Demolition man was kept very busy in 1960s
THE biggest swinger in 1960s Gloucestershire was the demolition man’s hammer.
In Gloucester, great swathes of the city centre were razed, thanks to the Jellico Plan of 1962.
Geoffrey Jellico, a celebrated landscape architect of his time, was commissioned by the City Council to rid Gloucester of its postindustrial heritage.
Jellico’s response was to knock down hundreds of buildings that today would be listed and cherished, and replace them with characterless concrete.
The city was saddled with such delights as Eastgate shopping centre, King’s Square, the Shire Hall extension, the bus station (that’s recently been reimagined) and a couple of multi-storey car parks in consequence.
At about the same time, high-rise flats were changing the face of the Clapham, while the lower Westgate area was being flattened to make way for what in the 1960s passed as architecture.
Tewkesbury didn’t suffer on such a scale, but the swinging ball of destruction did damage.
Sun Street, with many 16th century timber-framed buildings, was pulled down, as were alleys in the High Street and Oldbury Road to make way for the new shopping precinct.
In Cheltenham, half of Winchcombe Street, all of Pittville Street, much of Albion Street and North Street were swept away, along with over 30 pubs, five railway stations and two churches.
In contrast to the many fine buildings
demolished, the Eagle Star tower and Quadrangle in the Prom were thrown up.
The best we can say is that in the 1960s the country was trying hard to cast off post-war dowdiness.
Besides a preoccupation with demolition, the 1960s ushered in many more changes across the county.
A long tradition of brickmaking in Cheltenham came to a close when Webb’s works at Battledown ceased to operate and E L Ward’s, which was one of the town’s foremost department stores, also shut up shop.
Before motorways, Gloucester was the main route into South Wales.
The Cross was reckoned to be one of the busiest traffic junctions in the country and Gloucester became the first city in the country to ban lorries over three tons from its centre.
The final aeroplane – a delta-winged Javelin – to leave the Gloster Aircraft Factory at Hucclecote before the firm closed flew out in 1963.
In the same year, the Gloucester Railway and Carriage Company closed, bringing to an end a century of rolling stock manufacture in Bristol Road.
Gloucester’s city boundary was extended to include Longlevens and Hucclecote, but also due to development, including plans for a new suburb at Quedgeley.
If you were looking for a home, a three-bed semi on the new Grange estate at Tuffley carried a price tag of £2,550.
The city’s new bus station appeared on the site of the former cattle market and the Ritz cinema in Barton Street became Gloucester’s first bingo hall.
Five were killed when two fog-bound oil tankers collided in the estuary off Lydney and destroyed the Severn Railway Bridge.
Another Forest landmark, Lydrook viaduct, was demolished in 1965.
Closure of the Cannop Colliery, near Coleford, in 1960, followed by those of the Northern United at Cinderford and the Princess Royal at Bream, heralded the end of commercial coal mining in the Forest of Dean.
Former miners were joined in the dole queue by bus conductors when driver-only services were introduced by the Red and White company at Cinderford.
In Stroud, however, the growing number of unfilled job vacancies prompted an announcement from the labour exchange that it was impossible to meet local demand for labour “unless more can be brought in from other districts”.
Archway School opened at Paganhill, replacing Rodborough County secondary.
Newent’s pioneering record producer Joe Meek achieved the pinnacle of his success in June 1962 with ‘Telstar’ for a group called The Tornados. The record topped the charts and sold three million copies.
The Beatles took Cheltenham by storm with two performances in town on November 1, 1963, staying afterwards overnight at the Savoy Hotel (now Hotel Malmaison) in Bayshill Road.
Their rivals for pop supremacy, The Rolling Stones, were riding a peak of popularity when they came to Cheltenham’s Odeon to play two sell-out concerts on Thursday, September 10, 1964, with local lad Brian Jones on guitar.