Stourbridge in the "good old days" 1960's autoshite content

[theorganist]

I have found some interesting old vidoes on Youtube of Stourbridge. They are from around 1969 when the ring road was built.

 

They might be of interest for the autoshite content. The ring road is quite controversial, I believe it is the smallest ring road in Britain, it literally is a concrete collar around the commercial centre.

 

Personally I think it should have been built further out as you still get a lot of congestion in the town as traffic passing through has to come virtually into the town centre, also it has ruined the character of what was an old market town as quite a few interesting old buildings were pulled down. Some are getting their own back, parts of the ring road started collapsing over the last ten years into old cellars dating back to the 18th century I believe, they were not filled in correctly during the construction.

 

I know of people who will drive miles out of the way to avoid it, when my parents first came to Stourbridge to look at an house, the saw the ring road and drove back out of town vowing never to move there!!

 

Strangely enough one of the town councillors at the time owned a garage of which part of the ring road is built, there are rumours of "brown envelopes"!!

 

These videos are not my work and I did not upload them to youtube, I hope you may find them interesting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also an interesting video from the 1980's:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNWPTpmBi3Q

[Lord Sterling]

Interesting stuff. I think you posted this sometime ago as I remember the first video. Interesting to see how things have changed, the first vid showing the ring road before the Crystal Leisure Centre was built. I also noticed that the area where the Mercedes Garage/Bus Station is now was a little narrower.

 

Ole' Fatha_Sterling and his mates used take thier famalies on an outing sometimes to the Crystal Leisure Centre, I used to hate going to the swimming pool, I never wanted to go. We last visited the Leisure Centre in 2003 as we passed through Stourbridge, I never remember it being as run down as it looked then, as a kid I remember the Centre being pretty amazing and new, very early 90s middle-class Leisure Centre like.

 

I didnt realise the ring road held the title of the smallest ring road in Britian. I have a small book on various area of the Black Country where members of the public took pictures before or around the year 2000.

 

I'm looking for some pics of the old Ford garage on Birmingham Street. Looks to have been closed for a while but I'm pretty sure I remember it being open at one point.

[Louise2cv]

I know of people who will drive miles out of the way to avoid it...

 

Yes! I did this.

 

Remember when it collapsed?

[red5]

I still do - legacy of driving from Bewdley to Audnam (Stourbridge VW)...

[carlo]

This is as interesting for its social/urban history as for autoshite.

 

I would have thought Watford would run it close, its ring road is pretty tiny.