Joined the navy in Plymouth in early 1964..... a whole new experience for me to be so far from home (Scotland) on my own for the first time. All my ships, except the last one, were Devonport based. Loved my time there.
When you see the footage so many memories flood back in the mind. The Guinness Clock , Saltash Street etc. How clean everything looked. Gracious over the decades we have become slovenly we've become.
It looks clean now, I'll have you know. PCC workers are constantly hard at work everyday, making sure the streets of Plymouth are free from litter. It's a thankless job.
I too was born in 64 and visited as a kid as my dad was in the navy, years later my sister married and stayed in Torpoint for 25 years only returning to Scotland to settle for retirement so I continued visiting until just last year, Plymouth is a very big part of our lives and always will be.
Just amazing. So fascinating seeing the old Drake. I wonder if the little kids at the beginning have seen this now, all these years later. They'd be in their 60's I'd imagine now. This is gold.
We lived just around the corner from The Hoe. There were still a few bombed out houses in the area and a lot of wasteland. I started school at St Andrews around the time this film was taken. I think I was only there for a year or two before we moved. I remember going to St. Andrews Church for a Christmas Service as part of a St. Andrews Primary School class. The Army used to have displays of tanks and other military vehicles on The Hoe. At the age of five after school I used to look around the displays instead of going straight home, much to my mother's annoyance.
Everything is pretty much the same over 50 years! I've been here one year for uni and i won't even get lost if i can travel back to 60s..i love this city, it's been part of me..
Eric Grey I don't know if you are still at university, but you can still see some of the old Plymouth. The hard stuff is from before the war. And if you walk through the mall you are walking on the old road.
Wow - I wasn't expecting that! I can see my old room in the Hoe Centre at the start when I was at Plymouth Poly in 1973. Demolished for a Tesco now I believe. Some progress....
It looks like Pyongyang it's so void of people. 👀 My parents grew up in Plymouth around this era, when they were young and reckless, they got tired of the place, married and moved halfway across the country. Ironically, they did this because they figured it would be easier for their children to get jobs closer to London. It's ironic, because I moved back down to Plymouth in my late 20s. 🤣 Still waiting for my mum to commit and move back down here where she belongs.
Thanks for posting. Went to a small boarding school in Hartley, Kingsland for 4+ years from 1965. Happy happy days. Used to be sent to St Andrews Church every Sunday! Then Methodist Central Hall (?Rev John Ashplant?) in the evening followed by a visit to Pretes on the Barbican. Happy memories. Now 68 and seeing this is very nostalgic!
@@julianmoore3091 hello Julian. You must of left in the July and I pitched up in the Sept of 65. Teachers were Tony B, Jenkins,Stone,Hitchman,Baker, Johnston,Wonnicott from memory. Were you a boarder or day boy? I loved my time there(with family split it was a "happy place" to be), but wished I'd put a bit of grunt behind my education 😇. Some old boys used to pitch up at OKA events like Blowey,Murrin, Youlden,Rickard, that I'm guessing were from your era. Anyway 70 now and memorys getting misty! Best wishes to you Julian
I'm pretty certain that the minister at the Central Hall would have been Ronald Frost, I was at school with his son. Some years later I met the Rev again in Tottenham, of all places!
Eye opening for the appalling development and concrete structures overshadowing Plymouth's heritage - depressing. Many have been replaced fortunately. Certainly not unique to Plymouth though and WW2 was still on everyone's lips with the rush to rebuild - Plymouth was devastated during the war... Videos like this are a wonderful eye opener and wake up call for developers though.
The most replayed bit of the video is the shot of the building at the east end of St Andrews Cross Roundabout, which has been closed/disused for a long time and currently has botched, half-arsed contractor fencing around the entrances which people have, very reasonably, shat on (as in literally, out of their bumbums). In the 60s it looks like some sort of grand Speer-ian edifice... how did we f*** up so badly?!
Dad was in the RN. I went to school there in the 70's. Such a clean modern vibrant city. Then the centre was pedestrianised, then people stopped going, then shops started closing....I drove through at Cristmas to revive memories on the way to Cornwall. The proud city was so scruffy and tired and run down, a shadow of its former self. The post war city fathers must be spinning in their graves. So very sad. 😞
Wow. Thanks for up loading this video from the the same city and year I was born in. Even the Torpoint ferry that I would of been taken across on as a new born!!!!
I used to love that salt water swimming pool when I was a kid. Is it still there? And I seem to remember a park that had a ride along train. What great footage thanks for sharing
Yes...and I hear the the Council, last year, cut down more than a hundred 100 mature trees in Armada Way ....eliminating much of anything organic in the centre..revealing the concrete blocks....poor Plymouth....I was brought up in and went to school in Plymouth. I left in 1970 , have been back once since then and plan to visit this year... tree destruction fresh in mind.
As a frequent visitor to Plymouth since the early 2000's, a lot of the landmarks in this film are familiar... but it's a great shame I never got to see the original Drake Circus and Guinness Clock building... should never have been pulled down, especially with the ghastly 70's outdoor shopping mall which replaced it...
Please remember it was a time with a lot less plastic and everything was a lot simpler then. Life is x5 the speed it used to be and everything is disposable.
I visited Plymouth once per month to be trained by a national running coach....athletics. I was the third fastest schoolboy in the 880 (yards). On paper I was touted as being the fastest and was guaranteed to win. I did not, I was feeling very weak and was running a temperature. I got home and broke out in German Measles, it has an incubation period of 2 weeks. Like everyone else there I had trained specifically and exclusively for that race. It broke my heart.
Sutton Harbour is now (2021) cluttered up with yachts and the airport has been closed down, and there's still no fullsize Mayflower replica moored near the Steps, grrr...but at least the city is not overun by hordes of immigrants..:)
Yes, the city is owned by Masons, property developers and yachtsmen, who have built around Sutton Harbour with the beenfit of many grants, so they can look at their boats from their fancy apartment windows.
@marc biff Plymouth isn't even all that diverse - still good to see you leave a provocative comment and wait for the response.If you want diversity go to Birmingham or Manchester - there's not much strength there - just loads of different communities keeping themselves to themselves.
