Shopping centre has already become history

Time passes us by so quickly, that before we know it, what historians may class as modern history, turns out to be something like 30 years ago. It’s quite scary really to look back through my archive at pictures that I have taken in particular – and when you look at the date, you realise it was taken a lifetime ago.

Ashford has changed so much over the decades that pictures from this recent vintage are still interesting and are always an insight to the younger generation. Pictures from the 1980s for instance were the subject of conversation the other week as I talked to a couple of friends in the town. One of my friends wanted to see a picture of the High Street in the eighties, so I accessed my remote cloud storage to show a picture from 1988 – with the conversation overheard by a passer-by who was immediately interested as that was the year they were born!

Growing up in the 1980s, the town as it was then is still fresh in my mind. Yes, I have my archive to refer to, but even without that immense luxury, I still remember much of the appearance, feel and atmosphere that 1980s Ashford brought. The market, the buses through the town centre (up Bank Street into the High Street and North Street), and shops that I used to frequent like Martin’s the newsagent, Our Price Records and Sainsbury’s – doing the weekly shop with my Mum. It was in the late 1980s that the Tufton Shopping Centre one of two open-air shopping developments, was renamed and a new glass roof was built to enclose the malls and squares of the centre. Named County Square, the multimillion-pound revamp was completed by 1990 – but the question is, how many readers remember it as it used to be just prior to the works fully commencing?

This week’s trio of images show the old Tufton Centre in 1989, just weeks before the 1975 built development became one big building site, where business was usual throughout.

Do you have you any photographs or slides that you would be willing to lend me, to be scanned and featured in the Kentish Express? Write to me: Steve Salter, Kentish Express Remember When, Unit 4, Park Mall Shopping Centre, Ashford TN24 8RY, email me at rememberwhen_kmash@ hotmail.co.uk, or find me on Twitter @SteveKMAshford.

Or you can also leave a telephone message for me with brief details by calling 01233 623232. Please help me by supplying a return address for the return of originals.