I Can’t help feeling sad, seeing so many of our lovely old buildings disappear from the ‘Old Town’ landscape.
While I understand the need for redevelopment after all these years.
It does seem such a crying shame that a lot of our unlisted old buildings are being snapped up to be turned into apartments, when what the Old Town badly needs is a retail development.
Our heritage is fast disappearing along with our identity, maybe we won‘t realise this until its all gone.
What we don’t want is for the Old Town to become a distant memory, or a collection of old black and white photographs
Take the La Scala building in the High Street in Runcorn, originally it was a cinema, then a well known bingo hall.
It’s said “the Beatles once played there in the early nineteen sixties�
I’m sure it had an art deco frontage and was used in many top t v drama, such as ‘Pennies from Heaven’ by Dennis Potter.
It’s a shame the buildings façade couldn’t have been kept in it’s original state and the building redeveloped inside, this could be said of a lot of Old Town buildings.
It is really heartbreaking to see the ruined shell the La Scala has become because redevelopment has taken so long.
Waterloo House in Waterloo Road was built in the late 1830s by Charles Hazlehurst and it later became our Town Hall from 1874 to 1933.
It became well known as a community centre for the company YKK.
Who, in their right mind would let one of Runcorn’s Town Halls be turned into yet more apartments?
To complete the trio of well known buildings due to disappear soon is the Technical Institute known locally as the Tech.
The Tech was built in 1894 by John Tomlinson Brunner of I C I fame with the help of public subscription.
In 1902 the pupils of the new Runcorn County Secondary School shared the building.
These building are all a major part of the history of the Old Town.
I can’t help but have some misgivings as to what is happening in the Old Town and if we are really doing the right thing.
Such a pity we couldn’t take a leaf out of Frodsham’s book and preserve our heritage for the future.
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