"Shortlisted" - UK's most depressing town, 2024

[whole diary]

[grahame]

Well - we still have 359 days to change people's minds - from The Mirror:

Aldershot, Alloa, Andover, Annan, Aylesbury, Barton-on-Sea, Basildon, Basingstoke, Bedford, Bexhill-on-sea, Bideford, Blackpool, Bognor Regis, Bolton, Borehamwood, Boston, Bradford, Caernarfon, Canterbury, Canvey island, Carlisle, Chard, Chatham, Chesterfield, Chichester, Chipping Norton, Cirencester, Colchester, Coventry, Crawley, Cromer, Croydon, Cwmbran, Dalbeattie, Darwen, Doncaster, Dover, Dudley, Dumfries, Dunkeld, Durham, Ealing Mead, East Kilbride, Eastbourne, Eastleigh, Edinburgh, Ellesmere Port, Evesham, Frinton-on-Sea, Gateshead, Gillingham, Gravesend, Great Yarmouth, Gretna, Grimsby, Harlow, Harwich, Hastings, Havant, Haywards Heath, Helston, Henley-on-Thames, High Wycombe, Hitchin, Hoddesdon, Holton Le Clay, Hounslow, Huddersfield, Hull, Ilfracombe, Ipswich, Isle of Sheppey, Jaywick, Leamington Spa, Leeds, Leicester, Leven, Liverpool, Llandudno, Lossiemouth, Lowestoft, Luton, Lyme Regis, Macclesfield, Maidenhead, Maidstone, Margate, Marlow, Medehamstede (Cambs), Melksham, Merthyr Tydfil, Newark, Newport, Newton Stewart, Northampton, Nottingham, Oldham, Orpington, Padstow, Paignton, Paisley, Penrith, Peterborough, Plymouth, Poole, Port Talbot, Portsmouth, Preston, Quinton, Reading, Reigate, Rhyl, Rochdale, Ruthin, Rye, Saffron Walden, Selby, Shoreditch, Sittingbourne, Skegness, Slaithwaite, Slough, Southampton, Southend-on-sea, Southport, St Helens, Staines upon Thames, Stoke-on-Trent, Stretford, Strood, Sutton Coldfield, Swansea, Swindon, Teignmouth, Telford, Tiverton, Tonbridge, Torquay, Trowbridge, Wadhurst, Walsall, Warminster, Wells, Weston-super-Mare, Whitley Bay, Whitwell, Widnes

[TaplowGreen]

Slough and Swindon are generally fixtures in the top ten every year - having lived in one and worked in the other in the past I can heartily support that verdict! 

[IndustryInsider]

Perhaps the reopening of the line to Leven in a few months will help get it off the list?  I believe commissioning and testing runs started today.

Slough and Swindon are generally fixtures in the top ten every year - having lived in one and worked in the other in the past I can heartily support that verdict! 

Do you also support the inclusion of Plymouth? 

[Witham Bobby]

With all the empty and down-at-heel commercial/retail premises in central Evesham, it's hard to disagree with this rating.  The place has been strangled by an ill-thought-out traffic system, too much traffic, sky-high parking charges, and very zealous parking enforcement for on-street parking.  And then there's the crazy business rates and greedy landlords

I first knew Evesham in 1967, when it was a tourist destination for day trippers from Birmingham, Coventry and elsewhere.  Thousands would arrive to enjoy a day in the beautiful park and other grounds by the River Avon.  None of that now

[RichardB]

Do you also support the inclusion of Plymouth? 

No.

Surprised to see Lossiemouth (was there in late October) and Padstow on the list.  Ealing Mead seems to just be a small part of Ealing - Ealing itself shouldn't be on the list. 

[Marlburian]

I'm always suspicious of such polls, especially since one rated Tidworth as the best place in the country to live. (Not that it's that bad, being on my beloved - well, nearly beloved - Salisbury Plain.) And a pedant might differentiate between "depressing","tedious" and "boring" in the Mail article.

Many of the places listed are quite pleasant (eg Henley), albeit the seaside resorts ar dead in the winter but OK in the summer. I lived in Sidmouth - not on the list - in the 1960s, and before that Torquay, then a fashionable resort - the "Queen of the English Riviera". But I regularly visited in from 1999 to 2005, and it had seriously deteriorated. Poor shops, mansions turned into flats often with dozens of bins outside, shingle beaches and difficult to get out of by road. Shoreditch is now very gentrified and vibrant, with some interesting back streets to explore, though most of its notorious strip pubs have closed.

Of the places in the list that I do know, I would nominate Swindon - but it does have the railway museum - with  a touch of prejudice because it's grown so much at the expense of Wiltshire countryside.

Edit to adjust a markup tag

[TaplowGreen]

Perhaps the reopening of the line to Leven in a few months will help get it off the list?  I believe commissioning and testing runs started today.

Slough and Swindon are generally fixtures in the top ten every year - having lived in one and worked in the other in the past I can heartily support that verdict! 

Do you also support the inclusion of Plymouth? 

Based on the city centre of Plymouth, yes, it becomes grimmer by the year and I suspect that's what it's based on.............but there isn't another city in the country that can match the Hoe, Barbican, or the proximity of an area like Dartmoor.

Helston surprised me - it was a lovely little town when I lived there however its more recently become a dumping ground for most of Cornwall's alcohol and drug dependent dregs and based on what I am told by friends who still live there (and/or are members of Devon & Cornwall's finest) only the brave/foolish head out after dark.

[froome]

Perhaps the reopening of the line to Leven in a few months will help get it off the list?  I believe commissioning and testing runs started today.

Slough and Swindon are generally fixtures in the top ten every year - having lived in one and worked in the other in the past I can heartily support that verdict! 

Do you also support the inclusion of Plymouth? 

Based on the city centre of Plymouth, yes, it becomes grimmer by the year and I suspect that's what it's based on.............but there isn't another city in the country that can match the Hoe, Barbican, or the proximity of an area like Dartmoor.

Helston surprised me - it was a lovely little town when I lived there however its more recently become a dumping ground for most of Cornwall's alcohol and drug dependent dregs and based on what I am told by friends who still live there (and/or are members of Devon & Cornwall's finest) only the brave/foolish head out after dark.

Would agree wholeheartedly about Plymouth.

My friends who spent many years living in Truro would undoubtedly support adding that to the list, which surprises me as it seemed reasonably pleasant when I visited.

Depressing is a very subjective term. What I find fascinating I'm sure many others would find depressing, and vice versa. To take two local examples from the list, I find both Warminster and Trowbridge fascinating, but I can understand why some people don't. Though I might be tempted to add Westbury to the list.

However, the many of the most depressing places I have visited are on the list - Rhyl, Jaywick and Barton-on-Sea (which I once described to a friend as the most boring place I had ever visited, only to find he was born and brought up there!). I would add Middlesbrough to the list, though I've only fleetingly visited it twice.

[JayMac]

Bridgwater

[RichardB]

Perhaps the reopening of the line to Leven in a few months will help get it off the list?  I believe commissioning and testing runs started today.

Slough and Swindon are generally fixtures in the top ten every year - having lived in one and worked in the other in the past I can heartily support that verdict! 

Do you also support the inclusion of Plymouth? 

Based on the city centre of Plymouth, yes, it becomes grimmer by the year and I suspect that's what it's based on.............but there isn't another city in the country that can match the Hoe, Barbican, or the proximity of an area like Dartmoor.

I've lived in Plymouth for more than 25 years and don't agree with you at all about the City Centre.  We're going through the mill with the current works and they've certainly taken an age but overall I still think the City Centre is great and better than when I moved here.  The history of why it is as it is - the Abercrombie plan etc - are so important and become increasingly so as the years go by.  It's good that English Heritage is so protective of the City Centre's post War heritage.

The Hoe, Barbican and the proximity of Dartmoor are indeed great.  I'd say the Hoe looking out of Plymouth Sound is a world class view, not well enough known (and that's despite huge and great efforts by Visit Plymouth).   

[CyclingSid]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Her indoors thinks there is no place like Reading, wonderful. I was asked the other month what I thought was the best thing about Reading to which my reply was: "It is easy to get out off".

[Mark A]

"A day out of Nitton is a day wasted" - an aphorism from... Newtongrange in the Scottish borders.

Mark

[stuving]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Her indoors thinks there is no place like Reading, wonderful. I was asked the other month what I thought was the best thing about Reading to which my reply was: "It is easy to get out off".

And faint praise is perhaps the commonest kind. When I moved to Reading, one of my new colleagues said the best thing about Reading was the fast trains to London. And when I was being interviewed for a Job in Bracknell I was told "Bracknell's a tip, but there's some nice places to live nearby".

But what counts as "depressing" says as much about the judge as the subject.

[paul7575]

I’m surprised that Manchester isn’t on it already?

Local politicians will demand it is added simply because Liverpool is already in the list… 

Paul

[johnneyw]

My better half was most taken aback by the inclusion of Leamington Spa where she was born.  Thankfully, nearby(ish) Kenilworth, where she grew up, has not been included.