I left Leicester after living there all my life two years ago... I certainly won't be ever going back again. That film was amazing it shows just how far Leicester has fallen over 60 years... and how its soul has been ripped out.
@@clivebaxter6354 I was born there in 63..Filbert street .. 2023 have not set foot in it for 5 years... a festering shithole of dirt , a soulless city now run by scum for scum.. makes me weep.
Lol and good riddance to the lot of you, things change, it amazes me how people expect stuff to stay exactly the same, you do realise the earth changes right? Been doing it for ohh let's see a few million years, so that means your quaint little life was once interrupting something else. Once upon a time there were no humans at all in Leicester, just trees and nature, your existence changed that but you don't see the animals bitching.
Went to school in Wigston , Abingdon High, in the 1950's. Used to go to Leicester a lot. I remember it being nice at the time but my feelings now are the same as many others and that is a dump. I now live in Bournemouth which has sadly gone the same way now. Remember the Fat Man in the museum !
@@jllbruce11 I worked at Gimson as well as my uncle, my Dad at the BU and more family at Dunlop and Steels and Busk, not Forgetting Imperial typewriters. All gone. Even the town centre has lost a lot of small shops where you could get anything. All replaced with food outlets.😔 I now shop in Loughborough or Nottingham, far better than Leicester.
Frighteningly accurate portrayal of Leicester in the 60’s. It captures not just the photographic detail, but so much more, the emotion of the city of my teenage years.
Love the fashion of the 1960's. Those sharp suits and rockabilly hairstyles! 20 years before I was around, but would've loved to have experienced this era in Britain.
In 1964 I was seven years old. I can just about remember what things were like then but only vaguely. At the age of eighteen I left Leicester to go to University and have not lived there since. Leicester was never the richest city in Europe, that is a myth, but for a period in the fifties Oadby had the highest average per capita income of any European suburb. Leicester had its poor but in the main it was an affluent place with a remarkably diverse industrial base: Hosiery, Evans lifts, Invicta plastics, Shoe machinery, Shoe manufacture, Imperial typewriters and sundry small light engineering concerns afforded it a significant degree of shelter from the winds of depression that blighted many single industry Northern towns in the seventies and eighties. It was not a friendly city compared to places I lived after University. In 1975 it was a considerably less attractive place than Nottingham, just up the road. But it was recognisably English when I left and it is not now. A friend who came from Mowmacre Hill recently described it as a sad old place and she was right. It’s my home town, I still go back because I love its sports teams. But I grieve for its lost mores.
oh well, maybe the native english people should've had more kids then they wouldn't need to haul millions of immigrants over to keep britain on its feet
Not a friendly city overall. Especially the older folk. I'm not a sociable guy but found it disconcerting how distant people were compared to Brum or Worcester which aren't too far fr9m Leicester
Well they don't stay the same, never have done, the irony is this guy in the video is moaning about change in 1964 and now everyone else on this page is moaning about the fact it isn't 1964 anymore, ironic.
What happened to our country, if only they could see Leicester now…well it’s simple actually, it is Years and years of European and American Meddling in Asia and Africa to loot their riches, DECADES and current of funding rebels (first hand experience) so people can flee because the economy has collapsed in their countries. Mass Immigration is a sign of corruption and evil. To reduce immigration ask your governments to tell you the truth, and to leave third world countries alone. The royal family are taking Billions from tax payer led institutions, yes THE NHS, they gave you a scapegoat to blame who has nothing and they are laughing at you.
Born on Mere Road in 1961 and lived in Leicester all my life. There was a a lot of industry here in the past including lots of hosiery factories. I still love my city despite so many moaners putting it down.
What a startlingly refreshing conversational voice over!.. So natural! It's like I am sitting next to him on the bus... Only I can't be as I cannot smell that horrible, yet wonderfully overpowering nostalgic melange of second hand cigarette smoke, diesel fumes and warm vinyl seat-covers. Best wishes from a boy from the Leicestershire/Northamptonshire borders, now making armour in a French forest. ⚒️🇬🇧🌞
@@liborsionko Hey Lorne, have some consideration... There are bald people here! 😡👀😂🤣😂 Joking aside, that stuff did smell magic! On that very note: In 92, in a Tenerife hotel bathroom, an angry sarcastic Englishman with less hair than a snooker-ball watched me combing Brylcreem through my frankly insanely-thick Oscar Wildesque flaxen locks. Upon leaving he shouted: "That stuff makes you bald mate!" How I did laugh, as with all my strength I tied my heavy mane behind me and walked back out to the restaurant. Sadly... I think he might have been right! 🤔
I'm born & bred in the fair city of Leicester. Born the same year as this video was recorded. Love the place, the people & our fantastic football & rugby clubs - Proud to be from Leicester!
As a kid in the 1960’s I remember more about life in the West End (Narborough Road) area. But I am blown away by prosperity and affluence of the shops and social amenities on offer at the time in the city. I was born and bred here and still live in Leicester. But it breaks my heart to the see the soul-less, semi-abandoned place it is now.
Was born there back in 1970 , in the late 70's early 80's can remember standing behind a bus with my parents waiting to cross the road while sucking the fumes in from the buses
I find the most amazing thing is the buildings that are still relatively the same, that shot from the top of Lee Circle car park at 2:19 (the Auto Magic Car Park!) looking north down Byron Street, that building that is now Thrify so clearly visible and virtually identical today, many of the other buildings in the same shot too. Difficult to locate the 'Ten Pin' from the shot of the front, I initially thought it was the building to the West of the South end of the car park, over on Charles Street that now has a Wilkos at the bottom (where the shot at 6:06 was taken from). But we also see the same building as the car is parking at the top of the car park and from there we can see that the windows were then as they still are today, not quite the same. A bit more digging (I should have heeded the clue 'above the ten pin our multi-storey wheelie wheelie'), it looks like it is the building on the South East of Lee Street, opposite Eldon Street. This whole area was clearly all new in the 1960s. I think the other multi-storey car par park that was shown in construction must have been what is now NCP Abbey Street, which would make the hills in the distance Bradgate Park I would guess. Brings back memories of when I got my car locked into that car park back in the late 1990s after a night at Alcatraz and clearly hadn't noticed the closing times!
I wasnt born until 1980, but I love these old archives of how it used to be. I imagine my parents as young teens and my grandparents, great uncles and aunts, no longer here, and think of them milling about in the town centre and where they might have been when this footage was taken. The thing that stood out was how smart everyone was. The town looked tidy, barr a few demolished buildings. Just highlighted how awful the city is now and why I avoid it like the plague these days, everyone seemed to have some purpose on those streets 😪 So sad but lovely to look back on and see it through the eyes of those who lived it 💙
@@amyb8693 it used to be fun. Every Saturday you'd go into town and just spend all day in town. A bus would come in from wherever you were at and you could spend all day in town doing interesting things oh just walking around shopping and looking. You can meet your friends you could hang out, there was a lot to do at one time. I wish you could have seen it.. I wish there was a way you could have enjoyed it as we did. I have a lot of good memories, it is sad that these may be the last good memories did anyone can make of our poor city center.
Superbly witty comment🌟 Ever thought of doing stand up? ( At your age, it may be more of a'sit down' or even a 'lie down' but if your body remains as agile as your mind, I retract this assumption😉
I lived in Ascot Road as a student. Living in a multicultural area was good for me, as I brought small town prejudices with me. I soon lost them. I should imagine many of the Asian people there now are second and third generation and were born in Leicester, actually making them the locals.
@@Melling-y8p My folks lived there until the early 70s then moved, it was no longer, no longer England he said. The trouble with it all now is the host population (white British) gets less each year % wise. Multiculturalism only can work when the host population doesn’t feel threatened by a rising immigrant population. Look at adverts on TV now, hardly a white face to be seen. We are being conditioned into this and not so subtly.
@@linalmeemow Oh no,it doesn’t. Census figures show 87% of the U.K. is white British, 3% Black and about 7% various Asian. You sit down, look at advert breaks - and to a lesser extent programmes - and see if those appearing in them constitute 8 out of 10 white British. Black people are way over represented, Asians less so. Broadcasters are engaged in the complete distortion in the media of the U.K. population. I have no problem with everybody being represented it is the distortion of the population ratios which is sinister.
I grew up in Leicester - I was 13 when this was made. And I really can't agree that Leicester had no proper accent. If asked to give an example of a pure Leicester accent, I always cite a fellow pupil in Junior School who put his hand up, and when called upon by the teacher, said "aya gorra rubba worracan borra?" Now that was a Leicester accent. My dear Mother always spoke with a Leicester accent, having spent her life in Leicester, the vast majority of it as a housewife. Her accent was a little more delicate than the previous example... for example she was always admonishing me in my teens to "go bed respekable", by which she meant to retire as a 'respectable' hour.
I only lived in Leicester for roughly 5 years during my secondary school years around the turn of the millennium. Left the city for university. Been back a few times to visit friends. Nice place still.
A great insight into someone from a working class background who went to university. The lads in the pub have it so good, they don't know what to do with themselves!
I'm from Leicester and it's mad how the 'rough' guy at the end is supposed to be a 'bum' - he'd be upper class and a straight-laced guy by today's standards
@@poshgentleman559 or any number of interesting country’s with the wealth of cultures calling Leicester home, That’s why I love my home city, so much to see, learn and experience in one place.
This video concentrates on life in Leicester city centre, when there was nothing much going on in the suburbs and far fewer people had cars. Before The Shires shopping centre opened in the early 1990s and was later expanded and renamed High Cross, I would have suggested that Leicester's retail offering was surprisingly poor for such a large city. Like many UK towns and cities, it currently still has a large Debenhams-sized gap where the eponymous retail chain used to be and the city-centre branch of Marks and Spencer closed permanently yesterday with no immediate plan for what should fill the space. However, there is a big out-of-town retail park at Fosse Park and a smaller one in Thurmaston. If you have a car, these places are much more convenient and parking is free. I remember accompanying my mother or grandmother to the market in Leicester city centre in the early 1960s but I haven't bought anything there for years, because I drive to Fosse Park or use the wide choice of supermarkets dotted around the suburbs.
I grew up in Leicester and everyone I know left immediately as soon as they could. Not a single member of my family or friend is still there. It was awful.
Growing up I always remember walking past the huge chimney on Glenfield Rd. I think it was part of the CO-OP. I was I would love to see footage of that if anyone has it.
The town centre destroyed by the hideous theatre, now shut, and the vile Haymarket centre not to mention what they did to dear old Lewis's. Upvc windows and a feeling of scruffiness too. Pubs shut by the dozen and bulldozeed factories is the only legacy now. Multiculturalism and cultural battles in the streets, all in my life time.
Absolutely love clips like these 🥰 love the narration speaks in proper english unlike people nowdays as its all slang talk ...also i notice so few cars on the road & people on the streets compared to now X please post more clips like this xx
Leicester use to be a really nice place, and Lee circle looked much better then today, but being a BBC documentary, I guess you all aren't ready to talk about why it's like it is today.
@@Matt.Willoughby Don't patronise me. Not all change is good. Much of what has occurred over the last 58 years has been for the better but society now is more fractured than it has been for a very long time - and there are some very clear reasons why. When you are older, you will learn the ruth of what I say (assuming you ahev the intelligence). In the meantime, don't presume to tell that change is how societies progress. If you knew moe history, you wuld also know that some types of change cause socities to fail. Dear boy.
@@thomasm1964 I didn't say if change is good or bad. That's totally subjective, so I wouldn't waste my time arguing that. Yes some societies fail, some don't. Not sure what your point is? I think you're patronising yourself old chap.
@@Matt.Willoughby You don’t even understand your own argument. You originally claimed societies progress (meaning “go forward”) through change. Now, you are back-pedalling.
It's called "Change" Society changes as we progress and move on. So I don't get you, the fact you are feeling alien ? Can you expand on your comment old boy.
I've lived in Leicester all of my fifty-five years and it has not changed for the better. There is no civic pride anymore, once decent neighbourhoods are going to rack and ruin. It's become a melting pot of all nationalities to the extent that I feel like a stranger in my own town. In short it now resembles something more like 1970s New York with garbage everywhere and a prevailing underclass.
@@IBWHUTID It goes way back to something called the Kalergi Plan i.e the eradication or ethnocide of white Europeans and their replacement with a race similar to Egyptians. Just walked home from work and hardly saw a white face. It's grim.
That shows a different Leicester in '64 to the place I remember, I have a few fond memories of the place, but not many, preferred the villages round the city.
Leicester is my hometown he ain’t got a LESTA accent because he’s not from there. Whatcha on about duck it’s the best of the Midlands! Always friendly, always up for a laugh LESTA is the place to be! Don’t take any notice of this dreary piece of journalism
1:44 "No slums", " to find the poor you have to look very hard". That folks was how it was in post war Socialist Britain. Look how far this nation has fallen in the past 40 years .
Indeed, it changed somewhere between the late 60s,and mid 79s, Labours dominant right wing threw in the towel well before Thatcher and, Powellites, sic, just like the "reformist" "social Democrats" on the mainland.
They were not the first but Leicester had early Bank cash machines. My bank the Midland in Granby St had one. You could use it with a card like today once a day ten times to get out only ten pounds a time, a lot of money in the 70's. Each time a hole was punched in your card and I presume it was sensed inside the machine and when it got to ten withdrawals the machine kept the card as it couldn't be used again. You used the new one they sent you automatically like when you got to the end of your cheque book. It had a magnetic strip to identify your account and debit it accordingly (if you had enough money in).
I am from west of Swansea. I worked for 4.5 years in Leicester in the 80s. It was already very different from the footage here. I then spent two years in Coventry. I have no feeling for Leicester at all. Cold hostile place. I had studied in Cardiff - that place too has no charisma either, apart from on match days. I do sympathise with the loss of industry & culture & homogeneity across Leicester & Nottingham. Textiles & shoes. Betrayed by the powers that be at all levels.
Narrator seems to downplay the city being part of manufacturing, back when. Little did he know! Now I suppose it relies upon service industries as the main sources of employment. It's not that manufacturing disappeared; it just went somewhere else. Greetings from a Brit residing in the USA.
Perhaps he downplayed it because people took it all a bit for granted then, because things seemed to be going well! But within 5 years, the Great Central Railway was closed , and going into the 70s, manufacturing took on a steep decline.
Sadly leicester city is not a place to aspire to live or bring up a family. Grew up in the 80s and used to love going shopping in the centre. Not now. The outskirts like leicestershire are very nice and much better for family life. To much knife crime and violent in the city nowadays. The councils have run the place down so much its such a shame.
You’re only saying that bcos you became a minority. Nottingham and Coventry which have a higher share of yt ppl have much higher violent crime than Leicester by a mile
@@willrichardson519 but you never find accents change 100% i work with young people in there 20s, many have strong accents so im sorry to say your wrong,and naive in a way goodbye i don't want to hear from you again.
@@willrichardson519 your older than me, you seem you have very wrong views on this, accent never change that much maybe less broad thats all, again don't bother me again your very strange and feel freaked out.
Don't bother it's scruffy, filthy streets full of every nationality who can't speak English. When I was younger it was a treat to go into town not anymore, not a safe place.
Wow what a fantastic city, one of the riches in Europe. its very different today a wouldn't go there as a ghost. so sad. All the people all over the world wanted to come.
To buck the inevitable "oh what a shame it's changed" comments, I think Leicester is far more interesting now than it was then. I can't get misty eyed over the construction of a carpark. Growing up there taught me to respect difference, and I'm forever grateful for that.
They really changed that part around the clock tower, no way you'd have buses rolling by like that now they'd be running down the M&S shoppers. 😂 Cool to see parts of it from the past.
Not now! The Marks and Spencer store on Gallowtree Gate / Humberstone Gate closed for good yesterday. The M&S on the outskirts at Fosse Park is much bigger and better than the one in the city centre.
All towns and cities change, none are like they used to be, maybe it’s for the better maybe its not… If it’s for the better we’ll that’s for the locals to decide, those that have lives their all their lives.
I used to like Ray Gosling but disagree with many of the sentiments voiced here, a little too whimsical to my liking. He mentions factory work 'making things that don't last long' whoops thats offended a lot of ppl straight away and factory work bringing no satisfaction, I disagree again, look back at any weeks effort and that is an achievement surely. Never mind, was always looked forward to, RIP old fella left this Earth 2013 age 74.
I left Leicester after living there all my life two years ago... I certainly won't be ever going back again. That film was amazing it shows just how far Leicester has fallen over 60 years... and how its soul has been ripped out.
I left after 55 years several years ago. Last time I went back I could only stand it for an hour before getting the bus out again
@@clivebaxter6354 I was born there in 63..Filbert street .. 2023 have not set foot in it for 5 years... a festering shithole of dirt , a soulless city now run by scum for scum.. makes me weep.
i left leicester in 1997 born and bread never went back and never will
Lol and good riddance to the lot of you, things change, it amazes me how people expect stuff to stay exactly the same, you do realise the earth changes right? Been doing it for ohh let's see a few million years, so that means your quaint little life was once interrupting something else. Once upon a time there were no humans at all in Leicester, just trees and nature, your existence changed that but you don't see the animals bitching.
Went to school in Wigston , Abingdon High, in the 1950's. Used to go to Leicester a lot. I remember it being nice at the time but my feelings now are the same as many others and that is a dump. I now live in Bournemouth which has sadly gone the same way now. Remember the Fat Man in the museum !
These old archives are wonderful to watch 🇬🇧🇬🇧
"In Leicester you make things".....not any more. My heart was so sad.
How I miss my home.
The real home.
@@jllbruce11 I worked at Gimson as well as my uncle, my Dad at the BU and more family at Dunlop and Steels and Busk, not Forgetting Imperial typewriters. All gone. Even the town centre has lost a lot of small shops where you could get anything. All replaced with food outlets.😔 I now shop in Loughborough or Nottingham, far better than Leicester.
Frighteningly accurate portrayal of Leicester in the 60’s. It captures not just the photographic detail, but so much more, the emotion of the city of my teenage years.
Love the fashion of the 1960's. Those sharp suits and rockabilly hairstyles! 20 years before I was around, but would've loved to have experienced this era in Britain.
In 1964 I was seven years old. I can just about remember what things were like then but only vaguely. At the age of eighteen I left Leicester to go to University and have not lived there since.
Leicester was never the richest city in Europe, that is a myth, but for a period in the fifties Oadby had the highest average per capita income of any European suburb.
Leicester had its poor but in the main it was an affluent place with a remarkably diverse industrial base: Hosiery, Evans lifts, Invicta plastics, Shoe machinery, Shoe manufacture, Imperial typewriters and sundry small light engineering concerns afforded it a significant degree of shelter from the winds of depression that blighted many single industry Northern towns in the seventies and eighties.
It was not a friendly city compared to places I lived after University. In 1975 it was a considerably less attractive place than Nottingham, just up the road.
But it was recognisably English when I left and it is not now. A friend who came from Mowmacre Hill recently described it as a sad old place and she was right. It’s my home town, I still go back because I love its sports teams. But I grieve for its lost mores.
oh well, maybe the native english people should've had more kids then they wouldn't need to haul millions of immigrants over to keep britain on its feet
@@timhoward5863 ... Very well put. The industry was vital for keeping the soul of the city. Once you take away any form of work people have to leave.
Not a friendly city overall. Especially the older folk. I'm not a sociable guy but found it disconcerting how distant people were compared to Brum or Worcester which aren't too far fr9m Leicester
How times have changed.
@Null How is making a direct observation r@ysist?
Well they don't stay the same, never have done, the irony is this guy in the video is moaning about change in 1964 and now everyone else on this page is moaning about the fact it isn't 1964 anymore, ironic.
It gives me so much hope that two people can watch the same thing but come to very different conclusions.
@@JohnBloggs-m8l that person was referring to the racial ethnic changes of leicester
What happened to our country, if only they could see Leicester now…well it’s simple actually, it is Years and years of European and American Meddling in Asia and Africa to loot their riches, DECADES and current of funding rebels (first hand experience) so people can flee because the economy has collapsed in their countries.
Mass Immigration is a sign of corruption and evil. To reduce immigration ask your governments to tell you the truth, and to leave third world countries alone. The royal family are taking Billions from tax payer led institutions, yes THE NHS, they gave you a scapegoat to blame who has nothing and they are laughing at you.
Born on Mere Road in 1961 and lived in Leicester all my life. There was a a lot of industry here in the past including lots of hosiery factories. I still love my city despite so many moaners putting it down.
I was also born in 1961 and lived at 222 Mere Road. Small world.
@@grahamsgoodies7531 220 more than me. We were right at the bottom at number 2
Good for you! I visited Leicester recently and found a vibrant multicultural city.
This geezer doesn't even have an East Midlands accent
What a startlingly refreshing conversational voice over!.. So natural!
It's like I am sitting next to him on the bus... Only I can't be as I cannot smell that horrible, yet wonderfully overpowering nostalgic melange of second hand cigarette smoke, diesel fumes and warm vinyl seat-covers.
Best wishes from a boy from the Leicestershire/Northamptonshire borders, now making armour in a French forest. ⚒️🇬🇧🌞
Don't forget the brylcreem!
@@liborsionko Hey Lorne, have some consideration... There are bald people here! 😡👀😂🤣😂
Joking aside, that stuff did smell magic!
On that very note:
In 92, in a Tenerife hotel bathroom, an angry sarcastic Englishman with less hair than a snooker-ball watched me combing Brylcreem through my frankly insanely-thick Oscar Wildesque flaxen locks. Upon leaving he shouted: "That stuff makes you bald mate!"
How I did laugh, as with all my strength I tied my heavy mane behind me and walked back out to the restaurant.
Sadly... I think he might have been right! 🤔
That journalist was a hopeless alcoholic who was destitute and bankrupt by his late 50s.
I'm born & bred in the fair city of Leicester. Born the same year as this video was recorded. Love the place, the people & our fantastic football & rugby clubs - Proud to be from Leicester!
Leicester is really boring and run down now.
@@Answersonapostcard Leicester's always been boring, but it's a lot less run down now than it was when I moved here in 1994.
I was born a month later after this was made.
You need to get out more
@@westleymanc Why?
As a kid in the 1960’s I remember more about life in the West End (Narborough Road) area. But I am blown away by prosperity and affluence of the shops and social amenities on offer at the time in the city. I was born and bred here and still live in Leicester. But it breaks my heart to the see the soul-less, semi-abandoned place it is now.
Same in Brum Worcester & elsewhere
I dig that motorcycle at 09:00..it will still look modern today!
Wow, that whole area around the clock tower has been pedestrianised for decades! Can’t believe it used to be a road back then.
They knocked down some really nice Gothic architecture to build the Haymarket also
Was born there back in 1970 , in the late 70's early 80's can remember standing behind a bus with my parents waiting to cross the road while sucking the fumes in from the buses
I find the most amazing thing is the buildings that are still relatively the same, that shot from the top of Lee Circle car park at 2:19 (the Auto Magic Car Park!) looking north down Byron Street, that building that is now Thrify so clearly visible and virtually identical today, many of the other buildings in the same shot too.
Difficult to locate the 'Ten Pin' from the shot of the front, I initially thought it was the building to the West of the South end of the car park, over on Charles Street that now has a Wilkos at the bottom (where the shot at 6:06 was taken from). But we also see the same building as the car is parking at the top of the car park and from there we can see that the windows were then as they still are today, not quite the same. A bit more digging (I should have heeded the clue 'above the ten pin our multi-storey wheelie wheelie'), it looks like it is the building on the South East of Lee Street, opposite Eldon Street. This whole area was clearly all new in the 1960s.
I think the other multi-storey car par park that was shown in construction must have been what is now NCP Abbey Street, which would make the hills in the distance Bradgate Park I would guess. Brings back memories of when I got my car locked into that car park back in the late 1990s after a night at Alcatraz and clearly hadn't noticed the closing times!
I wasnt born until 1980, but I love these old archives of how it used to be. I imagine my parents as young teens and my grandparents, great uncles and aunts, no longer here, and think of them milling about in the town centre and where they might have been when this footage was taken. The thing that stood out was how smart everyone was. The town looked tidy, barr a few demolished buildings. Just highlighted how awful the city is now and why I avoid it like the plague these days, everyone seemed to have some purpose on those streets 😪 So sad but lovely to look back on and see it through the eyes of those who lived it 💙
@@amyb8693 it used to be fun. Every Saturday you'd go into town and just spend all day in town. A bus would come in from wherever you were at and you could spend all day in town doing interesting things oh just walking around shopping and looking. You can meet your friends you could hang out, there was a lot to do at one time. I wish you could have seen it.. I wish there was a way you could have enjoyed it as we did. I have a lot of good memories, it is sad that these may be the last good memories did anyone can make of our poor city center.
@@jllbruce11 🥺💙
I was 98 years old when this was filmed in 1964. How times have changed since the 19th century when I was young.
You are 144 years old?
wow!! ❤❤❤🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦
Well done surviving cov19
Superbly witty comment🌟 Ever thought of doing stand up? ( At your age, it may be more of a'sit down' or even a 'lie down' but if your body remains as agile as your mind, I retract this assumption😉
Interesting young man
Bit of a time capsule, very enjoyable documentary, I would have been 7 when this was made, My how time flies.
Gosling is one of the greats, alongside Betjeman and Nairn. This is fab.
I enjoyed my teenage years going to Leicester. NYE round the Clock Tower, going to Il Rondo, the Trocadero, spending time at the Lido. 😊
My uncle lived in Ascot Road, he moved. It’s called The Khyber Pass now by real locals.
I lived in Ascot Road as a student. Living in a multicultural area was good for me, as I brought small town prejudices with me. I soon lost them. I should imagine many of the Asian people there now are second and third generation and were born in Leicester, actually making them the locals.
@@Melling-y8p My folks lived there until the early 70s then moved, it was no longer, no longer England he said. The trouble with it all now is the host population (white British) gets less each year % wise. Multiculturalism only can work when the host population doesn’t feel threatened by a rising immigrant population. Look at adverts on TV now, hardly a white face to be seen. We are being conditioned into this and not so subtly.
@@alfredroyal3473 "hardly a white face" is an out and out like. There are more non white faces than previously, which reflects the country as a whole.
@@linalmeemow Oh no,it doesn’t. Census figures show 87% of the U.K. is white British, 3% Black and about 7% various Asian. You sit down, look at advert breaks - and to a lesser extent programmes - and see if those appearing in them constitute 8 out of 10 white British. Black people are way over represented, Asians less so. Broadcasters are engaged in the complete distortion in the media of the U.K. population. I have no problem with everybody being represented it is the distortion of the population ratios which is sinister.
@@alfredroyal3473 "Hardly a white face to be seen" is still a massive, paranoid exaggeration.
I grew up in Leicester - I was 13 when this was made. And I really can't agree that Leicester had no proper accent. If asked to give an example of a pure Leicester accent, I always cite a fellow pupil in Junior School who put his hand up, and when called upon by the teacher, said "aya gorra rubba worracan borra?" Now that was a Leicester accent. My dear Mother always spoke with a Leicester accent, having spent her life in Leicester, the vast majority of it as a housewife. Her accent was a little more delicate than the previous example... for example she was always admonishing me in my teens to "go bed respekable", by which she meant to retire as a 'respectable' hour.
ey up me duck.
Nice to hear Ray’s voice again - usually unappreciated.
I only lived in Leicester for roughly 5 years during my secondary school years around the turn of the millennium. Left the city for university. Been back a few times to visit friends. Nice place still.
Leicester born and raised worked at Corah's and left England in 1962. I will always be proud to be English
😆😆
Now sadly, that Leicester is just a distant memory and a BBC archive.
Was it just me who looked up 40 Bushland Road Northampton, to find Ray's home.
I'm looking at it right now by chance as I live on the street that joins on to it!
I like this guy's voice. It's very suave.
Suave is a word you don’t hear much today’
No, suave is said about a posh voice. He hasn't got a posh voice
@@juliaward1127 What?
Posh voices are not suave.
At 3:47 I was surprised to see a bus driving over the kerbstone, lucky no kids were loitering there..
Much better road safety these days, good point!
A great insight into someone from a working class background who went to university. The lads in the pub have it so good, they don't know what to do with themselves!
Wow! Brilliant watch
I have lived in Leicester since I was one in the early 1970s, bar around six years. Still love the city despite its faults.
There were slums; our house was pulled down in the sixties and so was the whole of St Matthews. I had to walk through the rubble to get to my school.
4:19 *Met my future wife at The Granby School of Dancing above Burtons on the Clock Tower !*
I'm from Leicester and it's mad how the 'rough' guy at the end is supposed to be a 'bum' - he'd be upper class and a straight-laced guy by today's standards
Leicester really was a thriving city in the mid 20th century
What about now?
@@Zlervo Now it's an utter 💩 hole
Still is I’m proud of my city
If you went today: you could be forgiven, for thinking you were in India.
@@poshgentleman559 or any number of interesting country’s with the wealth of cultures calling Leicester home, That’s why I love my home city, so much to see, learn and experience in one place.
I like the philosopher at the end.
I'm from here mixed views about the place, I live on the outskirts groby which is fairly nice.
Very American with all the drive-thru services and parking garages. I like it. (I'm American.)
That was then its changed beyond recognition now
This video concentrates on life in Leicester city centre, when there was nothing much going on in the suburbs and far fewer people had cars. Before The Shires shopping centre opened in the early 1990s and was later expanded and renamed High Cross, I would have suggested that Leicester's retail offering was surprisingly poor for such a large city.
Like many UK towns and cities, it currently still has a large Debenhams-sized gap where the eponymous retail chain used to be and the city-centre branch of Marks and Spencer closed permanently yesterday with no immediate plan for what should fill the space. However, there is a big out-of-town retail park at Fosse Park and a smaller one in Thurmaston.
If you have a car, these places are much more convenient and parking is free. I remember accompanying my mother or grandmother to the market in Leicester city centre in the early 1960s but I haven't bought anything there for years, because I drive to Fosse Park or use the wide choice of supermarkets dotted around the suburbs.
I grew up in Leicester and everyone I know left immediately as soon as they could. Not a single member of my family or friend is still there. It was awful.
Cheerio Then Me Duck you ain't Missed
@@frankcross7925 Phew I was so worried what you thought
Yeah I was Worried you'd Come back. You're probably in the south now
Nob head
you became an immigrant somewhere
Growing up I always remember walking past the huge chimney on Glenfield Rd. I think it was part of the CO-OP.
I was
I would love to see footage of that if anyone has it.
Lovely.🇦🇺
I was born and raised in Leicester. Anyone remember Pepperday's Barber Shop by the Clock Tower?
It’s funny this makes me feel nostalgic but I’ve never even been there.
bloke at 9:56 is still alive, rents out vans
The town centre destroyed by the hideous theatre, now shut, and the vile Haymarket centre not to mention what they did to dear old Lewis's. Upvc windows and a feeling of scruffiness too. Pubs shut by the dozen and bulldozeed factories is the only legacy now. Multiculturalism and cultural battles in the streets, all in my life time.
Best city in England. Friendly people, good vibes, great town centre. ❤️
Absolutely love clips like these 🥰 love the narration speaks in proper english unlike people nowdays as its all slang talk ...also i notice so few cars on the road & people on the streets compared to now X please post more clips like this xx
"proper" English lol
Great video! I was born in Lincoln which I suppose is technically the east midlands but I 100% feel northern
Hardly northern 🤔 Carlisle is the north
@AutoShenanigans lovely view of the Leicester car park.
8:50 Boy was he right about getting a machine to do that work. Everyone of those people was out of a job within about 10-15 years.
Now the area around the clock tower has been pedestrianised I suppose it resembles a central ‘square’ more nowadays
Leicester use to be a really nice place, and Lee circle looked much better then today, but being a BBC documentary, I guess you all aren't ready to talk about why it's like it is today.
Over crowded with you know who🤨
I love “birds” with loose morals!
That made me laugh 😂
I was born the year this was made. In my lifetime, this nation has become alien to me.
1963 for me & I totally agree with you.
@@Matt.Willoughby Don't patronise me.
Not all change is good. Much of what has occurred over the last 58 years has been for the better but society now is more fractured than it has been for a very long time - and there are some very clear reasons why.
When you are older, you will learn the ruth of what I say (assuming you ahev the intelligence).
In the meantime, don't presume to tell that change is how societies progress. If you knew moe history, you wuld also know that some types of change cause socities to fail.
Dear boy.
@@thomasm1964 I didn't say if change is good or bad. That's totally subjective, so I wouldn't waste my time arguing that. Yes some societies fail, some don't.
Not sure what your point is?
I think you're patronising yourself old chap.
@@Matt.Willoughby You don’t even understand your own argument. You originally claimed societies progress (meaning “go forward”) through change. Now, you are back-pedalling.
It's called "Change"
Society changes as we progress and move on.
So I don't get you, the fact you are feeling alien ?
Can you expand on your comment old boy.
I've lived in Leicester all of my fifty-five years and it has not changed for the better. There is no civic pride anymore, once decent neighbourhoods are going to rack and ruin. It's become a melting pot of all nationalities to the extent that I feel like a stranger in my own town. In short it now resembles something more like 1970s New York with garbage everywhere and a prevailing underclass.
That's England in the 2020's...same in every large city. What the hell went wrong???
@@IBWHUTID It goes way back to something called the Kalergi Plan i.e the eradication or ethnocide of white Europeans and their replacement with a race similar to Egyptians. Just walked home from work and hardly saw a white face. It's grim.
@@joegibbs448 Come on Joe, say it out loud. Show us what you really are.
Move
Leicester like 70s New York!?You’re exaggerating just a tad.C’mon cheer up ,we won the league!
12:00 ... And Tony Stanger did go on to have a settled life with a nice Mrs and job
dont you mean moose , worked with Tony tough guy and a nice fella
Stanger and sons?
What a beautiful England 🏴
So developed at that time. ❤
That shows a different Leicester in '64 to the place I remember, I have a few fond memories of the place, but not many, preferred the villages round the city.
The "Drive in Bank" (7:20)
They'll make a few tweaks to it.
You'll get used to it, mate.
It didn't last long that drive-in bank LOL
The Dunlop factory in evington?
Leicester is my hometown he ain’t got a LESTA accent because he’s not from there.
Whatcha on about duck it’s the best of the Midlands! Always friendly, always up for a laugh LESTA is the place to be! Don’t take any notice of this dreary piece of journalism
1:44 "No slums", " to find the poor you have to look very hard". That folks was how it was in post war Socialist Britain. Look how far this nation has fallen in the past 40 years .
Indeed, it changed somewhere between the late 60s,and mid 79s, Labours dominant right wing threw in the towel well before Thatcher and, Powellites, sic, just like the "reformist" "social Democrats" on the mainland.
I’m surprised drive though banks/post offices never caught on into the 70’s and 80’s and early 90’s
this isn't america
They were not the first but Leicester had early Bank cash machines. My bank the Midland in Granby St had one. You could use it with a card like today once a day ten times to get out only ten pounds a time, a lot of money in the 70's. Each time a hole was punched in your card and I presume it was sensed inside the machine and when it got to ten withdrawals the machine kept the card as it couldn't be used again. You used the new one they sent you automatically like when you got to the end of your cheque book. It had a magnetic strip to identify your account and debit it accordingly (if you had enough money in).
@@kenstevens5065 The Nat West had those too, I thought it was great at the time.
Lovely video, what a great shame Leicester has become, we all know what's happened to it many towns and cities have suffered the same fate...
What's happened? Go on, say it out loud.
@@linalmeemow It has happened that a pack of lies cannot lead you anywhere.
@@giulianaraffa9391 What???
What “fate” Leicester’s great!!cheer up!
i know right, it seems full of racists now?!??!
Leicester has changed a bit OMG 😳😳
I was in Leicester last month it's a beautiful city so multi cultural which adds to the charm.
I actually remember this documentary. At school we didn't like it!
I am from west of Swansea. I worked for 4.5 years in Leicester in the 80s. It was already very different from the footage here.
I then spent two years in Coventry. I have no feeling for Leicester at all. Cold hostile place. I had studied in Cardiff - that place too has no charisma either, apart from on match days. I do sympathise with the loss of industry & culture & homogeneity across Leicester & Nottingham. Textiles & shoes. Betrayed by the powers that be at all levels.
AT ALL LEVELS !!
I agree. I spent some time in Cardiff and found that it had more Spirit, if that's the right word.
Narrator seems to downplay the city being part of manufacturing, back when. Little did he know! Now I suppose it relies upon service industries as the main sources of employment. It's not that manufacturing disappeared; it just went somewhere else. Greetings from a Brit residing in the USA.
Made in china 🇨🇳 🏭 🤪 👎
Perhaps he downplayed it because people took it all a bit for granted then, because things seemed to be going well! But within 5 years, the Great Central Railway was closed , and going into the 70s, manufacturing took on a steep decline.
My god what a luvli vid. Born and bŕed here all old buildings gone now shame ❤❤❤❤
Don't give up on Leicester... something good is coming your way in 2016. But get to the bookies first 😂
A place with birds with loose morals...sounds alright, me duck
Where are they though? I live in Leicester and I can't find any!🤣
@@2760ade the birds from the 60s? try to guess where are they now
After watching this video, all the comments have the local accent as I read them.
I like his accent!😊
But it’s not really Northants!
Sadly leicester city is not a place to aspire to live or bring up a family. Grew up in the 80s and used to love going shopping in the centre. Not now. The outskirts like leicestershire are very nice and much better for family life. To much knife crime and violent in the city nowadays. The councils have run the place down so much its such a shame.
You’re only saying that bcos you became a minority. Nottingham and Coventry which have a higher share of yt ppl have much higher violent crime than Leicester by a mile
09:55 If he's talking about the Swan & Rushes, he's dead right. It was still a nutter's joint at the start of the 2000's.
Shame they didn't preserve The White Swan, looked like a lovely pub!
What did he say they call Liverpidlians at the start?
Plenty chips, Plenty chapatis
The size of bloke waiting for a pint at bar wow big lad
Fast Forward 60 Years and IS THIS LEICESTER?
WOW! It's a good thing it's so much better now🙀😂
Interesting the accents sound different.
Accents evolve, young people want to be different from wrinklies, sic.
@@willrichardson519 but you never find accents change 100% i work with young people in there 20s, many have strong accents so im sorry to say your wrong,and naive in a way goodbye i don't want to hear from you again.
@@willrichardson519 your older than me, you seem you have very wrong views on this, accent never change that much maybe less broad thats all, again don't bother me again your very strange and feel freaked out.
I left in 1982 and never went back , someone told me Leicesters twin city is Bombay
Ray died in 2013
Might visit Leicester now.... lol
Don't bother it's scruffy, filthy streets full of every nationality who can't speak English. When I was younger it was a treat to go into town not anymore, not a safe place.
Wow what a fantastic city, one of the riches in Europe. its very different today a wouldn't go there as a ghost. so sad. All the people all over the world wanted to come.
And they have !
To buck the inevitable "oh what a shame it's changed" comments, I think Leicester is far more interesting now than it was then. I can't get misty eyed over the construction of a carpark. Growing up there taught me to respect difference, and I'm forever grateful for that.
Tell that to young white girls !
@@davefitzpatrick4841 All of them? I think they'd find that a bit weird Dave. And it would be a logistical nightmare
@@redcarsgofaster just the ones who have suffered at the hands of the grooming gangs, still a logistical nightmare !
@@davefitzpatrick4841 And there it is.
@@redcarsgofaster as with the authorities, choose to look the other way .
They really changed that part around the clock tower, no way you'd have buses rolling by like that now they'd be running down the M&S shoppers. 😂 Cool to see parts of it from the past.
Not now! The Marks and Spencer store on Gallowtree Gate / Humberstone Gate closed for good yesterday. The M&S on the outskirts at Fosse Park is much bigger and better than the one in the city centre.
Heartbreaking. Literally showing Lee Circle and its a dump. Look how hopeful people were back then.
All towns and cities change, none are like they used to be, maybe it’s for the better maybe its not…
If it’s for the better we’ll that’s for the locals to decide, those that have lives their all their lives.
Of course, towns and cities change. However, do the faces and culture need to also?
I was born there and im 8
It is absolutely reprehensible what our governments have done to our country
10:08 MEN actually, more men used to visit pubs in the 60’s/70’s that women and you would never find families in them like you do these days
They went to the pub to get away from their families. 😂
"I killed someone once"
Best comment ever.
Nice one Ray.
I went to Leicester about 12 years ago and it was pretty well spot the white man
And?
But when you own a big chunk of the bloody Third World, the babies just come with the scenery...
My dear if buildings are now vacant then perhaps the councils should turn them into affordable housing
I used to like Ray Gosling but disagree with many of the sentiments voiced here, a little too whimsical to my liking. He mentions factory work 'making things that don't last long' whoops thats offended a lot of ppl straight away and factory work bringing no satisfaction, I disagree again, look back at any weeks effort and that is an achievement surely. Never mind, was always looked forward to, RIP old fella left this Earth 2013 age 74.
Alienation wasn't great, but mass unemployment and precarious under-employment are a damn sight worse.
pure stoner viewing