Thanks for watching, we hope you enjoyed this video! If you have any feedback or comments, we'd love to hear them just drop us a comment below - we'd also like to hear what your town centre is like!
Swindon was a lovely town and the town center was a great place to walk to shops and look at it now. Looks like a third world hell hole. Not just Swindon, it is happening all over the country. Britain is self destructing at such an alarming rate. The future of this country is so bleak.
This has made made me very sad, born in 1948 Swindon and living in a small village nearby. Apprentice mechanic attended The College gaining city n guilds my ticket to travel, head down worked all hours saved in preparation still having great fun with friends around Swindon town it was a bustling vibrant place n quite frankly as good as anywhere. Main thing in life is staying positive, I may be wrong but is it the English way to always expect the worst. I’m 75 this year and had thoughts on a trip home but my mates are mostly gone now and watching this was depressing. Thanks for making this vid and I wish everyone around Swindon just the very best ❤ Rob Smith👍👍👍
Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment, Rob, and for sharing your experiences. I'm glad you have fond memories of your time in Swindon; and you're right it is the English way to expect the worst, but it's also quintessentially British to bounce back stronger when times are tough, right? Times are tough right now, and town centres, in particular, are in a bad way, but I'm hopeful for the future!
I went to Swindon town centre recently after about 10 years since my last visit and I was shocked at the dereliction,I would go to Swindon quite often to shop when I lived nearby ,it is so sad to see so much new build housing but the town is so decayed and neglected.
I lived and worked in Swindon for over 30 years until 2006. It started going downhill just before I left, and it's sad to see the depressing state of the town centre now.
I live in Swindon, and whilst I 99% agree… you very carefully avoided the actual town centre… where all the shops are open and it’s relatively busy. Suppose that wouldn’t work with your videos message though
Yea but be honest the town centre is a shithole Sainsbury’s closed Argos closed there are a bunch of other shops in the actual centre that are closed and also where the big screen used to be is fucked
Lived in Swindon for 25 years, it reflects Swindon, don’t believe the rubbish about the town centre these are important parts of it. Needs a real sort out and to get rid of SBC
What's left of the business has concentrated into a much smaller area, leaving swathes of empty properties you don't really see or think about. The entire north extension of the Brunel is empty now bar the gym and maybe just one or two small shops. Half of the Brunel still lies empty, spaces like Sainsbury's covered up. M&S shuts down and leaves this month. The big department stores are shuttered and it's not even visible to see just how much space is lying there empty - huge amounts of it. A lot of the shops are also what you'd consider "filler" shops. What was Topshop is now a luggage outlet type store. Those are low grade fillers that landlords bring in just so they don't have to pay the rates bill. Same with the pound shops, it's a sign of just how bad things are. Swindon has fallen a long way and it's still on a downward trajectory. It needs turning around with some new ideas, free parking for the town centre would be a good start, and the rents need to fall to bring businesses back. The council have also made a number of stupid decisions here too which have contributed to the decline in no small way, and with everyone with any money to spend these days owning a car, they'll always go to a retail park where they can park for free as opposed to paying £4-£6 to park in the town centre for 3 to 4 hours.
I was based at RAF Lyneham in the 1970s and was a regular visitor to Swindon then. It always seemed like a nice town if perhaps not the most pretty. I remember climbing the hill to visit the Old Town part which had a village feel to it. Sad to see how it has declined so much. It is the story with so many towns. Out of town shopping complexes and all the online purchasing have combined to destroy so many places. The only people that seem to prosper there are those involved in drug dealing.
I lived in Swindon for 9 years. Luckily I found my way out from there. The best I could have found. Moved to my beloved North Wales. I will never ever consider coming back to Swindon. The outskirts are full of job opportunities in warehouses, but honestly there isn't anything else outside of that. People work, then drink after they finish and that's mainly it ... Very sad and overwhelming place.
My parents lived in Royal Wootton Bassett which is not far from Swindon, its nice there. I live in Devon, while most towns are in a similar state, the town of Totnes not far from me is a thriving town full of independent shops and businesses, its rare to see boarded up shops there.
This is deliberately done. Councils war on motorists, charging high prices for parking, high business rates. A police force who can't be bothered, courts who also can't be bothered . This is the end result.
I went to College in Swindon in the early 90s and it was a great place to be ....the pubs and clubs had a great atmosphere..I never saw any trouble and enjoyed my years there...such a shame.
I live in Swindon and don't need to go into the town centre as I live over North Swindon and I have the orbital shopping centre five minutes walk from where I live, and I went into the town centre for the first time in about the year about a month ago and I was absolutely shocked at how dead town is,its horrible
Swindon looks worse than a lot of other Uk town centres,,most are being regenerated,,,,only Outlet worth visiting...and old town,,,,,,centre is a total dead zone.....
Swindon's economic purpose was GWR and Honda, both of which have now gone Always you need to look at what has happened to the economic base of these towns
I've lived in Swindon for 45 years , slow and steady decline and now the town centre is not a safe place at all , Beggars , Theives , Druggies , Alcoholics. They are everywhere. Shops continue to close , The closure of Sainsburys was the start of the ball rolling then the closure of M&S was a massive hit , but don't worry as everytime a shop closes or a favorite coffee shop comes to an end a crappy painting or mural appears somewhere on a building nearby. Swindons no.1 eyesore attraction now is the "berlin wall" that surrounds the outer part of the bus station , grey dull with graffiti on it , you can gaurantee there are snipers in the high rise buildings , waiting for someone to climb over it. Someone spray painted Gaza on it aswell which i found quite fitting. Absolute hellhole , wish i had the means to escape , hopefully i won't spend my last years in this flea pit. You should do an update video since it was a year since the last one. Town is far worse now. No idea why they built a hotel opposite the savoy pub , no one is ever in it. SBC are useless aswell. Arrrrgggghhhhhh!!!.
My local high street cafe has closed because the landlord has increased the rent by 300% to force them. It isn’t the only one business forced out by greedy landlords.
Wow...that is where all the bars used to be. The nightlife down there used to be pretty good - Walkabout, Bedroom, Whethersoons, Lava Lounge, Kasbah...they're all gone. Its so sad to see it like that now. :-(
Town centres can be saved if reinvented, Northampton suffered really early from loss of shops due to having two large shopping centres built in close by Milton Keynes and Rushden lakes, then with the boom in on line shopping, so forced in its early fight back to redesigned the area to feature new cultural centres, theatre districts, museums, a new waterside campus for the University, new council buildings bring in many 1000s of daily visitors and the construction of 1000s of new apartments where the big shops once stood will help keep the centre of town vibrant. Work is still continuing on several projects and yes much can still be improved, but you can clearly see the improvements and feel a better vibe when visiting. Well worth a visit.
In the 90s and early 2000, Swindon had a hell of a lot going on , but about 10 years it’s been slowly going down hill (fast) , just like everything in the country
Ah yes, Ian, I know Tewkesbury and you’re right. It’s a lot of fun there when they have the medieval celebrations going on, too! Haven’t stopped by for a while, it’s on the list now. 😀
@@trondog8503Tewkesbury _mostly_ escaped the corrupt town planners of the 1960s. The high Street itself has quite a lot of concrete monstrosities in it. Fortunately a lot of Black & white beamed houses in other streets survived.
Sad. This video reminded me of a recent visit I made to a town where I spent my teen years, Weston-Super-Mare. I had not been back since 1996 and was shocked at how the town center had been gutted - lots of boarded up businesses and discount shops. Only Boots, Superdrug, a jeweler and a women’s clothing shop remained from the old days.
You really must have a look at Aberdeen or Aberdoom as most people in Scotland call it! Despite being an extremely rich place from oil & gas, the city centre is grey and empty with decaying 60’s buildings everywhere. You really have got see it to believe it.
You can read a tale by Borges called Brodie's report. The main protagonist is a man from Aberdeen. I am from Barcelona, and I plan to visit ABerdeen some day because of it.
I grew up in Swindon and I moved to the US in 2011, I used to love going to Swindon town, walking the street, doing some shopping. I havent been back since 2013. It saddens me that it has turned into this, it makes sense though, here in the US, malls are experiencing the same fate. I just have such a fond memory of the 2010s in Swindon where it was popular and busy, I know times have changed but seeing it in such a state, breaks my heart. I remember going to the town center with my friends, going to primark, getting coffee at costa, buying professor green's album on CD. I always miss England and Swindon in particular, the nostalgia, this isnt the memory lane that I expected to experience today.
A year later, and it’s getting worse. I only ever go into town if I want something specific, and with M&S closing its doors, there is even less to draw people in. The last time I went into town I was going to a craft/eclectic items fair at the Meca, and only went into Wetherspoons as I was meeting a friend first.
All by design, encourage online shopping at the same time put the rates up on shops so they have little or no profit this is all for a bigger plan coming very soon ✌
I've lived in Swindon all my life and it's true , the town center is now an eyesore and very much in decline , but in fairness i think the same can be said for most town centers now in the UK. Our retail parks are now very busy and appear to be thriving , but again , i think this is a familiar story all over the UK. It's a shame but i really think it's R.I.P to high street shopping in this country.
Reading which is just a stones throw from swindon is actually pretty decent, there are obviously a few empty stores but it’s pretty healthy for the most part.
While there are many factors in our urban decline, one stands far out in front of all the others - property prices. How can any small, independent, inventive business thrive when rents and rates are crippling? As a result, most people who might have wanted to start their own cottage industry or retail idea soon realise they have no chance. Neither central nor local government want to tackle the property cost crisis and so long as that is true our city centres will continue to crumble away.
I was born in Wokingham and bought up in Reading (used to be 42 miles from Reading to Swindon) Anyway I digress! We moved from Reading to Swindon in 1961 due to my dad's job in the tyre trade, we lived at the Cricklade road end of Beatrice st (86) back then Swindon was becoming quite a dynamic go ahead place, the Railway works was still thriving and many companies were moving their HQs there from other parts of the country and they had just started remodeling the town centre!, we only lived there for 4 years before we got moved to Portsmouth to open another branch but I really enjoyed it although dad didn't like it much for some reason, it's really sad to see it's apparently gone down the tubes??, I've been watching lots of vids on Reading (we went back to live there in 67 and stayed there until emigrating to Australia in 81) Reading looks really dynamic and vibrant in contrast to Swindon nowadays, I was expecting Swindon to be the same, what happened! Yeah loved all 3 places we lived in UK, Reading Swindon and Portsmouth great times! I now live in a little town in North Queensland Australia which I love and I'd never come back to live in UK but it's so interesting to see these places as they are now and indeed were when I lived there, Cheers to Swindon hope things get better, was a great town many wonderful memories ❤🇳🇿
swindon was a village until the train works were built and it became a town overnight with people travelling there for jobs in the new steel fabrication works that produced the trains, new homes were built for these people, pubs and shops sprung up and everything boomed until the train workshops closed, the jobs were heavy industrial jobs, boiler makers, welders, fabricators, all serious manual work, a few call centres did open but mainly woman and teenagers filled the positions so the men who used to work in the train shops were left to rot along with the town, the internet has closed many high street shops and they will never reopen, the only hope city centres have is for more people to live in them as shops and offices are converted into homes for the homeless, the days of high street shopping is coming to an end, who really wants to spend Saturday wandering around town with loads of bags struggling in the heat and paying ridiculous car parking charges, just sit in the back garden having a br-b-q with a glass of wine with your family and order your stuff online and two days later a van turns up with your things, let the homeless live in the city centres after the shops and offices have been converted into flats, its the only way the decay can be reversed, high street shops are of the past, get your head round it and move on !
Im from The Netherlands and town centres are really alive and bustling. They dont really have that much to suffer from the online markets because they offer somthing else, a " day on the town " so to speak. So, especially saturdays and sundays are very busy. Its more of a case that you will see different kinds of stores. Like furniture and electronics is pretty rare nowadays, moved either to big box stores or of course online. But in return there are a lot places like bakery's that serve coffee and have a nice lounge area or terrace. Plus of course almost all the town centre's are car-free and most people cycle to them so they are a nice area to just stroll around. So when you take that in to consideration you can see the problem in this video, nobody wants to walk there for fun i can imagine.
Another measure City centers in parts of The Netherlands took in respons of online shopping is changing closed shops at the edge of the center into houses for people to live and thus making shopping areas smaller
Swidon is sh*thole. As the video explains so many shops in the town centre are closed, Wilkos is now closing as well, and what's left is struggling. Old Town seems to have faired better with he only large supermarket in the form of a Co-op To say the place is grime would an understatement. I moved out four years ago and never looked back.
I live not too far from Swindon in Witney. Our town centre is quite nice however due to the County council deciding that the high street should be closed to traffic and thereby removing passing trade from shops it is starting to struggle. A few new shops have sprung up but they are either charity or Coffee shops and many of the larger and longstanding ones have closed.
Yeah I was gonna say - Witney has a long history of being dangerous because of drunken nutters. Would sooner shop in Swindon than Witney any day of the week.
I agree. I like to be positive, but I don’t see a way out of the mess Swindon has found itself in, it’s never going to be like it was 10-20 years ago again.
Swindon's run by misfits, the council has always been dreadful, the money left long ago, the upshot is growing up there breeds character and amidst the decay and plebs there are some incredibly talented and inspiring folks
Live in a small fenland market town called Wisbech, like most towns now, ours has been largely neglected over the past few years, the town centre itself is unrecognisable, betting shops, charity shops, vape shops, there are empty burnt out buildings with faux facades, and you cannot escape the aroma of weed anywhere. That said, the riverside is stunning, the finest Georgian architecture to be found in one place, and the native locals are actually still very nice.
went to collage between 1996 and 1999 used to go to town all the time its was thriving clean and safe as houses its shocking how its rooted in 25 years
In Waterlooville, they made it a shopping Precinct and diverted the traffic ar.ound. Now: it needs TRAFFIC to give it some Life!!!! Id say 90% of shops GONE!!!! ,( even the charity shops!!!!!) I think thers ONE CHARITY SHOP, POUNDLAND, GREGGS, left. !!!!!
Give Birkenhead a go. A once proud ship building town steeped in rich history now reduced to a vape shop, sausage roll, herbal smoke, lager infused, violent run down grief hole.
This is a tad disenguous, yes it's def become depressing & hit badly since Covid, but the actual town centre has lots of people and open shops, bustling cafes and such. However on my last visit the shopping centre (Brunel) has a shocking number of closed stores, even compared to reopening after lockdown. The imax just closed too. It sucks that the town is dying and i hope the town council do something to reverse it.
Should really compare the town centre to the out of town retail parks as that's where the shoppers have gone to the expense of small retailers who are shut out of those places.
You failed to show Regent Street, the Parade, Havelock Square, and the Brunel. That's where the bulk of shops are. As if you didn't know. 🙄 Yes, it's looking really scabby at the bottom of town, and yes there's a lot of dossers about, and also yes a lot of big name stores have left. But name me one big town that doesn't have these problems.
We have a lovely village, which, sadly, the local council have let in scum bags in one area, and you can see they are scum bags as they stand out a mile. Hopefully no more scum bags will be allowed in. Crewe Council and MP Dunwoody, when she was alive, destroyed Crewe, absolutely destroyed it. Crewe was a lovely place, vibrant and a market of a Saturday that hundreds poured into and Crew Gardens was a show case for beauty then destroyed, the aviaries went, the green houses went, the train went, everything cut back to bare minimum.
I have been to Germany alot over the years mostly Munich or dusedolf or Dortmund and Oberhausen areas they seem ok I know Oberhausen has a large retail shopping. Center . I think one of the largest in Europe.
No better but no worse than any other town centre in the UK at this time. Too many people went onto on-line shopping during lockdown, and the physical shops couldn't compete with it, and had to close. I now live in Swindon, but used to live in Southend-on-Sea. I visited there a few years ago and the high street there was just the same. Only when people stop spending their money on-line and actually go out to shops will things change.
I’m curious if you have walked through the North Star subway tunnel that leads into Swindon Town Centre? Apparently it used to be called ‘Mugger’s Alley’ back in the day, from what I gather it has since improved, but you can’t walk through it without getting your shoes covered in bird poop. It’s a shame that no one seems to care and make any improvements, personally I think Swindon is destined to fail, it doesn’t seem like anything could ever thrive in a place like this.
It’s a pity we make Amazon and it’s like rich while losing our communities. I was raised in Swindon from 1957 and it breaks my heart to see my beloved home town fall into decay. I agree it is happening everywhere and this video focuses on the worst of the town, which is far from being the worst place to live in England - in fact it has a lot of good places. There is no easy answer to urban decay, but I hope Swindon can clean up and solve the problems highlighted here. Supporting local businesses does mean paying more than online, but surely it’s worth it to not have problems like this? Perhaps the council could help with low business rates, improved public transport and cheap or free parking? Perhaps even give startups advantageous tax rates to encourage local employment? After all, the corporate global giants who kill local businesses manage to avoid UK tax altogether - if that could be changed, use a percentage of those globalists’ vast untaxed profits to subsidise local economic growth as a condition of trading in Britain?
I noticed you've done lots of videos about Swindon. You should do Oxford, was a complete dive back in the 90s - that's just the city centre (away from the posh universities). Blackbird leys, Rose Hill, Barton, Wood Farm were notorious. Not forgetting the grooming gangs
My local town is kidderminster. It is very run down. As previous poster said when the big employer left. Carpet the money to spend in shops also left as did thevjobs
I was born here 1972 it was brilliant 👌 loads of lovely shops Brunel market clubs was safe could walk home omg I dint know what happend or were it all went wrong sad 😭
76 model here. We left for overseas in 81 but have been back I load of times and have many positive memories of a friendly and industrious town with great shopping and entertainment. These videos are alarming and I just don’t have the words.
@user-ub5qp8sq1w atleast Swindon doesn't have extremist illegal immigrants and shootings. Ilford has tonnes of them, especially around the town centre and Seven Kings areas.
as someone who works in town and lives in north there’s more rats at the orbital than there are in town, plus the Fleming way renovations only started around this time last year, at least be factual lol swindon’s a shithole there’s no need to exaggerate
@@ukexplored Sorry, I know it takes a long time getting round, filming and then editing. I wasn't expecting to be taken too seriously. I was just surprised you didn't see or smell any rats (they stink when they rot, probably underground or stuck in something). Fleming Way is an eyesore, but it probably doesn't look like they've been doing something there since 2020. They closed the whole road and started digging it late last year, then stopped and started again.
It was alright in the 1940s. The saddest thing for me watching videos about Swindon and Walcot etc is when you spot a surviving westcountry cottage among the ruins. At one time the town centre was all westcountry and stonebuilt. It had oodles of character (and the best traditional westcountry faggots in the country. I miss them in particular).
So the market you posted was the tented market the better market was at the bottom of the town which was developed on had restaurants and hotel built there now looks like a right mess the council just do not care and will not do anything to sort it out which is a shame
I never ever go into town anymore. Theres no free parking they double yellowed everywhere. I still use the vilage butchers but thats it. Everything else Lidl, Morrisons and Amazon.
Hola.Estoy leyendo "La bibliotecaria" de Salley Vickers.En la página 244 aparece mencionada la ciudad de Swindon, edición en español de 2019.Y me "subí" a RU-vid para conocerla.Saludos! 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧❤️❤️❤️🇨🇱🇨🇱🇨🇱😊😊😊
Stoke is exactly the same. On line shopping not to blame really. Just how society has evolved. Can’t turn the clock back. I have no answer to this problem. People will never go back to shopping in Hanley, it is just not what we want to do.
You missing the point of all the hundreds and hundreds of illegal immigrants that Are staying in Fife star hotels around Swindon At also Swindon has got a bad reputation for violence especially when there are football matches And also remain for all the criminal activities and drug abuse in the air Nothing is precious and nothing is safe in that part of the world
I Doubt that illegal immigrants are staying in fife star hotels, you fall for the same old shite, instead of blaming the rich blame the migrants and benefit scroungers.
Not happening around the SE of London. It's booming. Yeah not being able to put people in prison for doing their crimes does seem to be a problem in the UK.
ah sorry about that, just trying to make it more interactive and interesting. All conventional video editing advice points towards people having a super low concentration spans and losing interest if something isn't happening every couple of seconds. Kids theses days, eh, they need bells and whistles on everything.
hi, such a pity as this was the home of the GWR and British Rail engineering. i believe honda has gone as well.any loco made in swindon was Top of the Pops,
@DONTSASSMEBOI Yeah exactly. Tory infested. People can moan about Labour all they want, but I don't ever remember town centres being this empty and decrepit when they were in power.
😄😁 If you should come to Cheltenham and go to the lower end of the high street it is now called the Calcutta There have been lots of knife crimes robbery and drug abuse and alcohol And now it's full of illegal immigrants Also you would find it difficult to find somebody in that area speaks English
