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Sunderland railway station.

Shopped in Washy twice recently The Galleries/Retail Park and it was buzzing - car park full (free) maybe which it's selling point.

The Market Village looked a bit Scary-Mary
 

Football Dinosaur said:
If by the real world you mean ne1 then yes. I'm there most weeks and it's certainly improving
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What's Newcastle got to do with anything? It's an average city at best and is crap compared to the places it should be competing against ie. Leeds, Manchester etc with a council which has fell asleep. The state of Northumberland Street is (if not) the worst major shopping street in the UK. The tarmac patching is just embarrassing.

EDGE said:
So you haven't visited many other shopping centres then as I originally asked you.
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Stoke, Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield, Nottingham, Aberdeen, Inverness, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle, Durham, London, Derby, Liverpool, Carlisle, Stirling. All within the last 5 years.

Stubbs ftm said:
What's difficult about walking from say park lane to high street West?
If the bridges wasn't there, you'd still have to walk through those streets to get there. It's not as if the city centre is huge, takes about 5 minutes to get from one side to the other
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It was more High Street West into the Bridges I meant, they killed off the retail link with Primark imo, and High Street West has really been struggling ever since. It's quite sad how badly it's deteriated in the past 20 years so from the days of the likes of Mothercare, Littlewoods, BHS, M&S, Dixons etc. Other than M&S limping on (the new Washington store will sadly kill it imo) there's nothing left along there.
 
Zimba said:
What's Newcastle got to do with anything? It's an average city at best and is crap compared to the places it should be competing against ie. Leeds, Manchester etc with a council which has fell asleep. The state of Northumberland Street is (if not) the worst major shopping street in the UK. The tarmac patching is just embarrassing.



Stoke, Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield, Nottingham, Aberdeen, Inverness, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle, Durham, London, Derby, Liverpool, Carlisle, Stirling. All within the last 5 years.



It was more High Street West into the Bridges I meant, they killed off the retail link with Primark imo, and High Street West has really been struggling ever since. It's quite sad how badly it's deteriated in the past 20 years so from the days of the likes of Mothercare, Littlewoods, BHS, M&S, Dixons etc. Other than M&S limping on (the new Washington store will sadly kill it imo) there's nothing left along there.
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16. What about the other 50? London is a huge place with many shopping centres. You visited them all? The majority of those you quote are from larger cities. Not comparable to Sunderland. Did you visit Oldham or Barnsley or Rotherham or.....?
 
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EDGE said:
16. What about the other 50? London is a huge place with many shopping centres. You visited them all? The majority of those you quote are from larger cities. Not comparable to Sunderland. Did you visit Oldham or Barnsley or Rotherham or.....?
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What they got to do with anything? They're all towns.
 
EDGE said:
Just examples. You said Sunderland was the worst.
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City, I did mean that aswell. There's much much worse around in towns. Kirkcaldy probably get's that, most grim place in existance. The Merrion Centre in Leeds is grim aswell, if you want me to be balanced, but there's so much outside that you can just avoid it.

Bradford done a good job with their new centre, ignoring the 10 years to get it built. Brand new centre, big names with a cinema, bowling, mini golf and eateries all part of it. Would be perfect for Sunderland if it was phased in starting at the Debenhams end. Sunderland is crying for a new leisure multiplex right in the centre as Sunniside is just slightly too far out and has pretty much failed.

Believe Wakefield and Rochdale have done similar in recent times aswell which are all comparable and even Derby with it's Derbion which is a similar distance from Nottingham. I know there will be outroar by certain people but Sunderland CC should really try and get The Bridges under their ownership.
 
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Lord Potts said:
The Bridges was constructed in the mid 1960's I can't recall the exact year but it must have opened around 1967/68 'ish. It was an open to the elements shopping precinct then and it was to say the least a bit of a wind tunnel owing to its ill conceived design with high rise blocks at each end. The adjoining enclosed bus station was opened at the same time. Inside that hundreds of waiting passengers were exposed each day to the diesel exhaust fumes of dozens of busses. From the very start it was therefore obvious that the bus station was a design disaster.

A large part of area that the Bridges occupies had been a bomb site flattened in a big air raid in March 1943. The south end of the station that's now being modernised was destroyed in the same raid and was permanently rebuilt in the early 1960's just before work started on the Bridges. As a kid in the 1950's/60's I well remember the bomb site & the temporary entrance to the south of the station that had been erected during the war.
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The south entrance to the station was actually rebuilt in 1953 and lasted a mere 13 years before the recently demolished building replaced it in 1966. A more sensible approach might have been to spend the money spent in rebuilding the south entrance on repairing the north entrance but as I've said earlier the station has seen a catastrophic series of "improvements" during my own lifetime. They'll probably close it altogether one day by mistake.
 
PinzaC55 said:
The south entrance to the station was actually rebuilt in 1953 and lasted a mere 13 years before the recently demolished building replaced it in 1966. A more sensible approach might have been to spend the money spent in rebuilding the south entrance on repairing the north entrance but as I've said earlier the station has seen a catastrophic series of "improvements" during my own lifetime. They'll probably close it altogether one day by mistake.
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I was only a year old in 1953 so I had always assumed that the entrance that was replaced in 1966 had been built during the war.

You are right about the north entrance with its long hallway that ran from High Street to the gates for the platforms about 100 yards away. Sadly years of neglect had ensured that it was in a disgraceful condition so when someone came along to knock it down I don't think there was that much objection.

I agree that things could have been done a lot better the town centre had been pretty badly damaged during the war and people had waited nearly 20 years for it to be put right . When someone came along in the 1960's and said lets build a whole new town centre out of concrete it must have sounded like a grand idea.
 
cactus said:
I was in the bridges today for the first time in ages. Obviously there are empty units but that is the case in any modern day town/city . If you focus your line of site upwards, I think it looks alright, high ceiling with plenty light. I think that replacing the flooring would do wonders for the place.
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When you have a complete line of them where Debenhams used to be it's more than just empty units, it screams derelict, the empty unit where Tescos used to be does also.

And it's all from extortionate rent the Bridges themselves are charging, there was no reason for Tescos to move out but they did and what inflated the problem was people like Boots and Superdrug refusing to pay rent during the pandemic citing you's lot need us open more than you want us closed, and got away with it (this was also in every shopping centre they were based in) so these shopping centres have to put up rent for the loss of revenue for 2 years with Boots and Superdrug not paying rent
 
Football Dinosaur said:
He's a mag. As I said earlier many posters on this thread hate our city and won't allow anything positive to be said. We're getting back on our feet after decades of underfunding. If and it's a huge if certain projects get off the ground we'll see positive change the like of which we've not seen I'm generations. Those from further north or with petty footballing prejudice will have to pipe down and put up with it.
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As an outsider looking in there is some fantastic regeneration taking place in Sunderland.

If it all comes off it will be a great place to live work or visit.
 
Zimba said:
What's Newcastle got to do with anything? It's an average city at best and is crap compared to the places it should be competing against ie. Leeds, Manchester etc with a council which has fell asleep. The state of Northumberland Street is (if not) the worst major shopping street in the UK. The tarmac patching is just embarrassing.



Stoke, Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield, Nottingham, Aberdeen, Inverness, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle, Durham, London, Derby, Liverpool, Carlisle, Stirling. All within the last 5 years.



It was more High Street West into the Bridges I meant, they killed off the retail link with Primark imo, and High Street West has really been struggling ever since. It's quite sad how badly it's deteriated in the past 20 years so from the days of the likes of Mothercare, Littlewoods, BHS, M&S, Dixons etc. Other than M&S limping on (the new Washington store will sadly kill it imo) there's nothing left along there.
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Given that your an obvious mag you'd know where all north east investment went. We've had to fend fir ourselves with little to no government funding. Given what's been done to Sunderland in the last 60 years its a miracle we have what we have now. Some people still care deeply and are investing, its no worse than similar sized cities and I feel much better in some cases
 
Football Dinosaur said:
Given that your an obvious mag you'd know where all north east investment went. We've had to fend fir ourselves with little to no government funding. Given what's been done to Sunderland in the last 60 years its a miracle we have what we have now. Some people still care deeply and are investing, its no worse than similar sized cities and I feel much better in some cases
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Even known I've got a season ticket and was at the match yesterday but okay. I have no self interest in Newcastle either which is a poor city but the competition between both, both sides are as bad as each other, only benefit places like Leeds and Manchester.

Sunderland outside the centre, especially Roker / Seaburn is one of the nicest places in the North East imo. Penshaw and Herrington County Park is a right asset aswell. In comparison, to Newcastle pretty much everywhere outside the centre, bar Gosforth, is an absolute dump.

All councils in the North East suck though, they're more bothered about infighting like school children than working together and actually building something for everyone hence why everything is half arsed. No doubt this mayor will be much of the same and spending on pointless things like replacing art at Byker Metro station was removed in the first place as it kept getting damaged from antisocial behaviour. Mind Sunderland has had much more money that us (SE Northumberland) we've been pretty much ignored since the pits closed especially Ashington with it's giant hole, Bedlington with it's giant hole and Blyth which soon will guess what have a giant hole where they've demo'd things and not replaced them in the centre.
 
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Zimba said:
Even known I've got a season ticket and was at the match yesterday but okay. I have no self interest in Newcastle either which is a poor city but the competition between both, both sides are as bad as each other, only benefit places like Leeds and Manchester.

Sunderland outside the centre, especially Roker / Seaburn is one of the nicest places in the North East imo. Penshaw and Herrington County Park is a right asset aswell. In comparison, to Newcastle pretty much everywhere outside the centre, bar Gosforth, is an absolute dump.

All councils in the North East suck though, they're more bothered about infighting like school children than working together and actually building something for everyone hence why everything is half arsed. No doubt this mayor will be much of the same and spending on pointless things like replacing art at Byker Metro station was removed in the first place as it kept getting damaged from antisocial behaviour. Mind Sunderland has had much more money that us (SE Northumberland) we've been pretty much ignored since the pits closed especially Ashington with it's giant hole, Bedlington with it's giant hole and Blyth which soon will guess what have a giant hole where they've demo'd things and not replaced them in the centre.
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Sunderland, which is no where near as bad as made out is improving. Private money from local people is assisting this, as usual in defiance to others who want to put the city down.
 
Hurrah for the City Station bogs!


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Weremuthe said:
Hurrah for the City Station bogs!


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Just watched the video looks like the the station has a ground floor and and a first floor - which I didn't expect.
 
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