During the immediate post-war period, thousands of houses were demolished in Preston. By the 1960s tower blocks dominated the landscape. Unfortunately, they rapidly became damp and unpopular. Some lasted for less than 40 years before being demolished. 

Unlike the more unfortunate cities, Preston was not remodelled by the Luftwaffe; that was left to the council.

Advertisements

The town centre was blitzed and a new ring road was built. This dual carriageway has taken traffic off Fishergate but it is not exactly attractive.

Towards a prouder Preston was the name of the plan produced by Preston Council, in 1946. 32,000 of the town’s houses were built before 1890. Consequently one sixth of them were deemed unfit and would have to be demolished. A massive house building programme ensued with large swathes of the town being ‘redeveloped’. 

A soldier’s return

Demobbed soldiers had shoddy prefab houses to look forward to. Some of them were used well into the 1960s. Above, new build housing can be seen under construction behind the prefabs. Preston resembled a bomb site through much of the 1950s and 1960s.

The map below shows the new post war housing areas.

Preston’s house clearances in the 1950s 

One of the first areas to be cleared, in 1955, was around the not-aptly named Pleasant Street and Brunswick Street, in Avenham. 209 houses were compulsorily purchased and communities began to be be demolished.

Rows and rows of terraced houses succumbed to the bulldozer.

Today, some of the Avehnam flats are still in use, others did not survive.

Demolishing the old Town Hall, another mistake?

In 1947 Preston’s much loved Victorian Town Hall burned to the ground. A petition was started to restore the building which reached 8,000 signatures. However, things dragged on and the building was eventually demolished in 1962. Importantly, this was the era when extensive redevelopment was taking place and anything Victorian was deemed passé.

However the new Crystal House built on the site produced much scorn. The building was difficult to let and led to a reduction in the land value! It has been voted Preston’s ugliest building. Another disaster involved the building being re-clad in combustible material in 2010. Consequently, this  now needs to be replaced.

Brave new world? Planning in reverse

By the early 21^st century housing policy had reversed with tower blocks being demolished in favour of renovated older housing. Many of the tower blocks in Preston bit the dust.

As early as 1978, Ronald Atkins, Labour MP said:

“We suffer from changing fashions in planning. In the 1950s and early 1960s planning opinion favoured high-rise flats as the answer to problems of land scarcity in town centres. These blocks today are almost universally condemned by the same planners.” 

The collapse of Ronan Point in 1968 highlighted how some of the tower blocks were just thrown up with little thought for structural integrity. In fact a gas explosion had blown out a flat, which led to the collapse of the entire corner of the new building.

Read more: See the latest Preston news and headlines