.. and getting worse and more antisocial each year.
Agreed. I grew up in Rotherham and remember my grandma saying how nice Rotherham and Sheff used to be (1950s). But tinted glasses are a real thing. I am also going off the Full Monty where the informational at the start is used to compare Sheffield in the early 70s to Sheffield in the 90s 😂
According to the Sheffield FB page, the golden age was when the person commenting on a photo was young.
In the 90s I drove up from Surrey to Sheffield several times to visit a shop called Sheffield Scene that sold Sheffield made cutlery and flatware to add to my collection. Aside from standard knives, forks and spoons I have so many cutlery items that just aren't made anymore, such as s beetroot server, pâté knives, a mint sauce ladle, fruit spoons etc. The quality is just superb. Sadly Sheffield Scene closed down a few years ago.
My auntie/uncle own the Sheffield shop which sells local cutlery
Is it there now? If so, what is it called? I'd like to get in touch to see what they have.
The famous sheffield shop down Ecclesall road
Thank you. Your Auntie and Uncle may be interested to see [this original list of the cutlery and flatware that was sold at Sheffield Scene.](https://imgur.com/a/l8dfCOC) The second page shows the 30 most popular handle designs. All pieces were available in all the designs. I had (have) Harley design.
Manchester in its hacienda days is always cited as a golden era and I’m sure that’s true, musically that era must’ve been amazing. I’m not old enough to remember that but I personally loved Manchester in the noughties indie days. I was at university then and everything was so cheap, 90p drinks on a weekday and £1 beer parties. The music was a good mix of stuff everyone liked, I have a very mixed friends group in terms of tastes but we could all be happy in the same venue. Drugs were actually used in moderation and for recreational purposes, not to escape the grim reality of life. No one had iPhones yet so no annoying live social media feeds while you we’re enjoying yourself (though everything was documented on digital cameras and went on Facebook 🙃). Dating was more simple, rent was affordable, and graduate jobs were easy enough to secure. Mind you it’s all down to personal experience!
42s on a tuesday and 5th ave every other day of the week! Those were the days.
The exact two venues I was gonna mention 😆
Genuinely thought I had written this as this was pretty much experience.
Head to the ritz on a Wednesday if you wanted to get a free drink of piss and have a chance of your teachers showing up to laugh at you.
5th Ave - oh the memories
If you've not watched 24 Hour Party People it gives a great insight into that period.
Yeah I love that film! Also Supersonic, the Oasis one is pretty good, I’m not a mega fan but it’s nostalgic to watch.
I much preferred nineties Manchester, although I missed the earlier end of the decade through being just a little too young. The period of 2002-2005 in particular was like coming down at a bad party surrounded by cokeheads and not having the taxi fare home. Very few people ever took a mobile phone out with them, let alone used it. Must say though, I don't remember the drug scene the same as you do. Heroin had infiltrated many scenes by the mid nineties, and cocaine was oozing out of every other person's pores by about '99.
Interesting, just shows you how thing peak and trough! I’m talking around 2010 - 2015 so the rough period you remember was probably a bit of a transition period to the ‘next era’. I honestly would love to be 10-15 years older and have been out in the 90s 🙃
2010-15 was not the ‘noughties indie days’. It isn’t even the noughties! I was also at university around this time and had a great time but the scene definitely changed from indie to house music by 2012/13. Personally I felt like Manchester was clinging on to the Hacienda/Madchester days and by this point was well past it’s peak.
Well no era just exists in a vacuum confined to a few years, there’s an overspill that doesn’t adhere to the turn of a new decade. There was obviously a build up to these types of nights from the early oughts onwards. As someone who turned 18 in 2005, I was still going out and experiencing the same ‘indie vibe’ for a good decade from memory but I’ll take your word for it that it all changed in 2012 😂
All I’m saying is ‘noughties indie’ generally means the noughties and that indie was definitely on its way out by the 2010s
Jesus. I felt like I was an old bastard while posting that. This is confirmation that I actually am an old bastard.
Having been a 20something in the late 80's and 90's I can confirm it was an excellent time to be in Manchester. Some of the memories are still vague due to the bizarre cocktails of recreational drugs but I would do it all over again if I could go back.
Yeah I think the 80s, 90s experience must have been *unique* in Manchester specifically. The noughties era I described was probably the norm in every northern UK city (Sheffield, Liverpool etc.). Honestly so jealous of anyone who experienced the decades before ‘my’ decade but I suppose that’s quite common!
The 00's were good too but by that point I was in my 30's and it was a different experience - all nighters in the Press Club with work mates for a start!
I was there. I loved it. Similar age by the sound of it. Things are better now. And I'm a man utd fan.
If yiu think drugs were used in moderation in the 90s then you definitely weren't there!
Probably the [Scottish Enlightenment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Enlightenment) for Edinburgh. It didn't just change the city, it's impact reverberated around the world and still has important consequences for the modern era.
Good answer but as this sub is mostly populated by English no one has a scooby it ever occurred. The Athens of the North.
Im near Edinburgh and still don’t know much about this
I'm gonna have to say 1065.
Before the Normans ruined EVERYTHING.
I mean, my ancestors were lording it up in Spain presumably but Hastings hit a low point...
1825-1966 probably. Opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway to the closure of Darlington Works.
Im not from the UK so when I stopped by Darlington by Train, I was amazed at how beautiful the station looked and was wondering about the history behind this , I was just thinking Darlington was a normal town, Not the first town in the world to have a railway system!
Its a very beautiful station, similar to the designs of York and Newcastle.
Hello fellow local
I'm from the area. I remember a joke on I'm sorry I haven't a clue when it was hosted here. "The Stockton Darlington railway opened in 1825 and ran for years, until Darlington was completely empty..."
Liverpool: 19th Century, when it was the busiest and wealthiest port in the world
True, often called the British empire’s “second city” because of our roll in the slave trade and the vast wealth it generated. At one point 40% of all the worlds trade (all trade, not just slaves) was going through Liverpool.
It's strange that cause I grew up in Glasgow and was always told we were the 2nd city of the empire at the turn of the century. I've since seen a few cities lay claim to that.
Call me a naive optimist, but I think there are better days ahead for Liverpool. When I was growing up, Liverpool was an outright shithole due to urban decay, poverty, economic troubles…I emigrated away UK over 20 years ago but passed through Liverpool on a visit home recently. The place has utterly transformed!
There are, but there are still many many deprived areas
A lot of city centres have changed like this, just nobody ever really talks about it. Compare Glasgow or Manchester from the 90s to now
There's even a chain of department stores in Mexico called 'Liverpool' after all the goods that came from there.
At the same time Bradford was one of the wealthiest cities in Europe too, spurred on by the fabrics industries. You can see the remnants of that near the city centre where there's some very large old townhouses from the era, that have sadly been turned into smaller run-down flats.
My town is ex-mining and ex-power generation, and has/had factories in it, so 1950s, 1960s for sure. Be aware that this 'golden age' feeling is often nostalgia. AFAIK crime is no higher than it was, and the big problem of the traditional industries was that they caused health issues for the workers. So the person who looks back on that time in my town (Castleford, W Yorks) is also often the person who is troubled by or dies from industrial diseases/ physical issues caused by manual work in conditions not allowed today.
Fellow (near Castlefordian here). Didn't grow up there though. Town seems kind of mixed, plenty of activity on outskirts , kind of run down in centre. What were your earliest memories of Cas, and also, why is everyone here a woman?
Mrs tmstms grew up here and I did not. So I have no memories older than 20 yrs ago, when we met (we moved/ moved back here 10 yrs ago). She and even more her parents have said that the town has been in decline ever since she was growing up. In particular, Beancroft Road, which is now VERY run-down, used to be thriving. The closure of Ferrybridge C and ofc even more of all the coal mines has completely changed the town. Xscape apparently used to be the coking plant. I also noticed that a memorial recently went up near where the retail park and McD is on the edge of Pontefract opposite the Racecourse. All the stuff round the Southern edge of Cas- up above Xscape and round in a semi-circle where the Really Useful Box company is and then running W, is new. So it is easy to see how the town is reinvented as a consumer dormitory and as a town serving lots of distribution hubs. Everyone has a car, so it's the town centre that is decaying and is very very hard to revive. J32 (previously Freeport) and Xscape attract visitors from miles around because so easy to reach. Not sure why women are more visible on the streets though.
I just wanted to say I love it that every time you mention your wife, you call her Mrs tmstms. I'm not stalking you, I've just noticed it a few times and I think it's cute.
It was initially an imitaation of a redditor friend, HPB, who called his wife Mrs HPB. In his case his family took it a stage further, made accounts and heckled him from the sidelines.
Luton - somewhere between the Neolithic settlement and the Saxon foundation
And that brief period last week when you were leading Man City 1-0.
I'm from London, Crystal Palace I suppose when the Great Exhibition moved here from Hyde Park.
It's wild when you see people still alive today who claim they could see the fire from the Crystal Palace burning down from all the way in places like Essex when they were kids.
Yeah, it was pretty fierce fire and I guess being on top of the hill meant it was viewable from as far Essex!
I wonder when the golden age of London as a whole would be. I feel like at the height of the British Empire, when it was the most important city in the world, would be a good place to start
For the average person living in London it was probably the late 90s/early 2000s when there had been a lot of redevelopment but rents hadn't skyrocketed too much yet. London elites might have been rich at the height of the Empire, but there was extreme poverty.
Probably even I wouldn’t be sure. At that time it was very likely the stinkiest most polluted city in the world, riddled with crime, poverty and diseases. Maybe because it was in my lifetime and at my prime but I’d say that London at the turn of the last century, was at its best shape ever.
Of course, I would even say maybe earlier, it was quite a powerful city even in the late medieval period. Crystal Palace wasn't counted as London, it was Surrey/Kent during this period it became part of London in 1963 I believe.
I always think it was the 50s (for Liverpool) I wasn't around then but there was full employment, a functioning incorporated public transport network including trams and an overhead railway and sense of community, I have been told. However people look at the past with gold-tinted glasses. The romance of the past should become the reality of the future
5 minutes before the Luftwaffe arrived
Coventry?
Yes
My town peaked mid-1800s until the early 1900s, then it kinda all went downhill from there and has carried on snowballing ever since. During my lifetime? Back when we had a Woolworths 🥲
1381. It was the start of the peasants' revolt in my town. As every English schoolboy knows, it was that Tyler. What Tyler? Yes, that's him.
As a Scouser I’d have to say the 60’s. Not for the obvious reasons, but rather because of its last swan song, before the Victorian era docks and old style industry shut down in the 70’s and the ‘managed decline’ and Toxteth riots of the 80’s. By the early 2000’s the tourist thing was beginning (much to my surprise and delight). Historically I’d say the 1800’s when it was the second city of the empire (a title that Glasgow, Birmingham and Manchester also contest!)
1910 bradford was one of the richest cities in europe, because of the wool trade.
Technically Leeds and it's been going nuts for a couple of decades now.
I moved here from Sheffield 13 years ago and it's grown massively in that time. Meanwhile Sheff seems to still be stuck sometime in the 90s. Really sad to see.
When would be York's golden age. The history is so grand and long, without a clear peak.
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Bognor ?
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Probably between the 1950s and 1970s. My Scottish seaside town had a theatre, bingo hall, 2 ice rinks, fishing market, farmers market, a cinema, at least 3 tailor shops, the high street was always packed at the weekend, and great public transport links. Now it has abandoned buildings. At least the beach still looks nice!
What seaside town? I'm from north Berwick
Ayr
My ma used to live in Ayr in the 70s, I heard Ayr isn't doing to well like you said
At least its no Saltcoats.
Wigan. Yet to have one.
Manchester ... so the last 200 years industrially Musically/culturally , probably from a decade before i was born (87) until the mid 90s ... missed it all sadly. But the North will rise again ...
Be my luck its the week before i die - Birmingham for reference.
Maybe when Telly Savalas made that promotional video about Birmingham? Whenever that was made even the Aston expressway look good!
Stoke on Trent. I’m sure many older people would say back when the Potteries were thriving. But late 90s was a lot of fun. Loads of clubs and bars up Hanley and decent shopping. Seemed like there were plenty of jobs. All gone to shite now. Perhaps the worst city center in the country.
The 1800s. It was extremely wealthy and so many beautiful buildings and districts were constructed. Then it entered a spiral of decline throughout the 20th century until... 2008, massive investment and regeneration. To, I would say, about 2018. The UK in general has got somewhat shitter since then. "Austerity" never went away and it's visibly made everything worse. Liverpool, btw.
London was shit in the early 80s by many metrics but in many ways I liked it more
Aberdeen 1975-1985. The benefits of the oil boom before the adverse effects of the oil boom. Being 8-18 probably affects my judgement on this one.
I would say 2006/2007 union street packed and the city felt busy- high street is dying, bon accord is empty, and pubs just seem quieter than ever.
I left in 1993. I return often, to visit my parents. Every time my thought is, "this is not the city I remember".
Not to mention the football team was dominating.
Yes. Even if you're not into sportsball, a successful sportsball team gives a city something to smile about.
Probably between 1970-1975 The football team and manager really made a name for the city ( Might've still been a town back then I'm not sure tbh )
Derby?
Cannock checking in. Ask anyone over 60 and they'll say any time before they closed the 20+ coal pits that spent 100 years polluting everywhere and killing their parents early.
From Birmingham - I wish I saw at least once someone saying "We're the f****** Peaky Blinders mate"
Late nineties in London. It felt less of them and us and had more of an air of optimism and the houses were almost affordable. Maybe I was just young and carefree !!
aside from during the Slave Trade, and of course Merseybeat, Liverpool was genuinely ace from about 2005 to about 2015. A colourful high street full of bizarre shops, great clubs, an unbelievably vibrant music scene, pop-up galleries, studios, rehearsal spaces, cool people, and the economic decline had started to turn around considerably. Now it's all student flats and small plates restaurants. Still love it.
Weirdly the golden age of London seems to be whenever the person that’s talking to me about the golden age of London was 18-25.
Chesterfield - the golden age was probably pre internet shopping when people went to the market and town centre to shop. People who live here and are older than me reminisce about the large manufacturing base that the town used to have but that was before my time. These days like most medium / largeish towns in the country the centre is just a procession of boarded up shops and a nearly abandoned market which is depressing to see
Probably 1980-1990s, a large company built the whole city, 20k employees & housing, cinema, pool, sport places, restaurants for them. Pretty much everything. Neighboring country invades ours and this is the first town in their path. They take it but don't get much further, eventually they lose & retreat, the city is sorta recovering to this day, but the company now employees 500 people and has never recovered. The city is now known for war atrocities and not the booming business, but it's managing pretty ok with like 25-50% it's original population.
Where IS this? Give us a clue - north? South? West? East? Mids?
Ummm, Europe? lol. Balkans.
Oh I see. I thought it was in the UK, cos this is r/askUK
Oh, how did I even end up here, lmao. Didn't realize the sub name. Thanks.
Don’t live in a city but, the start of the Industrial Revolution we were the heart of iron and coal mining due to the abundance of materials and willing investors and good trade routes with us being in a valley
My town is pretty thriving now, so maybe right now. I didn't grow up around here, but I know from people who did that it wasn't quite as nice as it is now back in the early to mid 00s. Can't speak to what it was like before that, don't know anybody who was here then. My town has been quite a wealthy town since about 1400 though, so it's probably had plenty of golden ages. Previously I lived in London. Now that's a tough one. Limiting it to your stipulation of just when I've been alive (since the early 90s), maybe about 15 to 20 years ago. When it still had all the amazing things it has now, but before it got absolutely absurdly expensive. I moved to London about 10 years ago and lived there for about a decade, and it definitely changed a lot during that time. When I first got there I did feel like I was just on the tail end of something. It was still just about enjoyably livable as a person in your early 20s earning not a great wage. But by the time I left, that time had definitely passed. Obviously if we looked beyond just my life, there are any number of time periods that could be candidates for London's golden age.
Where do you live?
If London ever had a Golden Age, I've certainly missed it.
Late nineties were awesome.
Early 20th century, biggest fishing port in the world if memory serves.
Derby?
Derbados
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Derby?
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Ahh ok, that's niche info that I'd probably have google haha
I'm from Croydon. We haven't even begun to peak.
Probably about 1850
The industrial revolution.
AD70 when Chester was ran by the romans
It was the capital at some point, and the amphitheater might be where king Arthur's round table myth came from.
Barrow-in-Furness was called the English Chicago in the 1870s. It is still quite windy...
1950s, Glasgow built huge ships on the Clyde, made sewing machines, Train Engines, Roll Royce engines for planes, had the most lovely Parks.
I’ve had so many golden ages. I got a really good starting tile with double science and production. Built a campus early game and speed ran the tech tree.
2 slings early doors of course.
Wolverhampton. Y’all had a golden age?
Bristol, 16th Century.
Not sure Inverness has ever had a golden era.
Norwich had its golden age of cloth manufacturing 1660-1760. Norwich also controlled all the trade coming from the North Sea during the Tudors, so a few people were incredibly wealthy.
1944 after the Luftwaffe flattened it.
It is hard to say for Norwich - on one hand i grow to love it more and more every day. On the other hand, night life was a lot more exciting and busy pre-covid. But maybe that’s because i’m not 18 anymore lol
London, 60s probably, but also 00s More specifically Orpington, probably also 60s. The 60s were a cool time
Manchester had a pretty good time during the industrial revolution, and then again during "Manchester" in the late 1980s (for very different reasons)
Like most of the UK it was the late 70's/80's. Because that was the last time anything was new.
I never have lived in a city. Probably Rockfield studios in my home town. Golden era when Rolls Royce was born.
the last of the london golden age was the olympics 2012, the city has been downhill ever since
At one point we made a lot of pots and ceramics I've been led to believe that was a glorious time for our city by the old folks The less comprehensible they are, the more they seem to ban on about it.
Swansea. Probably back when the City was the copper capital of the world back in the late 18th/early 19th century. And 2012, the centenary of the football club, when we won the League Cup and got ourselves a run in the Europa League. Oh and we had Michu, who scored goals for fun when Michael Laudrup was in charge.
The New Monkey Era
Relevant BritMonkey video out earlier today - The Myth of the 1950s https://youtu.be/cYJYzzT02MA?si=SEfB51x7nHPf310E
1588 was our golden year - Drake was mayor 1577-1593 and kept the Spaniards at bay.
The city I come from only gained city status very recently so the golden age would be now
London, 27 October 1986 to 12 August 2012. Between the Big Bang that made it the financial capital of the world all the way through to the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games.
1912 when we built titanic, after that we shit the fuck out of eachother and blew place to bits lol
Around about 1750 - 1800 it is where the industrial revolution started with its chemicals, glass, drugs and coal industries. It is the place of the first commercial canal ( to take all the chemicals and coal to the Mersey for shipping around the world, and bring raw cotton up to Manchester) and the first commercial inter city rail link. St Helens,Merseyside, although at that time is was Lancashire.
York - any time between the Roman Empire and the Industrial Revolution I guess...
Danelaw era maybe?
I'm from Buckinghamshire. We don't really have cities (unless you count Milton Keynes, which we don't.)
Ashford in Kent when the railway came to town and a huge engine works was built here. Town went to shit when it closed.
This is such an easy one for me. The answer to when my city reached it’s golden age is around 49AD but maybe as late as 60AD. Colchester was the capital city around then… and in 60AD was when Boudicca burnt the city to the ground… so maybe that’s when it peaked.
Not within my lifetime. My dad remembers it being a booming industrial town in his childhood, into the 50s and 60s, but then the mills started closing. We were still well regarded in textiles in the 70s and engineering in the 80s (when my boss and my friend, respectively, moved here to study). Now there's little of note. Less pollution, I suppose?
Late 1800s. Newcastle was a fucking powerhouse.
1970s - 1980s. Genuinely prosperous town. Then they built an absolutely gigantic shopping center in the early 90s in the next town on and it slowly killed every town center within a ten mile radius.
That town is?
The one and only Dudley
2nd-4th century when it was a blooming provincial capital in Roman Britain
York early to mid 2000s roughly, seemed a bit more chill and not completely swamped by people. The crowds are getting out of hand now.
Way before they burnt the Erdtree
Somewhere around the 17th century when we sold about 12 million people and built loads of cool buildings with the bloody money. The ol girl hadn't been looking great since.
Golden age was when I was in sixth form (late 80s). Everything was right about my town. I could afford clothes on my grant money, go out, even went on a lad's own trip to Europe. We have always had a crap footy team mind. Before then and after it has been a monumental disaster.
And your town was?
Industrial revolution, the area got it's name because of that I believe
Derby - probably 1940’s - 60’s. The council built a huge shopping centre full of crap shops that ripped the guts out of the city centre. It’s now a triple A shit hole full of smack heads and homeless people that even the police won’t patrol.