1986 National Garden Festival Stoke-On-Trent (BBC2)

A Festival Of Flowers coming from The National Garden Festival in Etruria, Stoke-On-Trent.
First shown on BBC2 in 1986.

[@lovetheatre100]

I was 18 years of age i was employed by the local cinema ABC in Hanley we advertised what was on the cinema that year and gave away cinema tickets. What a wonderful job that was i missed it for years after it was over, to work in such beautiful surrounding. A place i will never forget and the people i worked with.

[@skylined5534]

Please say you also remember that large super low res large screen on the end of the odeon advertising various things there! I remember being mesmerised by it as a kid!

[@johnfellows2867]

I remember the old Shelton steel works, dirty, noisy and totally amazing !! Very happy memories !!

[@chrisparkes2179]

My mother lived for a while on one of the streets with a direct view, but about two miles away, and she remembers the light of the furnaces being opened.

[@skylined5534]

@@chrisparkes2179 And the noise! Very distinct even living in Drubbery Lane in Blurton!

[@cosmicskye]

I was there when the queen opened it in May 1986.......the cost that went into creating Beautiful Gardens and entertainment for the kids ........Brill day out for all the family......Such a shame the garden festival is turned into a retail park......Great projects dont seem to last very long.

[@chrisparkes2179]

One of several retail parks that have gradually sapped the life out of the surrounding towns.

[@skylined5534]

At least some of it still exists many years later.

[@CoreRTV]

OMG... i cant believe you have this footage from the garden festival..... i remember being on stage in one of the pavilions when i was a kid... shame that its all been built on now and the rest of the site has overgrown but some of the features are still there :)

[@skylined5534]

True! Not a lot left but enough to get your bearings! I remember going here quite a few times as a kid!

[@ewennicolson4342]

Amazing to think there was a time when wild flowers were considered a thing of the past. River and canal banks. parklands and even roadside verges now are teeming with these raw beauties.

[@skylined5534]

The roadsides always were. I was there.

[@ewennicolson4342]

Fuck me I thought that was David Ruddy icke on the slide there for a moment!

[@skylined5534]

*ALIENS!*

[@JamesTilsley1]

why didn't they keep it it looks so nice :( better than a bloody retail park

[@ewennicolson4342]

The idea was to re-develop into what you see today. Retail/new industry/condo's etc. The Garden Festivals were about reclaiming old industrial land, turning it into something new then flogging it off to real estate vultures. A very Tory concept.

[@scottessery100]

@@ewennicolson4342 spend tax payers money to attract private money to make a few chums rich... got it

[@jonathanbuxton6991]

Because its Stoke on Trent where everything gets destroyed.

[@marky78mark]

Jobs have been created out of it, surely that is a good thing???

[@chrisparkes2179]

@@marky78mark Nowhere near as many jobs as were lost in the eighties. Apart from the closure of the mines and Shelton Bar steelworks, 35,000 manufacturing jobs in the pottery industry alone were lost in the city in that decade. We also lost hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs in small engineering and allied trades companies. Creating a few dozen jobs in shops standing on land where once hundreds of people worked isn't such a good deal.

[@johnmaxnodiff5875]

I didn’t go until the last few weeks, it was looking a bit worse for wear then, but I still thought it was one of the best things done since the war in the city. On the second visit I made a very bad decision, I went to a store selling including other things fantasy gaming stuff. On the counter was a pile of what was called modules by TSR of the USA. They had produced one specially or the event called “Up the garden path” They were selling them off for 50p each instead of about £5. These modules now sell to collectors for over £5,000 each in as new condition. I made the bad decisions of not buying any.

[@chrisparkes2179]

Hindsight is a right bstd, isn't it?

[@homeboy5218]

Lol I have to watch this for school

[@peterduncalf9993]

Should of kept it open it was a lot of money wasted for 6 months. I wish they would do something with it. Re open what's left

[@chrisparkes2179]

It is open, parts are still ok-ish, but a lot is bleak and unnerving to walk around.

[@skylined5534]

@@chrisparkes2179 Unfortunately yes. Remember that awesome POMA skyride?!

[@chrisparkes2179]

@@skylined5534 I certainly do! When my mother went she was very impressed with the Welsh hillside. So much do that she took a piece of slate home as a souvenir. I was expecting her to have a thumb sized piece. Nah, she produced her handbag and brought out a dinner plate sized slab.

[@ewennicolson4342]

Same fucking jazz band at every GF. Think that was why Glasgow & Gateshead were the last. They couldn't justify the bodycount from hacked off Weegies & Geordies.

[@chrisparkes2179]

About 15 years ago they, or another similar bunch, used to turn up in Newcastle under Lyme whenever there was a special market on. I worked in an office overlooking the High Street where they honked, hooted and howled and often wished for a cauldron of boiling oil like at the start of the Addams Family movie.

[@youyatubetak7624]

alan skidmark , a suitable case for drowning

[@jonathanbuxton6991]

That didnt last long..A bygone age which has long gone..Now its a complete shit hole of a place with boarded up windows and dust heads everywhere.

[@skylined5534]

You must mean Hanley. Festival Park is too 'remote' for dusty MFs.