A past buried under concrete and steel

1971: Edinburgh Road at its junction with Park Street is seen here during the era when many residential properties and business premises still existed in the vicinity including business such as Lambert Wholesale greengrocer pictured here.

In the days before the largescale redevelopment in the town, we sometimes tend to forget some of the many streets and businesses that once stood on today’s prime town centre sites.

Many of the town’s historic streets have been progressively buried beneath copious amounts of steel and concrete and there is barely (if any) trace of their existence. It’s quite sad to see parts of your home town disappear into history.

Often there is nothing wrong with houses and business premises earmarked for redevelopment. It is quite often the case that some of

Again taken in 1971: Edinburgh Road - which is now consumed by the Park Mall Shopping development - is seen here with the many residential and business premises that once existed along its length. these doomed properties are nowhere near as old as one might think, whereas others are around 100 years old or more.

One such area of the town is that now covered by

Park Mall Shopping Centre and Wilko. Made up of both housing and business premises, those streets, namely Edinburgh Road, Wolseley Road, Stone Street, Park Road and a substantial section of Park Street, have all been swallowed up by developments of the last 50 years.

This sector of the town has been earmarked for building for many years prior and there was a progression of abandonment and dereliction of

those buildings occupying the area over a period prior to development plans being approved and past.

Parts of the aforementioned streets had been severed in the early 1970s for the Ringway and had previously been accessible from Albert Road.

It was interesting when work eventually started on Park Mall. During excavations, several underground air raid shelters were uncovered on the site - in particular around the Wolseley and Edinburgh Road vicinity.

This week, Remember When focusses on a trio of images showing Edinburgh Road in the early part of the 1970s, before mass redevelopment took place.

Do you have any photographs or slides of

Old Ashford that you would be willing to loan me, to enable them to be scanned for possible feature in the Kentish Express? Please don’t delay, get in touch - email me rememberwhen_kmash@ hotmail.co.uk

Edinburgh Road looking towards its junction with Albert Road in 1971.

The houses and business premises pictured were derelict by the time they were demolished in 1985.

As Ashford temporarily loses its two cinemas this week, here’s a view of the former Odeon in the High Street