Panoramic views from top of church

With our towns and cities changing decade and decade and year on year, it’s hard to keep track of such changes when walking around our locality.

We can walk along familiar streets and through familiar places, but the changes before us may not be all that obvious.

But when viewing our locality from an elevated vantage point, such changes are clear and plain to see.

Until the early 1970s, the town of Ashford had very few vantage points compared to today, one of which being the long-standing facility of the church tower of the church of St Mary the Virgin in the centre of the town.

While it may be a huge undertaking for some of us (including myself) to climb the steps of such towers with their winding spiral stone steps, the view is most certainly worth the effort.

Many before me have clambered to the top of the church tower to photograph the surroundings and having such an array of pictures from the same position over different years and decades in my personal archive is helpful when looking at the changes to be had.

This week’s trio of images hail from 1960 and illustrate the town viewed from the church tower of St Mary the Virgin with the third picture illustrating the visible differences in the Lower High Street in the same year.

The pictures come from a haul inherited from my good friend, the late Richard Filmer who passed away in May 2017.

■ Do you have any photographs or slides of old Ashford you would be willing to loan me to enable them to be scanned for possible feature in the Kentish Express?

Please don’t delay, feel free to get in touch.

Write to me: Steve Salter, Kentish Express Remember When, Unit 4, Park Mall

Shopping Centre, Ashford, Kent, TN24 8RY.

Email me: rememberwhen_ kmash@hotmail.co.uk

Follow me on Twitter: @ SteveKMAshford.

Or you can also leave a telephone message for me with brief details by calling the Kentish Express office in Park Mall on 01233 623232.

This view from the church illustrates North Street and beyond as pictured from the tower in 1960

An unidentified procession taking place in the Lower High Street in 1960, in the days before pedestrianisation took place in the 1970s