Clackers

Some more shots of 1973 Clacton On Sea.

FYI, you can no longer ride your motorbike onto the pier; the Ghost Train is long gone; the Steel Stella rollercoaster burned down only a few months after the show was filmed, and the Dolphinarium closed in the nineteen eighties. When I went last year, I sought out / trespassed into the abandoned Dolphinarium and found it slowly decaying, barred to the public but still intact, concrete seats,  half-empty pools and all, although I believe they have plans to do something with it this year.

Here's an aerial shot of how it looked a couple of years ago. I didn't take it: I don't like heights. The green square is the pool.

Thank you for your attention.

Pictures Of New Towns

Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire was designated a new town in 1947. Originally envisaged as 'a city in a park', the first new residents moved in to the town in 1950, although the original expansion plan was not completed until the 1980's. Hemel can boast the first multi-storey car park in the UK, constructed in 1960, as well as the infamous 'Magic Roundabout', an elaborate and mystifying circulatory where six separate roads meet.

In 1957, Hammer Studios shot part of 'Quatermass 2' in the town, cannily linking Hemel Hempstead's construction to the fictional 'Winnerden Flats' being built to house workers at the 'artificial food plant' in the story. Basically a big building site, the town proved an apt and eerie location, starting with the approach on a big empty road which abruptly terminates in the middle of nowhere.

Finding a dirt track that leads to the beginnings of a huge estate, Quatermass stops to interact with a few of the locals. The lady with a speaking role is an actress, but the ladies in the background are real residents, lucky enough to have been allocated one of the few completed houses on a project that still has years to run. There isn't even a pavement for them to push their shopping baskets along.

I believe this is the area of Hemel Hempstead known as Warner's End, although I stand to be corrected. Like all the individual estates in the new town it was designed to have its own mini civic centre: a parade of shops, a pub, a Doctor's surgery, some public art. In the film, however, all they have to look forward to is Whist on Wednesdays (cash prizes), and all there is to see are the abandoned double decker buses that brought them to this brave new world. 

Incidentally, I have been to Hemel Hempstead and it's quite nice, really, with very little evidence of alien invasion.

Pictures Of New Towns

Bracknell in Berkshire was designated a new town in 1949. Over the years it has served as a location for a number of films, including something called 'Larry Potter'. In 1972, however, it featured in the early scenes of 'I Want What I Want'.

The elevated walkways of the town centre seems to take the 'streets in the sky' concept used in highrise housing and apply it work and leisure, although the complex labyrinth of railings and ramps provide a nice metaphor for Roy's imprisonment in a male body and the small town attitudes that will drive him away.

Much of Bracknell still seems under construction in the film, and the image of the new escalators on a patch of concrete in a building site is pretty striking. 

Out of town, the housing estates are similarly half-made up, judging by the temporary bus stop and piles of rubble. The houses look nice, though, although this beast is presumably at the upper end of the scale. There are no streets, roads, avenues, closes or crescents in Bracknell, only names, alphabeticised depending on which of the estates they are on. I supposed you get used to it.

We'll come back to Bracknell again soon but, until then, we'll take the escalator to who knows where and say TTFN.

Pictures Of New Towns

Stevenage in Hertfordshire was designated the first British new town in 1946. In 1967, Clive Donner filmed swinging sex comedy 'Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush' in the town, managing to capture most of the pedestrianised civic centre (the first in Britain) as it looked eight years after being officially opened by The Queen. Here are some shots that give you a flavour of the town's appeal.

For the record, a new town was not generally brand new, simply a small town with the scope to be extensively developed in order to help alleviate crowding in major cities and to tackle the post-war housing shortage. A good new town would provide a home from the cradle to the grave with all civic amenities, including varied employment, comprehensive transport links, schools, hospitals and housing, all contained within a planned, modern, controlled environment.

In one of the greatest examples of the presiding Labour governments curious and contradictory mix of liberalism and authoritarianism, the offer of greatly improved facilities, a home of one's own, all mod cons, etc. was not always well-received, and so many people were forcibly rehoused, with some long-standing working class communities destroyed forever.

I'm interested in new towns for many reasons, but their visual appeal, the mid-century modernist style which, fifty and sixty years on, now looks both miraculous and ridiculous, is something I like very much.

In 2001, parts of the Brad Pitt film 'Spy Game' were also filmed in Stevenage, with the town's massive GlaxoSmithKline research centre standing in for CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia. I didn't know that until earlier today, of course, I don't really watch films like that.