I've been going through a 'nostalgic' phase recently. I'm 32 now, in case it matters:
The house I lived in until I was four years old
I seem to remember my early life better than most people do. I looked up pictures my first house recently on Zoopla, which I haven't entered since 1987, and the changes to it have been largely superficial, aside from the conservatory, which has been added. Even the kitchen drawers are the same.
I still visit the surrounding area quite often, and that has changed for the worse, gradually, since the early 1990s. Since then, the Post Office, the petrol station, the milk depot, and one of the two convenience stores has been lost, as has the butcher's.
My old primary school (1988-95)
I looked it up on Google Maps, and I looked up the interior on the school's website. It's much the same as it was, aside from two things:
1. The large water tower has been removed.
2. Large, steel gates have been erected between the car park and the junior school block.
The interior looks much the same, aside from the fact that 'plain walls' have largely given way to pictures of children's drawings, cartoon characters and Welsh language phrases.
The surrounding area has improved, though. A block of shabby, run-down, dingy shops which local yobs used to hang around has been replaced by a much better, large convenience store with some rather nice-looking flats above it.
The sixth form college I attended between 2000-02
I returned to the area briefly earlier this year and walked around the grounds late at night after a few pints. There were only a few changes I noticed:
1. Part of the playing fields have been sacrificed to make way for new classrooms.
2. The smoking shelter has been demolished. Back then, the legal age for smoking was 16, and we were welcome to smoke on the premises, provided we used the shelter.
My university campus, which I attended between 2002-05
It was looking fairly shabby and run down in my era, and having taken a look at Google Maps recently, today's students have much better facilities, with shops, coffee shops, bakeries and general amenities.
Our students' union was OK for 'clubbing' nights in my day, but for daytime stuff like food, drinks, and sports, it was actually fairly poor.
The one 'sign of the times' I noticed was that one popular student bar from my era is now a Costa Coffee shop.
The pub I had my first pint in, aged 18, in 2001
This is poignant. I returned there yesterday (Tuesday) evening for what I'm sure will be the last time.
I had my first pint there in 2001 and visited fairly frequently until 2009, then I moved from the area, but returned from time to time to visit family, as I did last night.
The pub looks more-or-less the same. The regulars are still there, the older ones looking greyer and in some cases more frail, but there were still quite a few familiar faces.
Sadly, it's going to close down in a week or two's time for refurbishment, and will pretty much be a trendy restaurant when it reopens.
It felt like the end of an era for me.
The one thing I feel whenever I go back to that pub is that while it feels familiar, and while there are still some familiar faces there, I don't feel as though I 'fit in' anymore, nor do I feel as though there is much left for me in the area. It's strange, really.
I walked past my childhood home the other day, made me feel a little bit sad. When you go to places you went to as a child, the first thing that hits you is how much smaller those places are than how you imagine or remember them to be.
It was weird. This happened to me 3 - 4 weeks ago. The street hill is more of a slope and how tiny the semi-detached houses were. Plus it was like reliving the 80's for a moment. It was really strange. Funny how big the world looked when I was 8 - 10.
Well I went back to the uni and city yesterday. Even though I was only there I a short time (20 yrs ago this week!) I felt kinda depressed! The place had changed a bit but not a lot. Just tarted up etc.
I left having more questions that needed answering them anything and got home feeling kinda miserable.
Yes. I was thinking recently about where I grew up. I lived in the same house from age 5 until I moved out at 18. I went to the local primary school and secondary schools and I would walk to the secondary school. Just recently I have started to think about going back and walking the same walk that I used to do as a kid. Perhaps walking down the high street where I had a Saturday job and basically revisiting my old haunts.
When I was 18 I moved to a town about 20 mins from my childhood home and lived there for about 15yrs. So again I would love to see my old home and walk in the high street.
Bonkers really. I wonder why our brains want us to revisit old places .... some of which weren't particularly happy times. I mean, I hated school.
One of the places I went back to was Catterick Camp, Yorks where thousands of us first put on uniform in the early 50's to train and then serve mostly overseas - in my case Malaya. The visit was rather a disappointment. The once vast clean smart barracks blocks and parade ground once teeming with smartly dressed recruits was looking grey and dismal, and virtually no smartly dressed soldiers to be seen. The immaculate and new Naafi Club and dance hall (no boots allowed on the highly polished floor) had reverted to some kind of sloppy youth club with only delinquent looking juveniles congregated there. Havnt been back since
Yes, my old schools. Unfortunately they have all been knocked down and houses built on the grounds so if I visited now and hung around somebody would ring the police.
My old school was knocked down and houses built on it but before that happened we were allowed to go back and look around and you could graffiti the walls. You can imagine some of the stuff written about certain teachers...
My parents still live in the house I grew up in so I can visit there whenever I want. No desire to go and see the schools I attended or anywhere I've lived between leaving home and my current place.
One thing I would like to do is go on a particular walk along the North Wales coast. We used to take family holidays there when I was young and I loved the walk in question. We'd go a lot, anywhere between 2-5 times a year so it's somewhere I spent a lot of time. I think it would be fun to drag my dad along as it was with him who I did most of the walks.
So do mine, I do feel nostalgic sometimes at Xmas if I sleep in my old room.
Every time I have done, I've regretted it. The worst one though was finding photos of my childhood home on a real estate site and taking the virtual tour. They had extensively remodeled, torn down parts of the house and built on others. Even though I hadn't lived their for decades, it was still a wrench.
I do get curious about it but it's a pretty rough area and I've moved on a lot since those days. I have googled it like others here have done and that's probably as far as I'll go. I don't miss it at all.
For an example of how places have changed over the years - Singapore is a probably a typical example of taking change a step too far. . When our Signal Regt were posted there in 1951, once out of the city the remainder of the island consisted of semi jungle, rubber tree plantations and native huts and shacks dotted here and there together with winding country roads. Went back in 2003 and almost everything green had gone and now much of the island is covered in council like housing estates, ware houses and industrial buildings. As for the old city, that has been almost entirely bulldozed leaving just a few of the old historic buildings standing, or otherwise replaced with high rise chrome and glass skyscraper style structures. Very nice for the tourists but visiting Singapore for nostalgia - forget it.
Back in the 60's when Manchester was experiencing a massive slum clearance, some local photographers decided to record the whole city before it disappeared. More or less every street was photographed. Other older pics have since been added to the collection, which was originally only on dedicated library pcs, but now online.
My old college where I wasted nearly a year was a particularly mediocre time. In the year or two after I had a few bad dreams about the place so I rode over and saw it up close . I had the random idea that being there might put some of the old feelings to rest and I'm glad to say it did that.
My home where I grew up and lived for twenty years I had a look round on google and it is smaller, blander and not the rosy place I recall. I won't be going back there for real for ever.
I would love to see my old schools again. Some of my happiest memories were there. I often dream about them and wonder what they look like inside today.
But I'm a single bloke in my 30s with no kids. I would be arrested if I so much as went near them.
Back in the 60's when Manchester was experiencing a massive slum clearance, some local photographers decided to record the whole city before it disappeared. More or less every street was photographed. Other older pics have since been added to the collection, which was originally only on dedicated library pcs, but now online.
.
Bury had it's own 'Image bank' of 1950s and 1960s photos.......again it was pretty much every street, certainly appeared to be every shop including all the street corner shops
Maybe it was the same people who did Manchester down the road
But the website taken down for some reason......>:(
I spent hours looking a that site.....and was really quite upset when it disappeared
Fortunately I still have the Britain From Above site which includes about 20 aerial photos from the area I grew up in in the 1950s
Grew up on the Wirral and as well as Google instant street view there are thriving Facebook nostalgia and memory groups with hundreds of people who used to be neighbours school friends colleagues we all post old postcards and photographs and underneath talk about the olden days in the comments, the actual place is a s*** hole and all the attractions from the 1950s and 60s are long gone but the people are wonderful and talking about the memories is just fantastic but I am happy to do it at a distance as it is clear from Google street view that the place is run down boarded up and 0 interest plus all my relatives dead now, havent been home in 40 years and I no longer consider it home but I do like to look at it occasionally online
I have extreme nostalgic pangs for my childhood places. I think it's more common in people who perhaps haven't had the most fulfilling adult life and have had difficulties, whereas childhood was a lot simpler in comparison (for most of us, certainly for me..).
It's a double-edged sword though. Perhaps it's best to maintain that longing to revisit, but never actually go through with it. Not because things might have changed, but because it could remind you of how things in your life currently are messy and not good, compared to that old feeling of amazing freedom and happiness from childhood.
Although I occasionally have a look on google maps/street, I'm sometimes left with a bit of current sadness after the original nostalgic happiness.
Of course, if your adult life's been pretty great then I guess revisiting childhood places is simply an interesting thing to do. Being mildly nostalgic is probably a pretty positive thing in that case.
I go back to London to visit my family at least a couple of times a year. Usually when there is a family function but also at Christmas time every couple of years. I don't go because I miss London... I've completely embraced living in Cornwall.... but I want to see my parents and sisters and cousins. I do miss my family, especially my mum.
I am a member of the Old Girls Association at my former senior school so if we can, we'll time our visit for when there is an OG meeting at my old Alma Mater. The old place has changed a bit, but it's still very familiar and I must confess to having had a bit of a lump in my throat when I made the trudge up all those stairs to my classroom in Upper Third. The room was full of ghosts.
Upper Thirds at my school knew all about climbing stairs. Stairs were what we climbed.
It's always good to meet old classmates for a catch up and passing round pictures of our children and comparing ourselves now to the old class group photos. Goodness.... we were we really that young once..?
There is usually a netball match too, between the staff and the Old Girls and that's fun too. There are one or two out-of-breath red faces at the end of that, for sure..!!
It is nice to go back to visit, although I don't think of it as "home" any more. I've moved on. I left London behind the day I went to University.
My parents still live in my childhood home. Each time I go home all the childhood memories come flooding back. When I stand in my old bedroom it takes me back to simpler times as well as the whole drama of growing up and becoming an adult. This all reminds me of an old country song by Miranda Lambert https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQYNM6SjD_o
I still think about my old school often, sadly its been knocked down and replaced, I would love to just have one last walk around that place, at the time I hated school but looking back now they really were the best days of my life.
i go through my home village on the bus to visit my boys, i`m usually in tears by the time we get to the next, it`s barely changed, still feels like my home and i wish i had not moved from it.
The place where I grew up has changed a lot in terms of demographics, as in many over moneyed people (many of whom are ignorant townies) have moved in since I left.
I wouldn't mind going back to some other places I've lived at in the past, but haven't got round to doing it.
What i dont get about this, is there were three places where i lived before the age of 20, yet the one place i had a urge to go back to was a place i only spent a short time at!
I would like to see what my all boys Catholic school was like now (only went for a year until we moved home) - apparently for decades it has been a mixed institution.
Good.
Lord of the Files may have been be 'character' building for some (according to the sadistic priests and teachers) in the 'good old days' - but in the 21st century the place would have been closed down within weeks.
Comments
The house I lived in until I was four years old
I seem to remember my early life better than most people do. I looked up pictures my first house recently on Zoopla, which I haven't entered since 1987, and the changes to it have been largely superficial, aside from the conservatory, which has been added. Even the kitchen drawers are the same.
I still visit the surrounding area quite often, and that has changed for the worse, gradually, since the early 1990s. Since then, the Post Office, the petrol station, the milk depot, and one of the two convenience stores has been lost, as has the butcher's.
My old primary school (1988-95)
I looked it up on Google Maps, and I looked up the interior on the school's website. It's much the same as it was, aside from two things:
1. The large water tower has been removed.
2. Large, steel gates have been erected between the car park and the junior school block.
The interior looks much the same, aside from the fact that 'plain walls' have largely given way to pictures of children's drawings, cartoon characters and Welsh language phrases.
The surrounding area has improved, though. A block of shabby, run-down, dingy shops which local yobs used to hang around has been replaced by a much better, large convenience store with some rather nice-looking flats above it.
The sixth form college I attended between 2000-02
I returned to the area briefly earlier this year and walked around the grounds late at night after a few pints. There were only a few changes I noticed:
1. Part of the playing fields have been sacrificed to make way for new classrooms.
2. The smoking shelter has been demolished. Back then, the legal age for smoking was 16, and we were welcome to smoke on the premises, provided we used the shelter.
My university campus, which I attended between 2002-05
It was looking fairly shabby and run down in my era, and having taken a look at Google Maps recently, today's students have much better facilities, with shops, coffee shops, bakeries and general amenities.
Our students' union was OK for 'clubbing' nights in my day, but for daytime stuff like food, drinks, and sports, it was actually fairly poor.
The one 'sign of the times' I noticed was that one popular student bar from my era is now a Costa Coffee shop.
The pub I had my first pint in, aged 18, in 2001
This is poignant. I returned there yesterday (Tuesday) evening for what I'm sure will be the last time.
I had my first pint there in 2001 and visited fairly frequently until 2009, then I moved from the area, but returned from time to time to visit family, as I did last night.
The pub looks more-or-less the same. The regulars are still there, the older ones looking greyer and in some cases more frail, but there were still quite a few familiar faces.
Sadly, it's going to close down in a week or two's time for refurbishment, and will pretty much be a trendy restaurant when it reopens.
It felt like the end of an era for me.
The one thing I feel whenever I go back to that pub is that while it feels familiar, and while there are still some familiar faces there, I don't feel as though I 'fit in' anymore, nor do I feel as though there is much left for me in the area. It's strange, really.
It was weird. This happened to me 3 - 4 weeks ago. The street hill is more of a slope and how tiny the semi-detached houses were. Plus it was like reliving the 80's for a moment. It was really strange. Funny how big the world looked when I was 8 - 10.
I left having more questions that needed answering them anything and got home feeling kinda miserable.
When I was 18 I moved to a town about 20 mins from my childhood home and lived there for about 15yrs. So again I would love to see my old home and walk in the high street.
Bonkers really. I wonder why our brains want us to revisit old places .... some of which weren't particularly happy times. I mean, I hated school.
My old school was knocked down and houses built on it but before that happened we were allowed to go back and look around and you could graffiti the walls. You can imagine some of the stuff written about certain teachers...
So do mine, I do feel nostalgic sometimes at Xmas if I sleep in my old room.
Me too. My childhood places are pretty far from here, so that's the next best thing. The 3-D feature on google maps is fun too.
Coventry never was that great I guess
Funny you should say that but it seems much smaller to me too. Maybe seeing the big world makes you see how small it really is.
I always get a funny feeling that is hard to describe. I don't visit the street too often.
http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php
Back in the 60's when Manchester was experiencing a massive slum clearance, some local photographers decided to record the whole city before it disappeared. More or less every street was photographed. Other older pics have since been added to the collection, which was originally only on dedicated library pcs, but now online.
I was raised in this 'Coronation Street' .
My home where I grew up and lived for twenty years I had a look round on google and it is smaller, blander and not the rosy place I recall. I won't be going back there for real for ever.
But I'm a single bloke in my 30s with no kids. I would be arrested if I so much as went near them.
Bury had it's own 'Image bank' of 1950s and 1960s photos.......again it was pretty much every street, certainly appeared to be every shop including all the street corner shops
Maybe it was the same people who did Manchester down the road
But the website taken down for some reason......>:(
I spent hours looking a that site.....and was really quite upset when it disappeared
Fortunately I still have the Britain From Above site which includes about 20 aerial photos from the area I grew up in in the 1950s
It's a double-edged sword though. Perhaps it's best to maintain that longing to revisit, but never actually go through with it. Not because things might have changed, but because it could remind you of how things in your life currently are messy and not good, compared to that old feeling of amazing freedom and happiness from childhood.
Although I occasionally have a look on google maps/street, I'm sometimes left with a bit of current sadness after the original nostalgic happiness.
Of course, if your adult life's been pretty great then I guess revisiting childhood places is simply an interesting thing to do. Being mildly nostalgic is probably a pretty positive thing in that case.
I am a member of the Old Girls Association at my former senior school so if we can, we'll time our visit for when there is an OG meeting at my old Alma Mater. The old place has changed a bit, but it's still very familiar and I must confess to having had a bit of a lump in my throat when I made the trudge up all those stairs to my classroom in Upper Third. The room was full of ghosts.
Upper Thirds at my school knew all about climbing stairs. Stairs were what we climbed.
It's always good to meet old classmates for a catch up and passing round pictures of our children and comparing ourselves now to the old class group photos. Goodness.... we were we really that young once..?
There is usually a netball match too, between the staff and the Old Girls and that's fun too. There are one or two out-of-breath red faces at the end of that, for sure..!!
It is nice to go back to visit, although I don't think of it as "home" any more. I've moved on. I left London behind the day I went to University.
I still think about my old school often, sadly its been knocked down and replaced, I would love to just have one last walk around that place, at the time I hated school but looking back now they really were the best days of my life.
The place where I grew up has changed a lot in terms of demographics, as in many over moneyed people (many of whom are ignorant townies) have moved in since I left.
I wouldn't mind going back to some other places I've lived at in the past, but haven't got round to doing it.
Good.
Lord of the Files may have been be 'character' building for some (according to the sadistic priests and teachers) in the 'good old days' - but in the 21st century the place would have been closed down within weeks.