Thats a good one; Yes I love Co Durham it is a pretty county countryside wise; But things are worse than depicted in the video; Maybe if we went to Syria people could have a better life, because things are dire here ;
Durham council are starting to compulsory buy back abandoned homes after they have been abandoned after a certain number of years then turn them into social housing.
I’ve mastered sleeping in my car now. Even Travelodge was asking for £100 for a night. I’m not a tight person but I refuse to spend that much on an uncomfortable bed!
Maybe you could start a “wild car camping” channel too. They seem to do well. Though even living in a turd town would be better than camping in a car in the UK winter 😬, it looks utterly abject.
@@darrell190967 sorry to hear that. Some areas are less than welcoming to incomers and you might be seen as a stranger for the longest time unless there are opportunities to join in with local activities and events and get yourself seen in those capacities and therefore become more familiar and approachable.
@@sharonbeckett721 exactly. What gives some bloke the right to slag peoples areas off just to put a crap piece on his video. He’s done it to other areas as well. The people up here are on the whole friendly and will help anyone. I don’t live in County Durham but I know there are some run down areas a lot of places closed due to the pandemic But there are beautiful areas and wonderful people
Totally agree. I tried to explain this to someone a couple of weeks ago, who was supporting the rampant house-building programmes in the area. The only reason I can see for authorities and their construction chums not taking a holistic approach to the "housing crisis" is that bulldozing over fields and woodlands is cheaper and easier than bothering to redevelop ghost towns (which would require effort and brainpower) - and hence more profitable for parasitic housing development companies like Persimmon.
I'm in the house building game and trust me we aren't chums of the council,they've made life very hard to the pont it ended up in legal action. DCC are corrupt to the core and always have been but the counties imbeciles still think a silly vote will solve all problems.
I'm sick of my village being so run down so I've started litter picking, I'm amazed and a bit gutted at how much ive picked up around Easington..once a proud mining village..I'll still do it though.
All the mining villages were safe, close-knit communities until the soul was ripped out of them through anti-industry, Thatcherite policies that destroyed County Durham
I pick up trash and beer cans along the wilderness trails in Elliot Lake, Ontario. The people who drive ATVs can't seem to carry out their garbage, but hikers do.
I’m from Co Durham, Bishop is my closest big town, and you’ve absolutely nailed much of the sentiment here. We’re sick to death of councils and Governments who literally do not care about our communities.
Remember Sunak telling his constituency members that he had siphoned off levelling-up money to benefit their comfortable community. The people of England should be furious about the decades of mismanagement, corruption, and incompetency at all levels of government. I know I am, and I left decades ago.
I have just moved to Bishop from his constituency because I can not afford to live there! None of my friends from school live there because of just how expensive it is!
Born and bread in Eldon Lane 🥺 and still live in the area in the new build area the village used to be amazing a great sense of community my nan lived here 89years and the story’s she used to tell about our village was awesome shops up and down the street 💔 when I grew up in the village my mam never locked the door and if we needed anything the neighbours doors were open too the council are to blame for the lack of funding and sending people from down south alcoholics drug abusers and antisocial yobs to the area utter joke they payed to move them to our area to the point it’s so rough you can’t let your kids play out anymore this country is done some locals do try to clean up the place and go to council meetings but nothing is ever done don’t blame the people of Eldon lane blame the government for letting them down Have more respect for people who have no say no choice and are trying their best
I'm praying for the day locals rise up and take control of the running of their towns and villages from local and central government booth who have had their chance and failed miserably either by incompetance or malice. Might take a total collapse of the monetary system to bring that level of retreat from them though, but when resets come it need to be on local terms not WEF terms
@@Turdtowns you hit the nail on the head with that comment. There are 2 UKs, or possibly 3 if you count the massive underclass. The two recent patriot events in London were very largely working class, but the rough accents of Tommy Robinson and his mates put off the middle classes. They insist on viewing him as an ethnonationalist and a racist despite the presence of Sikhs and other non-whites. It was the middle classes who obeyed the government on covid, who tend to believe there's a climate emergency, many genders, etc (all the popular fallacies infact) while working class folk are less malleable. The middle classes have never forgiven the working classes for voting Brexit, too. (Sorry to get poltical.)
At least we know how to speak. 'Th' is a normal 'fing' to use in English grammar. Learn to speak before you pick on how a place is. These people have been through a lot.
Must be so depressing to be stuck in a dying town with boarded up shops, abandoned houses, and derelict industrial buildings, all covered with ugly graffiti. Sad to see what an abysmal and seemingly hopeless place England has become over the last 50 years or so.
@@FallenApaThy7 It is so sad, the built environment is literally telling you every day how worthless you are. And them people are surprised at the recent riot. If you have no pride in where you live of course you will burn it down!
Thanks for all your hard work you are chronicling the final death throws of an industrial society. It would be fantastic if you could identify any post-industrial UK towns that are a success and point your analytical and observational skills at them.
@@stammerton most pubs are shutting down charity shops galore just underfunded and not developing. However tynemouth 5 mins away is still really good. but we had a fancy new bus station not like anyone would wanna go to North Shields tho
Interesting...Rod Liddle has frequently stated that there is no actual shortage of housing. There would appear to some truth in this. Plenty of houses, but no jobs in so many of there's places.
There's 4 million second homes for a start, plus the corporate buyers. it's total bollox there's a shortage of housing. shorting of affordable housing sure, but that's a totally different issue.
You are not wrong; we have the same amount of housing per capita as in the 1970's the difference is that a few people own multiple properties, i.e. 1970's 7% private rental sector (PRS); now, 20% return to 7% = 4 million houses to either purchased by tenants or local authorities to turn into social housing. This was done from 1915-1988, where the PRS in 1910 owned 90%, then by 1970's 7%; how? Rent freeze followed by rent controls, which killed the land market and meant that only 3% of the value of a house was the land value, the rest being the building cost. Now it's 70% of the value. It's complicated and would take at least 20 years, but from 7-plus years of research (including an MRes that I'm finishing), it is the only way to de-commodify land. Or wait for the middle class to join the working class for rent strikes/general strikes. i.e. at least another 30 years as the inheritance money of the boomers goes into elderly care and family arguments about inheritance.
You won't be shy of business as the whole of England is dying now. We've closed the mines, shut down the forges and stopped the production lines. "London is a rich city with a poor country attached" as someone recently said.
The reason so many place in the North East are like this is because Westminster thinks anywhere outside the M25 doesn’t exist. The amount of money invested in places like London, Surrey etc compared to here in the North East is unreal and it’s been this way for generations. When the government closed all the mining and Steel Industry, people suffered incredibly and had to endure terrible hardships. Unfortunately they have never really recovered. Almost all the place in your list were old mining villages, these were the places hit hardest.
Living in England for over 5 years and coming over from a "3rd world country " i find it plain sad that such a small country with so much money can actually allow its own people to live in such harsh conditions...
@@ebnanaann5644 Spending all our money on lining the pockets of right wing donors, Reform and Tories will destroy this country whilst getting rich, we need a good proper socialist government to fix the issues
@@ebnanaann5644 this is true...no idea how that's gonna turn out. My misses use to work on one such hotel (4 star at that) it had an entire floor of migrants. Then it became their hotel, the workers didn't get paid for over a year. Meanwhile I don't remember HMRC doing nothing but overtax me.
So so sad to see. I was born in Hartlepool, lived in Acre Rigg Rd in Peterlee with family in Shotton Colliery and Sunderland. Mum and dad born in Trimdon and Horden. All of these places bring back so many happy memories from nearly 60 years ago. Moved away with dad’s job back in 1972. Have had a wonderful life but memories of Shotton, Horden and Peterlee are still my most treasured. Wish there was a way to put the life and soul back into these wonderful communities. My heart goes out to those now living there. Wish you could experience one moment of what these places used to be and the happy memories we have of those streets. I’ve laughed and cried over the last 20 minutes. Only those that lived there will understand. Thank you for one last trip down memory lane before I leave them all for good 😞
I'm from peterlee, my dad was from hordon ,my mam is from shotton. I can remember when the north east wasn't like this. Drugs and alcohol have not been kind to the north east. I moved down south and then to Australia. People destroy places. No pride. You can only blame politicians for so long. Why can't we love where we live. Why can't people not see their cup half full instead of half empty. The violence should not be tolerated. It's sad to see the decline
Well you can. You have to give people purpose, and the dismantling of all industries are the reason these places have declined. All because of trying to reduce emissions while the rest of the world increase theirs. The tories and labour hate the working class
The north east has been left behind. It’s so sad to see. I cant see it changing though. We were just used for the industry. Now they get it all from overseas they dont need us anymore.
A little unknown fact - 2 former popes have lived in Easington (I’m genuinely not making that up!) Easington was once where all the Durham bishops would live in the 1200s, and it had links to Breakspear, the only ever English pope. Robert de Geneva also lived in Easington for 2 months before going on to be pope.
Former mining and other industrial towns and villages where the industry was destroyed by Thatcher but not much done by New Labour either tbf and then the lie of Levelling Up. If County Durham had the money spent on it that London gets then things would be better. Can we have the Leemside line reopened please. Oooph too expensive. London get Crossrail for £15bn no problem. Just to the north of the county, the A1 is single carriageway. Could it be upgraded. Again too expensive. Northern line extention to Battersea Power station tho is no problem. Just to the south of the county and the cost of dueling of the A66 from Scotch Corner to Penrith has ballooned (to £1.5bn) what’s the cost of HS2, just to extend the London commuter belt? County Durham has been shafted by governments of both colours. The Docklands in London was regenerated, why hasn’t the former mining and steel towns in County Durham received the same level of investment?
Trade Unions, Socialism and Malcontents killed those towns, Thatcher just took the dying dog to the vets. Labour voters will be responsible for more depravation and the total destruction of communities in a way the tories could never imagine.
The A1 is dual all the way into Northumberland. It's single towards the Scottish border though. Also, the northern line was mostly paid for by the developers of Battersea power station. Which leads to the problem. All these developments are privately funded, so they fund places and projects where they can make money and get a return on their investment. So London's Docklands went from being derelict to bring bring prime real estate, to coin an American term. Piling money into a former pit town in the middle of nowhere isn't going to do the same. It'll just get smashed up. Thatcher and the Tories saw no money in mining. Easier to buy from abroad for less money. As for the people and their jobs, they didn't make money for them and those people didn't vote for them anyway. You can also put public money on but that will still be wasted. What needs to happen is investment in industry instead of shipping everything from China. Jobs attract people.
@@acciid To start with, the A1 is a road that goes from the capital of England to the capital of Scotland. IT SHOULD AT LEAST BE DUEL CARRIAGE WAY ALL THE WAY and not have long stretches of single carriageway between Morpeth and Dunbar. You say that places in County Durham are “nowhere” but that’s because they haven’t had the investment London gets. Fair point about the Northern Line but that doesn’t explain Cross Rail or HS2. London gets investment because it has the infrastructure and it gets the infrastructure because of the investment London gets what London wants County Durham doesn’t get the investment it needs. Explain how Cross Rail is more needed than dueling the A66 and A1 all the way for the UK economy and could you not get from one side of London to the other by rail before? What about north to south, do you want even more money at the expense of the rest of the UK? I tell you what let London have ALL the investment and the rest of the country get none at all. Take the lot, London gets double the what the North gets and on transport per head it’s even higher. That’s not good for the UK economy, it’s unbalanced.
I don't disagree with you. I love in London but I'm from Washington. I admit I don't go back to the north east much though. The A1 is only the main road as far as Newcastle. From London you're supposed to use the M6. Carlisle is East of Edinburgh after all. Funding is based on need; traffic is negligible up to the border when compared with the South East, or greater Manchester for that matter. Cross rail is more needed because of supply and demand. It's already crowded. Doesn't make it right of course and it's only exacerbating the problem, but that's the reality. HS2 is only really needed because the west coast main line is at capacity. It's a vanity project though ultimately especially as it now only goes to Birmingham. That swine beeching, and his chums have a lot to answer for.
I have been here for nearly 4 years. I think that I will go back down south next year. No jobs, no dentists, no hope. The best thing up here are the people.
We do affectionately call that disgrace the cats paw, so not far off 🤣 Mr Ruffer, the man responsible for the most recent "attractions", such as the "tower", is using this town as a vanity project at the cost of those who call it home, mans head is so far in the clouds and they just let him continue doing it.
I grew up in Newcastle in the 70's and 80's, and many of the places you showed were hostile to outsiders, even then. I was considered posh and above myself for being a nurse.
First a new 44 Teeth now a new Turdtowns! Cheers Matey. I remember being taught about the actual county council policy to remove resources from Durham mining towns to hasten their demise back in the 60s. Your video's a timely distraction from Starmer's threats to the populace today.
3 big problems: the pits closed & the local economy crashed, no other jobs & councils the country over allowed all the out-of-town shopping centres to destroy the high streets.
The worst thing that ever happened to Durham was the discovery of coal. Without that, you wouldn't have had workers migrating to the county in their hundreds of thousands, and their descendents left destitute when it all ended. Look at the far west of the county, a place not dissimilar to the Lake District without the water, and you get an idea of what the whole county would still be like without coal - a sparsely populated, rural, relatively prosperous area akin to North Yorkshire, Northumberland or Cumbria. Alas, it is what it is now.
@@jasejj True and there would not have been an industrial revolution or a British empire. Probably best if the whole of the UK had stayed in the 16th century with Henry the wife killer.
It's a shame for Bishop, not only personally because half of my family on my fathers side is from there, but because it truly did and still does have some amazing things there. Such as Kynren which happens over the span of months and makes you actually proud to be British and from Bishop too, but it's bittersweet knowing that just over the horizon of the live performance is a dying town and a fed up populace.
Why don't they sell property cheap to locals with a small grant to put in the basics and bring some hope and pride to a community. The countryside is lovely and with some help could be transformed
@@Samuel-hd3cpbut if they’re already local what difference does that make? They’re already paying silly money to rent, why not pay it to buy a place instead? You know - given that we’re ALL supposed to aspire to home ownership and whatnot…
Whilst I fully acknowledge that there is, on the whole, an overall nationwide shortage of housing, in certain areas, there are houses that they can't sell for any price. So we have this crazy situation where there's property hotspots where the vast majority of good quality, professional, high paid jobs are located and so most people want to live in these areas which has in turn created such housing shortages in those local areas that there's maybe 60 people going after one tiny flat for £2k+ rent pcm. Meanwhile there are places, like the northern town I live in, whilst nowhere near as bad as the places in this video, my own town is still on the cusp of being in the top third of England's most deprived towns. The average sale price of property in the town so far in 2024 is £166k and the average rent is £600pcm. Supply is about level with demand, so where there's few empty properties, nobody is screaming out for more. This is probably why plans for a large new housing development to be built on the edge of town seems to have been kicked into the long grass. There's no point in building more new houses in a town where there's no demand for them. So when the government say they are going to build 300k new houses per year (a figure I think they will find impossible to achieve), it is just as important that any houses they do build are built in the correct locations where the demand is. My own personal belief is that if levelling up had been carried out only to the extent that decent jobs were more evenly spread out across the whole country then the people would spread out more and we could use the property we already have in a much more efficient way alongside building more new houses in the worst places for housing shortages.
I lived in County Durham for the first 18.years of my life.. Peterlee to be exact, and it was actually better than it is today, hard to believe, I know.. Lived in Cornwall after that for over 30 years, and now in North East Scotland.
You're correct about solving the housing crisis. Instead of dumping smack heads or immigrants there, they encouraged people that can work from home, people that work low skilled jobs etc, these places would improve. The money would follow the earners.
Steven. But the people in Durham don't just hate asylum seekers and London smackheads. They hate everyone. How are you going to persuade anyone to move to a town with no facilities and high crime, where they will never be accepted?
Except the policy of dumping smack heads and immigrants into Durham and the wider North East is the government's plan for "levelling up" the areas; and has been for the last 10 years at least. Do you know that the majority of drug addicts entering rehabilitation from Liverpool and Glasgow end up being relocated to the North East? Also, over the last 25 years, the North East has gone from 1% non British born population to around 11% today.
In regards to Wheatley Hill. The scene where you showed a new house with the upstairs window smashed hasn't been lived in for ages. The building next to it with the four shutters was an abattoir and closed two year ago, not an ideal location for living next to. The barbers still hasn't been repaired if you looked closely. The ram raiders only smashed the door and knocked the window frames out. That big building that you say is abandoned, isn't. It is the local Co-op supermarket and funeral care and is open every day. There is a pub, well a club actually here. It's along Quilstyle Road. Behind the front street is a shithole which is where most of the footage is filmed. The bottom end of the village is alright along with the top. It's mainly the one street that is dragging the place down. I live in Wheatley Hill and I try to avoid the front street. Everywhere else is alright though. There used to be a dairy which employed a large proportion of the village although that is now a tropical fish supplier and lorry storage yard. The abattoir employed a few from the village aswell. The field shown in the first clip has plans to be turned into housing which many of us residents don't think is a good idea. Only one access and exit on an already busy small road. Alot of us has a make do and mend attitude. That white pub is to become an art gallery and a sports bar is opening along the road. I feel we would benefit massively if the front street was gotten rid of and possibly replaced with better modern infrastructure. Anyways that is that. Alot of us are welcoming people aswell, to the right people. You'll often find the roughest villages has some of the nicest people. Horden has a few things going for it if you get past the rows of terraced streets. Alot of what keeps us in these villages is the memories of when the villages were well regarded. Even if I moved, Wheatley Hill would still be home.
I didn’t actually end up going there but from a google street view search lots of the houses higher up the hill on the estate are boarded up too. Is that still the case? Looked like it could be nice up therez
@@Turdtowns you’re right in the sense that forgotten run down areas need to be highlighted, especially with the housing crisis. However, some ground truth might give the report more substance and a clearer picture to what’s going on. Anyone thinking of either moving in or out of an area may see something like this and be put off. Your channel is informative but think of the second order effect on what you put out.
@@Turdtowns think you should actually visit these places and meet the people rather than making judgements and assumptions using Google bloody maps 🤣😂, Wheatley Hill and Thornley actually have a pretty incredible sense of community and the numerous £200k to £550k new build homes would suggest other folks think the same.
I genuinely can't understand why someone like Haven/Butlins haven't purchased Horden, flattened it and made it into a successful holiday park, the beach is lovely and better than some of the beaches their other parks are next to and would bring jobs to the area 🤷♀️
This is a true story. I used to go to a fruit and veg shop in Stanley and I asked one day, what was the most popular seller. The lady said lemons, I thought she was having a laugh, but she said, it's for the druggies to keep the needles clean. Durham is the good, the bad and the ugly. The bad, is the local authorities, not getting a grip on the problems, the ugly are some of the towns and villages. The chap in the video, didn't explore Hartlepool enough and painting it as all bad, is untrue. The good, is very good. I've worked in many areas and nothing can beat the Durham/N Yorks axis and the towns like Stanhope, Barnard Castle and all of Weardale and the North Penines, as well as Durham itself. The people who live in the derelict areas are also to blame, they don't have any drive. I live in a beautiful village, but the natives don't go anywhere, don't get educated, it's like a social Depression.
When you visited Shildon, you missed out the Railway museum where Stephensons Rocket is currently on display. You missed out the National Maritime Museum at Hartlepool. Those places obviously didn’t fit your agenda. Now for balance show the rest of County Durham. It’s a beautiful county with friendly people, a world class university, beautiful coastline and beautiful cathedral.
I've travelled quite a bit of Co Durham and judging by the lack of newsagents and bookshops [compared to neighbouring Northumberland] the literacy rate is pretty low. I was told by an escapee that Horden had on average one book for every two houses [this was pre internet]. The few papers that are sold seem to be almost exclusively right wing. Beamish Museum doesn't even sell books in it's shop. With such a low skilled population it's not a fertile place for new factories to flourish.
If there ISN'T a supermarket in SHILDON, wouldn't that lead to an excellent business opportunity for anybody OPENING one? They wouldn't even have COMPETITION!
A museum or two and some stunning coastline are great reasons to visit a place but they do not provide stable well paid employment for anyone. His agenda if you can even call it one is him railing against local government ineptitude, corruption and a total lack of interest at a national level. It's a pity your feathers have been ruffled but fundamentally he is spot on.
@jeremyatkinson4976 It's a so - called CATCH 22 situation There NEEDS to be governments that DO govern, and create motivation locally, as a result. Not cut police forces, and just watch crime rise. Same for anywhere else. In other countries too. I'm retired now, but it's the absolute truth that when I left school, you could go into a job agency, and get MORE than one job interview there and then! Even before mass immigration, the trickle of immigration led to joblessness since the 80's. The country didn't suddenly have more jobs on offer, only more and more inhabitants. Most people my age wish the clock was turned back to a more sustainable time. Without even job prospects for school leavers and house builders exploiting people with ever increasing house prices , everyone has understandably just given up.
I think the reason for the flats only being low rise in Peterlee is the fact that as a former mining area, the weight of larger buildings could result in subsidence.
In 1947, Lubetkin was commissioned to be master planner and chief architect for the Peterlee new town, where he worked closely with Monica Felton. The following year Tecton was dissolved. Commenting on this, Lubetkin wrote to fellow Tecton member Carl Ludwig Franck "that after the war Tecton was at best a ghost of its former self". Lubetkin's masterplan for Peterlee included a new civic centre for which he proposed a number of high rise towers. However the extraction of coal was to continue under the town for several years which posed a risk of subsidence. As a result, the National Coal Board (NCB), itself an agency of the Ministry of Fuel and Power would only consider a dispersed low density development. Despite investigating a number of options that would have allowed coal extraction to continue without preventing the proposed development, the NCB would not alter their policy. As Lubetkin was the employee of the Ministry of Town and Country Planning this developed into an inter-ministerial battle, and despite attempts at dispute resolution at cabinet level the difference in approach between the ministries remained. Frustrated at the unresolved bureaucratic battles, Lubetkin resigned from the Peterlee project in spring 1950. The only physical sign of his involvement in the scheme exists in the adjoining opposed parabola forms of the road layout at Thorntree Gill.
Bishop Auckland Council ought to be investigated. It was an attractive popular historic town when they decided to build out-of-town developments, pedestrianize popular streets, and charge for parking. If you’d asked somebody to come up with a plan to kill a town center and drag an area down that’s what they would’ve opted to do. It would be interesting to take a close look at who the contractors were for the out-of-town development, and what connections they might have with people on the town council o a corrupt deal or a Marxist intention to bring a place down, it is difficult to understand what reason there could be for destroying the town center in that way.
Why would a Marxist want to destroy Bishop Auckland? Also the idea that all the smackheads in Durham come from London is ridiculous but says a lot about why County Durham is so unwelcoming to visitors.
You're right. It was my birthplace and generations of my family were from Bishop in the years when it was a thriving town, brim-full with businesses and a busy town centre with busy market. But gradually it was noted that businesses couldn't survive because of the extortionate rates and rents for business premises. Nothing was done about it as one shop after another closed. At the same time the council decided to build a ghetto of a housing estate that had a terrible reputation for crime and anti-social behaviours - after a while stopped maintaining them and stopped repairs which was the beginning of the deprivation. Nobody understood why this decay and deliberate neglect was allowed if not enabled by the local authority and by Durham County - who only ever seemed to look after Durham City itself. But the councillors drinks cabinets in their chambers were always full and their social expenses unusually high..... In the 'pagoda'...the council Offices in Crook, many of us witnessed the alarming frequency of drunken councillors collapsing in the mall.
Bishop went down hill before they ever started building on Tindale. I feel the two major blows were the 2008 financial crash and the rise of internet shopping. Still, I don’t think Bishop belongs on this list. I would add Soennymoor, Ferryhill, Chester-le-street, Newton Aycliffe before Bishop. Bishop atleast has a few things going for it. As for Eldon Lane it’s much, much worse than this video made out.
Thatchers legacy. She was determined to destroy communities and she succeeded. Successive governments have done little to improve it and 14 years of austerity has made things a lot worse. The Tory coalition council are exacerbating the problems with parking choices. Durham has some beautiful places and countryside.
I used to live in County Durham (Consett...honestly surprising it didn't make the list.)....if you think your Working Class...go to County Durham and you'll realise you were Middle Class the whole time.
I grew up in a rough part of Gateshead and recently worked in Durham. I felt posh passing through some of the areas there. There are some very deprived places in County Durham, it was quite eye opening.
These programs should be shown on national television.when people down south think of Durham they think of the cathedral and city and not the forgotten towns surrounding like all councils across the country city areas come first
Being a well travelled person, and from Wheatley Hill, i can tell you I’d rather live in Wheatley hill than London, which is a shit hole. You went down the high street, which has some problems, however 95% of the residents are normal working class people and there is a great community spirit.
Mate, i was brought up in Trimdon and grandparents from Wheatley hill and youre talking shite. Its a dystopian hellhole. Atleast in London there are jobs, places to Eat, transport, people!!
@@zaphodbeeblebrox9109 I spent a fair amount of time in Woolwich, which only redeeming feature is the ferry out of it. As far as transport in Wheatley hill, a lot of people have cars, believe it or not, it sits between the two major roads in the northeast. Failing that, the 22 is pretty regular through the village. As far as dystopian goes, I’d rather walk my dog to the fishing club than through Notting Hill.
"Why does anyone stay in a town that is dying?" Have fun selling a house in a dying town and managing to buy a house somewhere better. Many people are stuck in the places they live because of basic economics.
@@Rizzlez169 the South you say?; where the crime is higher, the costs or living are higher, and you still live under the tyranny of the same government as the rest of England.... yeah, unless you're rich, I doubt it very highly.
These videos should be compulsory viewing for parliament just before PMs question time. A sad state of affairs that is going to get worse. Cheers for highlighting how bad things have got in our declining country.
The more I see of these places, the more Wolverhampton isn't that bad after all (though it's still horrible). Used to live in Paignton & it nearly killed me 😮
It has its advantages. The countryside is beautiful. The... political agitators of the modern world are much thiner on the ground than other places... it is about as far away from the post apocalyptic nuclear crator of London as you can get and still be in England, and housing is cheap by comparison.
Durham is made up mainly of former pit villages. I live nearby so you could take a wild guess what could be number 1. As a local I’d say Stanley is the worst Turdtown round here.
Yeah and a once turd area of London got millions spent on it and is now very desirable. That area is Docklands. So why can’t Fishburn Easington Horden Dorden Consett Crook etc etc etc have the same level of expenditure spent on them. Cross Rail HS2 YES but the Leemside Line? No. New tubes for the Piccadilly line but how long has the Tyne abd Wear metro had to wait. Extention to the C Northern Line? Not a problem, extention to Tyne and Wear Metro would cost too much. London gets what London wants but County Durham can go fuck its self it seems.
Hartlepool is a very friendy town with miles of beautiful coastline, a marina, surrounded by countryside, and decent pubs. I might go down to mega-rich London and just shoot footage of the slums, then say they represent London.
Yeah to be fair hartlepool has plenty of decent areas and things going for it. I worked with the team that rebuilt Rodney St and Carr Street about 7 years ago. Every town has rough areas but not many have the coast, marina etc like you say. Every pit village in Co. Durham is literally just like the worst part of a town with nothing else
The marina is a dump, also most of the coastal places are just like Blackpool, but with lots of factories and smoking chimneys in the background. There are some beautiful Victorian and Edwardian houses however in Hartlepool, I will give it that.
I don't think TurdTowns is trying to mock people's homes he's just showing that there are rough areas and dying towns and that we as a rich country should have done better.
@@cultfiction3865 No it isn't. When you leave Hartlepool you clearly see the blue and gold "County Durham 'Land of the Prince Bishops' sign marking the county boundary. From 1974 until its demise, Hartlepool was in Cleveland county.
Absolutely loved this video. My home county. Born & bred in Shildon. Its certainly a strange feeling watching a video where I recognise so many of the places. Where B&M is now used to be a Morrisons & before that was a large Co-op supermarket but with Bishop Auckland being so close most people did their big shops there. Now it will be done in Tindale retail park. I remember there being occasions where the buses wouldn't even go through Eldon Lane or certain bits of Bishop Auckland like Woodhouse Close. Can't blame them really when the windows would get put out or on one occasion a firework set off inside the bus.
We built the new co-op opposite the old people's home about 5 years ago. Was a nightmare, cabins getting broken into, £200,000 machines getting smashed for £10 worth of red diesel. But the locals were really nice and embarrassed about it. There's good and bad everywhere
@@philipsutton5652 Netto was great, and there are still a few good small shops in the street. Its a shame some of the nicer areas of the town were not filmed. There is the railway museum too although there is something unsettling about living in a town whose heritage has become a museum in your own lifetime!
Many, many years ago, when I was a police officer, we got called to Eldon Lane after a suspicious incident. Someone had put fireworks into a dog waste bin, and they, and it, exploded. The front of one poor women's house was covered in dog mess. And as for her Nissan Micra. The smell was something to behold too
I genuinely makes me so cross what the councils and the government have done to our once beautiful county! They’re building all these awful, bad quality, still vastly overpriced homes when there is all these homes that could be fixed up and given life again. It’s heartbreaking
A lot of these old abandoned homes were built good and strong too, not like many of today's new builds which commonly have major issues very early on in their lives. Apparently the best bricks in the area used to be made in Eldon.
It really makes me sad to see my home county this way. I’m from Sherburn Village, County Durham and attended school in Durham City. I’d left to live in London with another part of my family. I’d gone back in 2006 to take care of my Grandmother and found work in a call centre in Peterlee. I wonder if that place is still there. I came back to London in 2010 and have ventured up there just a handful of times to reminisce.
I live within 7 miles of 3 of these towns and cannot disagree with your assessment of them .Years and years of social deprivation ,lack of investment in economic projects has left them in a desperate state of disrepair .
Absolutely hilarious 🤣😂 I live and travel all over the North East and you have spoke the truth about certain parts of Durham , believe me , there's plenty more dumps in the Durham area .
Alright MarkyD, you found my town! For what its worth, apparently Peterlee shopping centre have some sort of "plan", and all the shops were more kicked out than left - to allow this plan to be carried out. Not entirely sure I believe them, but its owned by a private company (not the council) so there's basically bugger all anyone can do about it. The rest of the town isn't so bad really: Sure, there's some bad bits, but even your video spotted that there's loads of nice open green spaces. There's also quite a lot of jobs from the 3 industrial estates and the business park, plus its 10miles from Sunderland, Hartlepool and Durham, which is handy. You are right though, most people who live here have no reason to go to the town centre, I pretty much never go there unless I need something specific (post office, argos, hair cut mostly).
Newton aycliffe should have got on here its a grim, depressing flat place that doesn't possess any character. Its one of those towns so bleak that it causes everywhere else to look fascinating and wonderful. So in one sense it does serve a useful purpose
I wouldn't live there rent free, my sister and best mate live there but there's nothing there. The shopping centre has been upgraded but the pubs are miles apart so you can't go on a pub crawl. I'd describe it as a cow pat spread out. 😢
Durham County Council hates the entire county, we have derelict towns all over the place but they wont/cant make adjustments to business rates to allow start ups to find their feet and thrive. they just want as much money as they can get their hands on. which is another problem, people pay more in council tax in some towns in county durham than some of the wealthiest parts of london...
Lone ponderer. I guarantee you that people in Co Durham don't pay higher council tax than people in London. Why would anyone start a business in Durham?
@@Samuel-hd3cpthey do, out of 345 councils in the UK Durham is the 13th highest. Gateshead, Middlesbrough, Hartlepool, Northumberland and Stockton on Tees are all up there too. Wandsworth and Westminster pay next to fuck all.
Good to see you back on top form. Shocking that such places exist and good for you to making the sensible point of helping the housing crises. Went to Shildon to visit "Locomotion" railway museum. Went buy buss and left by train. We did walk around the are a bit by the museum and it was dirty, abandoned and disserted, we did not feel safe.
An old friend of mine's parents bought a house in Bishop Auckland about 10 years back, they got a 4 bedroom house with a huge back garden and an allotment for £10,000. With that said, there is a lot of downsides that come with buying those cheap properties. Nobody wants to sell a home for that price, so if they're doing it, there has to be good reason.
If the people are united and trust one another, then the poverty is easier to bear I guess. The one thing that will destroy whatever is left of these old mining communities is having a load of shifty-looking men from Afghan & Syria places dumped on them.
The government will dump them where it's cheap. But basically what you're saying is that it's all the fault of people who aren't actually there yet? You're going to vote Reform and nothing is going to improve.
Seeing Eldon Lane genuinely made me sad and almost brought me to tears. All of this hasn’t been the result of SOMETHING gone wrong, it’s the result of SOMEONE doing wrong (deliberately imo) I don’t understand what it is with the people who run this country. When they decide that something needs to go (I.e mining, shipyards, steelworks etc), they cut it loose and then just shrug their shoulders and say “well, thanks for your service.” And make zero effort to retrain and reinvest in an area. And this is the result.
I'm from Bishop Auckland, it's completely spot on that the council have completely ruined the town by allowing this many shops to close, it's essentially 2 main supermarkets at the very top of the main street and nothing else, will probably only get worse as time goes on too
I always maintained that the 'levelling up' scheme also meant a transfer of the South's problem people. It won't be long before these towns are overrun with other 'visitors' - it's actually the inevitable ending for them.
It was a con. Like Brexit. I say, you, Northern oik. We're not the problem, we're British, Queen and country and all that. It's Johnny foreigner who's made things terrible. Vote for us and we will give ourselves, I mean yourselves, control and we'll make everything great like it used to be. Charlatans, the lot of them.
but if you remote work you can have a 4 bed detached for £220k, which many have done. A few years back you could get the same in bishop auckland, newton aycliffe etc for about £150k.
That's not the problem really. Some of them do have jobs (Peterlee has 3 industrial estates and a business park). Many of these places are a short hop to a place with jobs. Most people can drive 20mins or so each way without too much fuss.
I love these videos but feckin hell, they make you depressed about the direction the country is going. There is so much you could do for many of these places
I'm from shildon, you should have mentioned that Bishop Auckland Shildon and Eldon lane border each other, a couple of interesting facts shildon is the cradle of the railways, this is where the passenger railways first started and has a fantastic museum, Eldon lane had the same number of residents until the 60s as shildon at around 8000 at the time, and of course Bishop Auckland is steeped in rich history from Auckland castle having the second largest private chapple second only to the Vatican and it was the birthplace of Stan laurel.
I’m County Durham born and bred. I was born in Bishop Middleham, I’ve lived in Sedgefield and Trimdon Village and I now reside in Hartlepool (Seaton Carew). It’s a predominantly beautiful county with some lovely countryside and pretty villages and towns. I know that’s not the point of this channel, and believe me, I’m angry about what’s happened to my home county. The rot set in with Thatcher. However, I’m glad, in some twisted, perverse way that people think Hartlepool is a sh*thole because it truly isn’t. It has bad areas but so does any town. The fact that people think it’s so grotty keeps them away and that’s fine by me. It’s our little corner of the world.
These people know nothing of how Hartlepool is almost like a mini-city, not a town. Seaton, West, Owton Manor, Fens, Headland, West View, etc. It's textured, to say the least
@@polymath9372 OK Yes...I guess the point is that there really aren't the words to describe how awful these places are - believe me, I've lived in that area. I live in Teesside now, which is pretty appalling in parts, but its Elysian Fields compared to these bits of Durham.
I live in Peterlee, and the derelict shops are down to Praxis, the landlords who bought them all up and have extortionate rent rates so very few can afford to keep running. The council continually make decisions that negativity affect the the town. There are LOADS of jobs here since there is a pretty big infuriating estate where CATERPILLAR/NSK along with many others and a lot here refuse to work. It's a huge shame since it has great potential, we just need investment and for people who actually care in the council.
Eldon Lane is in Bishop Auckland, it's just another area of the same. I moved to this area in 2015 and quite frankly practically the WHOLE of Co.Durham needs demolishing and re-built. The Government have totally neglected these areas for DECADES and it could be such a super county if only money were poured into it - but alas, that will never happen. The Govt. deos nothing outside Greater London or North of Watford. People live here because they can't move since they are on benefits and can't afford to. From your list Horden is the worst.
"What's the point of a bus station?" Because people living in Bishop often need to travel to other locations for various reasons, such as work for one.
Even though people complain about it I just wonder would people have preferred it to how it was? Plus he also forget to mention Vinovium house has gone to the planning commitee to die a death. To be honest I think the locals would rather see it torn down instead of housing third world trash
There was nothing wrong with the old bus station, it had plenty of room for the buses to turn around, pickup/drop off and park up for layovers. It was never busy with people so no need to have a big flashy building to put them in. All it needed was resurfaced, or even just some of the brickwork redone in the places it had taken a battering from the buses. The stands were fine as they were. The new station will require higher maintenance and like Durham will need staff there through the day, which the old station did not.
@@Molotov_Milkshake personally the old bus station need change it hadn’t be touched in years and it showed. People may say this or that but having a bus station that is modern and not an eye sore can’t be a bad thing? There’s also it helping Kynren regarding transportation which is often overlooked. Also knocking down vinovium house will make bishop a much better place trust me. I highly doubt anything will be done to it since it’s clear what a certain Manchester developer wants to do with it, and counsellors on the planning committee won’t commit suicide with the locals next year, which is why it’ll just hang there since local pressure won’t allow it to be developed either ( 400 objections).
@@thomashowe1509 I agree. I went to Bishop bus station back in like 2004 and it didn't seem like a safe or nice place back then (the bus station I mean specifically). It felt kind of similar to the one in Consett at the time. Bishop needs to make things nicer for tourists because it does get plenty, as you said, because of Kynren. It's a big local draw for Bishop.
We were sent to Horden during the Firemans Strike, Christmas 1977, when i was in the Army, manning the Green Goddesses. I remember both Coal and Milk being delivered to houses by Horse and Carts, all cobbled streets, like a 30's time warp. People were great, but the Town has had bad luck since then.
In the 60s a lot of villages dropped into an expanding grounp of category D villages and at that point any expenditure other than absolute minimum was prohibited, no investment at all and these places were left to decline as everything around the mining and steel industries declined. No real thought or money was put into these places and they were essentially abandoned. I know of no real strategy of redevelopment. 60 years on it has an odd forgotten feeling as the objective of closing the mines was fulfilled and the communities forgotten.
It’s sad to see all these towns dying - growing up in the 70’s I’ve seen this happen everywhere, ‘the death of the high street’ so to speak. Councils charging to park is the biggest nail in the coffin in this age, why would you pay to park in your own town when you can go to a out of town retail park, do all your shopping in one place for free. Grew up in Wallsend and now live elsewhere, Wallsend once busy and bustling high street is now a shell of its former. Charity shops, vape and bookies with a smattering of take aways….. such a shame
I'm sure these delapidated towns with no oppotunities or jobs will be greatly enriched by the gov dumping large numbers of immigrants that don't speak english to further dilute the already tiny job markets and won't just result in mass slums
Yep, that’s who the politicians want you to blame to hide the real reason why this country is in the mud, and that’s the endemic levels of corruption and bribery
I have a feeling that Co.Durham has all the necessary potential to become a huge sponge for incomers. "Investment" will be expensive refurbishment of houses for them. Durham City (and area) is now becoming awash with women in headscarves and 'African' faces; just sayin’.
Look if you're willing to travel thousands of miles and risk your life for a better life, you're not going to stay in county Durham on the dole. They'll go to London and Leeds to find work. Families might stay in Durham, but the economically active will leave.
@@Samuel-hd3cp Haha good one mate, they're more than happy to live in shitty towns on the dole, or rather live in shitty towns dealing drugs under the table while staying on the dole or running a "barber shop" tax free with rebates from the council for "training" their 3 dozen cousins
Yes they are, and rightly so, can't you see why? Probably because they want change after what 14 years of austerity has done to this country? It was Thatcherism that turned these places how they are.
Hartlepool switched to Tory you dimwit. It's like you have no concept of how a ruling party controls funding to change political allegiance. You sure you're not from there?
A friend of mine obtained a list of Durham County Councillor’s wages it was abhorrent at the top end as much as 180,000 pa. and loads of them on 80,000 poor lads having to manage on 80,000. ………….disgusting
I emigrated to what many would consider a ‘3rd world’ country with 6x less gdp. Yet the standard of living pales in contrast. It’s mental. I thought the UK was meant to be one of the richest countries in the world.
The houses aren't habitable thats why they are abandoned. I have lived in most of these places at some point. If your looking for a tiny one (more a village than town) with a fun name there is 'No place' which is across the road from 'Hellhole'. Just a quick walk from the much more popular and expensive Beamish. Its only 3 streets, no shop but a pub and allotments/horse fields and surprisingly a school which apparently had only 8 students when I lived there. When they built the bypass between Beamish and Stanley it cut off No Place so most non local people passing don't know its there and no council claims it (this is a result that it was privately owned by the mines but when the mines closed councils still class it as private land) so there are pot hole you could swim in and we use to just throw old bricks and stuff in to try and fill them up. It does however have a sea view despite being approx. 15 miles in land thanks to its 'mountainous' position.
I moved down to London from the North East and I was surprised how much is being invested in London and new developments are being built in London than the North East
Durham was the county that voted in Bliar. You reap what you sow! It was ignored after the Tories closed the pits and then continued to be ignored by Bliar. Its got so much potential but likely to be continually used as a dumping ground.
'The county'? I think there might have been more. And ah yes, the Tories have been in power for something like 80 of the past 120 years but it's mainly Labour to blame.
Grew up in Wheatley Hill.. drive through it now very rarely.. remember front street been busy, thriving.. I knew every shop keeper, everyone knew me, my parents, grandparents etc.. didn't dare do much wrong.. knew what I would be in for.. went downhill quickly mid - late 90s... there's still good ppl there... like every village..
I live in Blackhall Colliery, County Durham, just a village down from Horden, very like most the places covered. Same here, so many empty houses, I live in between vacant houses each side.
I live near Bishop Auckland it was a popular Market Town. It's history is very important. It's been pulled to bits right at the moment. Now it's full of nail bars,charity shops, barbers, pawn shops, etc , it's a disgrace. Even down to the listed buildings aren't been protected. Well done for the video very informative.
France are pissed off that County Durham residents are turning up on rubber boats looking for a better life in the Calais camps
I was thinking of doing it, but I dont like garlic.
😂😂
Thats a good one; Yes I love Co Durham it is a pretty county countryside wise; But things are worse than depicted in the video; Maybe if we went to Syria people could have a better life, because things are dire here ;
@@theshamanarchist5441 😂😂
🤡
They should not be allowed to build a single new house in Durham until all of these are brought back into use. That will teach em
Durham council are starting to compulsory buy back abandoned homes after they have been abandoned after a certain number of years then turn them into social housing.
Yes, the alleged housing crisis deliberately schemed to inflate prices.
Ironically there is a massive new housing development that's 5 minutes walk from Eldon none of the developments make sense
@@bulletholeteddy9223 They will once they are crammed with dinks and bungos.
@Lav9944 LIAR Durham Council have nothing to do with housing it was sold off to livin under tony blair to his billionaire pal . Stop the bullshit
I’ve mastered sleeping in my car now. Even Travelodge was asking for £100 for a night. I’m not a tight person but I refuse to spend that much on an uncomfortable bed!
What’s your secret? I’ve made attempts to sleep in my car, and I always end up having a sore neck in the morning.
black belt barrister suggests it may be illegal. Soon they will stop you. Criminal record!
You didn't do Seaham?
Try Google Hotels and search by cheapest. One in Bishop Auckland is £55 a night.
Maybe you could start a “wild car camping” channel too. They seem to do well. Though even living in a turd town would be better than camping in a car in the UK winter 😬, it looks utterly abject.
I've just moved to Durham 3 months ago to a lovely little village. Everyone is happy to chat and my new neighbours made me very welcome.
It's a very friendly place. I love the place and the people.
For every Staindrop there's a Tow Law.
Unfortunately I've had and still have almost the exact opposite
@@darrell190967 sorry to hear that. Some areas are less than welcoming to incomers and you might be seen as a stranger for the longest time unless there are opportunities to join in with local activities and events and get yourself seen in those capacities and therefore become more familiar and approachable.
@@sharonbeckett721 exactly. What gives some bloke the right to slag peoples areas off just to put a crap piece on his video. He’s done it to other areas as well. The people up here are on the whole friendly and will help anyone. I don’t live in County Durham but I know there are some run down areas a lot of places closed due to the pandemic But there are beautiful areas and wonderful people
Totally agree. I tried to explain this to someone a couple of weeks ago, who was supporting the rampant house-building programmes in the area. The only reason I can see for authorities and their construction chums not taking a holistic approach to the "housing crisis" is that bulldozing over fields and woodlands is cheaper and easier than bothering to redevelop ghost towns (which would require effort and brainpower) - and hence more profitable for parasitic housing development companies like Persimmon.
And to destroy farmland......WEF/Agenda2030 plan to get rid of farming!!
I'm in the house building game and trust me we aren't chums of the council,they've made life very hard to the pont it ended up in legal action.
DCC are corrupt to the core and always have been but the counties imbeciles still think a silly vote will solve all problems.
They do not care about the environment
I'm sick of my village being so run down so I've started litter picking, I'm amazed and a bit gutted at how much ive picked up around Easington..once a proud mining village..I'll still do it though.
It's people like you that put the pride back in the town . You should be given an award 👏👏👏👏👏👏
Good on you dude ❤
You’re a hero!
All the mining villages were safe, close-knit communities until the soul was ripped out of them through anti-industry, Thatcherite policies that destroyed County Durham
I pick up trash and beer cans along the wilderness trails in Elliot Lake, Ontario. The people who drive ATVs can't seem to carry out their garbage, but hikers do.
I’m from Co Durham, Bishop is my closest big town, and you’ve absolutely nailed much of the sentiment here. We’re sick to death of councils and Governments who literally do not care about our communities.
I left Bishop years ago and wouldn't want to go back tbf
Co. Durham too. But I'm old enough to remember when this county was a good place to live.
probably ran labour
I was expecting Ferryhill to be on here to be honest. Thankfully Chester-Le-Street is way too nice to be on this list.
@@Pogo-A-Gogo Yeah, Chezza has always been a decent place to live. Was way better back in the 70s though.
Remember Sunak telling his constituency members that he had siphoned off levelling-up money to benefit their comfortable community. The people of England should be furious about the decades of mismanagement, corruption, and incompetency at all levels of government. I know I am, and I left decades ago.
Expat: I AM FURIOUS ... I lived in London, where people actually live in luxury, only they don't know it. JOBS bring development ...
They are furious, that's why the Tories were voted out.
They would rather punch down at people even worse off than they are.
@expatexpat6531, There has been no incompetency, or mismanagement, everything has been planned deliberately.for over 4 decades.
I have just moved to Bishop from his constituency because I can not afford to live there! None of my friends from school live there because of just how expensive it is!
Born and bread in Eldon Lane 🥺 and still live in the area in the new build area the village used to be amazing a great sense of community my nan lived here 89years and the story’s she used to tell about our village was awesome shops up and down the street 💔 when I grew up in the village my mam never locked the door and if we needed anything the neighbours doors were open too
the council are to blame for the lack of funding and sending people from down south alcoholics drug abusers and antisocial yobs to the area utter joke they payed to move them to our area to the point it’s so rough you can’t let your kids play out anymore this country is done some locals do try to clean up the place and go to council meetings but nothing is ever done don’t blame the people of Eldon lane blame the government for letting them down
Have more respect for people who have no say no choice and are trying their best
I'm praying for the day locals rise up and take control of the running of their towns and villages from local and central government booth who have had their chance and failed miserably either by incompetance or malice. Might take a total collapse of the monetary system to bring that level of retreat from them though, but when resets come it need to be on local terms not WEF terms
Won’t ever happen until the Middle Classes get upset and join the working class.
@@Turdtowns you hit the nail on the head with that comment. There are 2 UKs, or possibly 3 if you count the massive underclass. The two recent patriot events in London were very largely working class, but the rough accents of Tommy Robinson and his mates put off the middle classes. They insist on viewing him as an ethnonationalist and a racist despite the presence of Sikhs and other non-whites. It was the middle classes who obeyed the government on covid, who tend to believe there's a climate emergency, many genders, etc (all the popular fallacies infact) while working class folk are less malleable. The middle classes have never forgiven the working classes for voting Brexit, too. (Sorry to get poltical.)
@@Turdtowns There is no middle class we are all subjects that either work for a living or don't have too !
At least we know how to speak. 'Th' is a normal 'fing' to use in English grammar. Learn to speak before you pick on how a place is. These people have been through a lot.
Must be so depressing to be stuck in a dying town with boarded up shops, abandoned houses, and derelict industrial buildings, all covered with ugly graffiti. Sad to see what an abysmal and seemingly hopeless place England has become over the last 50 years or so.
Coming from North Shields outside Newcastle it’s very fucking depressing mate I tell you
@@FallenApaThy7 It is so sad, the built environment is literally telling you every day how worthless you are. And them people are surprised at the recent riot. If you have no pride in where you live of course you will burn it down!
@@FallenApaThy7what happened there? It used to be the go to place for every bank holiday. Pubs were always rammed.
Thanks for all your hard work you are chronicling the final death throws of an industrial society. It would be fantastic if you could identify any post-industrial UK towns that are a success and point your analytical and observational skills at them.
@@stammerton most pubs are shutting down charity shops galore just underfunded and not developing. However tynemouth 5 mins away is still really good. but we had a fancy new bus station not like anyone would wanna go to North Shields tho
Interesting...Rod Liddle has frequently stated that there is no actual shortage of housing. There would appear to some truth in this. Plenty of houses, but no jobs in so many of there's places.
There's 4 million second homes for a start, plus the corporate buyers. it's total bollox there's a shortage of housing. shorting of affordable housing sure, but that's a totally different issue.
Ah yes, that noted social theorist and policy analyst!
"but no jobs in so many of there's places" - lol, it's not like the sea peoples are coming here because of the jobs, are they?
You are not wrong; we have the same amount of housing per capita as in the 1970's the difference is that a few people own multiple properties, i.e. 1970's 7% private rental sector (PRS); now, 20% return to 7% = 4 million houses to either purchased by tenants or local authorities to turn into social housing. This was done from 1915-1988, where the PRS in 1910 owned 90%, then by 1970's 7%; how? Rent freeze followed by rent controls, which killed the land market and meant that only 3% of the value of a house was the land value, the rest being the building cost. Now it's 70% of the value. It's complicated and would take at least 20 years, but from 7-plus years of research (including an MRes that I'm finishing), it is the only way to de-commodify land. Or wait for the middle class to join the working class for rent strikes/general strikes. i.e. at least another 30 years as the inheritance money of the boomers goes into elderly care and family arguments about inheritance.
User, but that's just it. They ARE coming here for the jobs.
That's why putting them in the North East is pointless.
You won't be shy of business as the whole of England is dying now. We've closed the mines, shut down the forges and stopped the production lines. "London is a rich city with a poor country attached" as someone recently said.
Parliment only care about London. If you look past London, Birmingham and Manchester, the opportunities in this country get thin on the ground fast!
@@CT-ue4kg That's because we're not innovating anymore. Too reliant on that same government that is now turning against us.
Done deliberately 🤬
i usually like to say that "london is like singapore if it were attached and surrounded by a corrupt post-soviet nation"
@@ashemocha Ha, ha, London and Singapore. London is at least 30 years behind Singapore.
The reason so many place in the North East are like this is because Westminster thinks anywhere outside the M25 doesn’t exist. The amount of money invested in places like London, Surrey etc compared to here in the North East is unreal and it’s been this way for generations.
When the government closed all the mining and Steel Industry, people suffered incredibly and had to endure terrible hardships. Unfortunately they have never really recovered. Almost all the place in your list were old mining villages, these were the places hit hardest.
Have they done it any differently/better - down in South Wales ?
(Or again - S. Yorks?
Living in England for over 5 years and coming over from a "3rd world country " i find it plain sad that such a small country with so much money can actually allow its own people to live in such harsh conditions...
Deservedly so, we keep voting in the Tories. It's a masochistic-parasitic relationship
spending all our money on hotels etc for immigrants we are living in an upside down country we need thinker and doers in charge
@@ebnanaann5644 Spending all our money on lining the pockets of right wing donors, Reform and Tories will destroy this country whilst getting rich, we need a good proper socialist government to fix the issues
@@HaggardPillockHD how is it deservedly so? These deprived areas are usually Labour strongholds.
@@ebnanaann5644 this is true...no idea how that's gonna turn out. My misses use to work on one such hotel (4 star at that) it had an entire floor of migrants. Then it became their hotel, the workers didn't get paid for over a year. Meanwhile I don't remember HMRC doing nothing but overtax me.
Please never leave us again Mr TurdTowns
So so sad to see. I was born in Hartlepool, lived in Acre Rigg Rd in Peterlee with family in Shotton Colliery and Sunderland. Mum and dad born in Trimdon and Horden. All of these places bring back so many happy memories from nearly 60 years ago. Moved away with dad’s job back in 1972. Have had a wonderful life but memories of Shotton, Horden and Peterlee are still my most treasured. Wish there was a way to put the life and soul back into these wonderful communities. My heart goes out to those now living there. Wish you could experience one moment of what these places used to be and the happy memories we have of those streets. I’ve laughed and cried over the last 20 minutes. Only those that lived there will understand. Thank you for one last trip down memory lane before I leave them all for good 😞
I'm from peterlee, my dad was from hordon ,my mam is from shotton. I can remember when the north east wasn't like this. Drugs and alcohol have not been kind to the north east. I moved down south and then to Australia. People destroy places. No pride. You can only blame politicians for so long. Why can't we love where we live. Why can't people not see their cup half full instead of half empty. The violence should not be tolerated. It's sad to see the decline
Well you can. You have to give people purpose, and the dismantling of all industries are the reason these places have declined. All because of trying to reduce emissions while the rest of the world increase theirs. The tories and labour hate the working class
The north east has been left behind. It’s so sad to see. I cant see it changing though. We were just used for the industry. Now they get it all from overseas they dont need us anymore.
A little unknown fact - 2 former popes have lived in Easington (I’m genuinely not making that up!)
Easington was once where all the Durham bishops would live in the 1200s, and it had links to Breakspear, the only ever English pope. Robert de Geneva also lived in Easington for 2 months before going on to be pope.
Great info!! Crackin' stuff. Thank you.
I bet you're fun at parties?
I bet you’re off your face and on the crack
Have the council put up a blue plaque somewhere?
@@expatexpat6531 no point, the locals can't read.
Former mining and other industrial towns and villages where the industry was destroyed by Thatcher but not much done by New Labour either tbf and then the lie of Levelling Up.
If County Durham had the money spent on it that London gets then things would be better. Can we have the Leemside line reopened please. Oooph too expensive. London get Crossrail for £15bn no problem. Just to the north of the county, the A1 is single carriageway. Could it be upgraded. Again too expensive. Northern line extention to Battersea Power station tho is no problem. Just to the south of the county and the cost of dueling of the A66 from Scotch Corner to Penrith has ballooned (to £1.5bn) what’s the cost of HS2, just to extend the London commuter belt?
County Durham has been shafted by governments of both colours.
The Docklands in London was regenerated, why hasn’t the former mining and steel towns in County Durham received the same level of investment?
Trade Unions, Socialism and Malcontents killed those towns, Thatcher just took the dying dog to the vets. Labour voters will be responsible for more depravation and the total destruction of communities in a way the tories could never imagine.
The A1 is dual all the way into Northumberland. It's single towards the Scottish border though.
Also, the northern line was mostly paid for by the developers of Battersea power station.
Which leads to the problem. All these developments are privately funded, so they fund places and projects where they can make money and get a return on their investment. So London's Docklands went from being derelict to bring bring prime real estate, to coin an American term.
Piling money into a former pit town in the middle of nowhere isn't going to do the same. It'll just get smashed up.
Thatcher and the Tories saw no money in mining. Easier to buy from abroad for less money. As for the people and their jobs, they didn't make money for them and those people didn't vote for them anyway.
You can also put public money on but that will still be wasted. What needs to happen is investment in industry instead of shipping everything from China. Jobs attract people.
@@acciid To start with, the A1 is a road that goes from the capital of England to the capital of Scotland. IT SHOULD AT LEAST BE DUEL CARRIAGE WAY ALL THE WAY and not have long stretches of single carriageway between Morpeth and Dunbar.
You say that places in County Durham are “nowhere” but that’s because they haven’t had the investment London gets.
Fair point about the Northern Line but that doesn’t explain Cross Rail or HS2.
London gets investment because it has the infrastructure and it gets the infrastructure because of the investment
London gets what London wants County Durham doesn’t get the investment it needs. Explain how Cross Rail is more needed than dueling the A66 and A1 all the way for the UK economy and could you not get from one side of London to the other by rail before? What about north to south, do you want even more money at the expense of the rest of the UK? I tell you what let London have ALL the investment and the rest of the country get none at all. Take the lot, London gets double the what the North gets and on transport per head it’s even higher. That’s not good for the UK economy, it’s unbalanced.
I don't disagree with you. I love in London but I'm from Washington. I admit I don't go back to the north east much though.
The A1 is only the main road as far as Newcastle. From London you're supposed to use the M6. Carlisle is East of Edinburgh after all. Funding is based on need; traffic is negligible up to the border when compared with the South East, or greater Manchester for that matter.
Cross rail is more needed because of supply and demand. It's already crowded. Doesn't make it right of course and it's only exacerbating the problem, but that's the reality.
HS2 is only really needed because the west coast main line is at capacity. It's a vanity project though ultimately especially as it now only goes to Birmingham. That swine beeching, and his chums have a lot to answer for.
BTW I agree re the A66, but from the North East to Edinburgh it's the A68 for me. Great road to drive.
I have been here for nearly 4 years. I think that I will go back down south next year. No jobs, no dentists, no hope. The best thing up here are the people.
And we send billions abroad when its desperately needed in these places. Feel so sorry for the inhabitants, especially children.
"An electric shaver covered in cat hair" - Welcome back, king! 😂😂😂
We do affectionately call that disgrace the cats paw, so not far off 🤣
Mr Ruffer, the man responsible for the most recent "attractions", such as the "tower", is using this town as a vanity project at the cost of those who call it home, mans head is so far in the clouds and they just let him continue doing it.
I grew up in Newcastle in the 70's and 80's, and many of the places you showed were hostile to outsiders, even then. I was considered posh and above myself for being a nurse.
First a new 44 Teeth now a new Turdtowns! Cheers Matey. I remember being taught about the actual county council policy to remove resources from Durham mining towns to hasten their demise back in the 60s.
Your video's a timely distraction from Starmer's threats to the populace today.
Now all we need is a new PhotonicInduction.
AAAAAAAMPS
3 big problems: the pits closed & the local economy crashed, no other jobs & councils the country over allowed all the out-of-town shopping centres to destroy the high streets.
The worst thing that ever happened to Durham was the discovery of coal. Without that, you wouldn't have had workers migrating to the county in their hundreds of thousands, and their descendents left destitute when it all ended.
Look at the far west of the county, a place not dissimilar to the Lake District without the water, and you get an idea of what the whole county would still be like without coal - a sparsely populated, rural, relatively prosperous area akin to North Yorkshire, Northumberland or Cumbria. Alas, it is what it is now.
It's ironic that Durham is actually an attractive country although it can be bleak up on the moors.
@@jasejj True and there would not have been an industrial revolution or a British empire. Probably best if the whole of the UK had stayed in the 16th century with Henry the wife killer.
@@jasejj Without coal there would be no Great Britain !
Only the councillors receiving an income?
It's a shame for Bishop, not only personally because half of my family on my fathers side is from there, but because it truly did and still does have some amazing things there. Such as Kynren which happens over the span of months and makes you actually proud to be British and from Bishop too, but it's bittersweet knowing that just over the horizon of the live performance is a dying town and a fed up populace.
It’s a shame he couldn’t be bothered to see the regeneration around Bishop’s market square.
Why don't they sell property cheap to locals with a small grant to put in the basics and bring some hope and pride to a community.
The countryside is lovely and with some help could be transformed
SAS, Because there are no jobs there. If there was work all these issues would solve themselves, but without work whatever is tried will fail.
@@Samuel-hd3cpbut if they’re already local what difference does that make? They’re already paying silly money to rent, why not pay it to buy a place instead? You know - given that we’re ALL supposed to aspire to home ownership and whatnot…
Helping the honest citizens is against both local council and national government policy.
@@jgomo3877pigs and pigs in power.
Thatcher killed it all .
Whilst I fully acknowledge that there is, on the whole, an overall nationwide shortage of housing, in certain areas, there are houses that they can't sell for any price.
So we have this crazy situation where there's property hotspots where the vast majority of good quality, professional, high paid jobs are located and so most people want to live in these areas which has in turn created such housing shortages in those local areas that there's maybe 60 people going after one tiny flat for £2k+ rent pcm.
Meanwhile there are places, like the northern town I live in, whilst nowhere near as bad as the places in this video, my own town is still on the cusp of being in the top third of England's most deprived towns. The average sale price of property in the town so far in 2024 is £166k and the average rent is £600pcm. Supply is about level with demand, so where there's few empty properties, nobody is screaming out for more. This is probably why plans for a large new housing development to be built on the edge of town seems to have been kicked into the long grass. There's no point in building more new houses in a town where there's no demand for them.
So when the government say they are going to build 300k new houses per year (a figure I think they will find impossible to achieve), it is just as important that any houses they do build are built in the correct locations where the demand is.
My own personal belief is that if levelling up had been carried out only to the extent that decent jobs were more evenly spread out across the whole country then the people would spread out more and we could use the property we already have in a much more efficient way alongside building more new houses in the worst places for housing shortages.
I lived in County Durham for the first 18.years of my life.. Peterlee to be exact, and it was actually better than it is today, hard to believe, I know.. Lived in Cornwall after that for over 30 years, and now in North East Scotland.
When you move you do it proper! lol
You're correct about solving the housing crisis. Instead of dumping smack heads or immigrants there, they encouraged people that can work from home, people that work low skilled jobs etc, these places would improve. The money would follow the earners.
Steven. But the people in Durham don't just hate asylum seekers and London smackheads. They hate everyone.
How are you going to persuade anyone to move to a town with no facilities and high crime, where they will never be accepted?
Except the policy of dumping smack heads and immigrants into Durham and the wider North East is the government's plan for "levelling up" the areas; and has been for the last 10 years at least.
Do you know that the majority of drug addicts entering rehabilitation from Liverpool and Glasgow end up being relocated to the North East?
Also, over the last 25 years, the North East has gone from 1% non British born population to around 11% today.
In regards to Wheatley Hill. The scene where you showed a new house with the upstairs window smashed hasn't been lived in for ages. The building next to it with the four shutters was an abattoir and closed two year ago, not an ideal location for living next to. The barbers still hasn't been repaired if you looked closely. The ram raiders only smashed the door and knocked the window frames out. That big building that you say is abandoned, isn't. It is the local Co-op supermarket and funeral care and is open every day. There is a pub, well a club actually here. It's along Quilstyle Road. Behind the front street is a shithole which is where most of the footage is filmed. The bottom end of the village is alright along with the top. It's mainly the one street that is dragging the place down. I live in Wheatley Hill and I try to avoid the front street. Everywhere else is alright though. There used to be a dairy which employed a large proportion of the village although that is now a tropical fish supplier and lorry storage yard. The abattoir employed a few from the village aswell. The field shown in the first clip has plans to be turned into housing which many of us residents don't think is a good idea. Only one access and exit on an already busy small road. Alot of us has a make do and mend attitude. That white pub is to become an art gallery and a sports bar is opening along the road. I feel we would benefit massively if the front street was gotten rid of and possibly replaced with better modern infrastructure. Anyways that is that. Alot of us are welcoming people aswell, to the right people. You'll often find the roughest villages has some of the nicest people. Horden has a few things going for it if you get past the rows of terraced streets. Alot of what keeps us in these villages is the memories of when the villages were well regarded. Even if I moved, Wheatley Hill would still be home.
@@GanCanny I totally agree. It’s one street in the whole village. I’ve lived in Wheatley hill for 5 years and love it, the people are sound.
I didn’t actually end up going there but from a google street view search lots of the houses higher up the hill on the estate are boarded up too. Is that still the case? Looked like it could be nice up therez
@@Turdtowns you’re right in the sense that forgotten run down areas need to be highlighted, especially with the housing crisis. However, some ground truth might give the report more substance and a clearer picture to what’s going on. Anyone thinking of either moving in or out of an area may see something like this and be put off. Your channel is informative but think of the second order effect on what you put out.
@@Turdtowns think you should actually visit these places and meet the people rather than making judgements and assumptions using Google bloody maps 🤣😂, Wheatley Hill and Thornley actually have a pretty incredible sense of community and the numerous £200k to £550k new build homes would suggest other folks think the same.
I genuinely can't understand why someone like Haven/Butlins haven't purchased Horden, flattened it and made it into a successful holiday park, the beach is lovely and better than some of the beaches their other parks are next to and would bring jobs to the area 🤷♀️
This is a true story. I used to go to a fruit and veg shop in Stanley and I asked one day, what was the most popular seller. The lady said lemons, I thought she was having a laugh, but she said, it's for the druggies to keep the needles clean. Durham is the good, the bad and the ugly. The bad, is the local authorities, not getting a grip on the problems, the ugly are some of the towns and villages. The chap in the video, didn't explore Hartlepool enough and painting it as all bad, is untrue. The good, is very good. I've worked in many areas and nothing can beat the Durham/N Yorks axis and the towns like Stanhope, Barnard Castle and all of Weardale and the North Penines, as well as Durham itself. The people who live in the derelict areas are also to blame, they don't have any drive. I live in a beautiful village, but the natives don't go anywhere, don't get educated, it's like a social Depression.
I live 3 miles from Stanhope! Weardale is fabulous .. but ssshhh don't tell anyone ;-)
When you visited Shildon, you missed out the Railway museum where Stephensons Rocket is currently on display. You missed out the National Maritime Museum at Hartlepool. Those places obviously didn’t fit your agenda. Now for balance show the rest of County Durham. It’s a beautiful county with friendly people, a world class university, beautiful coastline and beautiful cathedral.
I've travelled quite a bit of Co Durham and judging by the lack of newsagents and bookshops [compared to neighbouring Northumberland] the literacy rate is pretty low. I was told by an escapee that Horden had on average one book for every two houses [this was pre internet]. The few papers that are sold seem to be almost exclusively right wing. Beamish Museum doesn't even sell books in it's shop. With such a low skilled population it's not a fertile place for new factories to flourish.
If there ISN'T a supermarket in SHILDON, wouldn't that lead to an excellent business opportunity for anybody OPENING one?
They wouldn't even have COMPETITION!
It must be really sad for people from HARTLEPOOL, because it looks really NICE.
As usual, the government hasn't governed, and not organised it a bit.
A museum or two and some stunning coastline are great reasons to visit a place but they do not provide stable well paid employment for anyone. His agenda if you can even call it one is him railing against local government ineptitude, corruption and a total lack of interest at a national level. It's a pity your feathers have been ruffled but fundamentally he is spot on.
@jeremyatkinson4976
It's a so - called CATCH 22 situation
There NEEDS to be governments that DO govern, and create motivation locally, as a result. Not cut police forces, and just watch crime rise.
Same for anywhere else. In other countries too.
I'm retired now, but it's the absolute truth that when I left school, you could go into a job agency, and get MORE than one job interview there and then! Even before mass immigration, the trickle of immigration led to joblessness since the 80's. The country didn't suddenly have more jobs on offer, only more and more inhabitants.
Most people my age wish the clock was turned back to a more sustainable time.
Without even job prospects for school leavers and house builders exploiting people with ever increasing house prices , everyone has understandably just given up.
I think the reason for the flats only being low rise in Peterlee is the fact that as a former mining area, the weight of larger buildings could result in subsidence.
High rise is also a lot more expensive to build. Makes sense when land is expensive. Not the case in Peterlee.
Makes sense
In 1947, Lubetkin was commissioned to be master planner and chief architect for the Peterlee new town, where he worked closely with Monica Felton. The following year Tecton was dissolved. Commenting on this, Lubetkin wrote to fellow Tecton member Carl Ludwig Franck "that after the war Tecton was at best a ghost of its former self".
Lubetkin's masterplan for Peterlee included a new civic centre for which he proposed a number of high rise towers. However the extraction of coal was to continue under the town for several years which posed a risk of subsidence. As a result, the National Coal Board (NCB), itself an agency of the Ministry of Fuel and Power would only consider a dispersed low density development. Despite investigating a number of options that would have allowed coal extraction to continue without preventing the proposed development, the NCB would not alter their policy. As Lubetkin was the employee of the Ministry of Town and Country Planning this developed into an inter-ministerial battle, and despite attempts at dispute resolution at cabinet level the difference in approach between the ministries remained. Frustrated at the unresolved bureaucratic battles, Lubetkin resigned from the Peterlee project in spring 1950. The only physical sign of his involvement in the scheme exists in the adjoining opposed parabola forms of the road layout at Thorntree Gill.
Bishop Auckland Council ought to be investigated. It was an attractive popular historic town when they decided to build out-of-town developments, pedestrianize popular streets, and charge for parking. If you’d asked somebody to come up with a plan to kill a town center and drag an area down that’s what they would’ve opted to do. It would be interesting to take a close look at who the contractors were for the out-of-town development, and what connections they might have with people on the town council o a corrupt deal or a Marxist intention to bring a place down, it is difficult to understand what reason there could be for destroying the town center in that way.
Why would a Marxist want to destroy Bishop Auckland?
Also the idea that all the smackheads in Durham come from London is ridiculous but says a lot about why County Durham is so unwelcoming to visitors.
Parking charges are a stealth tax that nobody wants to pay. Council's just don't get this.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
You're right. It was my birthplace and generations of my family were from Bishop in the years when it was a thriving town, brim-full with businesses and a busy town centre with busy market. But gradually it was noted that businesses couldn't survive because of the extortionate rates and rents for business premises. Nothing was done about it as one shop after another closed. At the same time the council decided to build a ghetto of a housing estate that had a terrible reputation for crime and anti-social behaviours - after a while stopped maintaining them and stopped repairs which was the beginning of the deprivation. Nobody understood why this decay and deliberate neglect was allowed if not enabled by the local authority and by Durham County - who only ever seemed to look after Durham City itself. But the councillors drinks cabinets in their chambers were always full and their social expenses unusually high..... In the 'pagoda'...the council Offices in Crook, many of us witnessed the alarming frequency of drunken councillors collapsing in the mall.
Bishop went down hill before they ever started building on Tindale. I feel the two major blows were the 2008 financial crash and the rise of internet shopping. Still, I don’t think Bishop belongs on this list. I would add Soennymoor, Ferryhill, Chester-le-street, Newton Aycliffe before Bishop. Bishop atleast has a few things going for it.
As for Eldon Lane it’s much, much worse than this video made out.
Thatchers legacy. She was determined to destroy communities and she succeeded. Successive governments have done little to improve it and 14 years of austerity has made things a lot worse. The Tory coalition council are exacerbating the problems with parking choices. Durham has some beautiful places and countryside.
Durham was Tony Blairs labyrinth.
Indeed, very true.
Weird how it was labour who closed more mines than Thatcher and it was Thatcher who built more council homes than all the pms after her combined
It was Labour that closed most of the mines and destroyed these towns.
@@P4T5H4RPifywhat’s your source for that? Sounds like a complete lie to me
I used to live in County Durham (Consett...honestly surprising it didn't make the list.)....if you think your Working Class...go to County Durham and you'll realise you were Middle Class the whole time.
I grew up in a rough part of Gateshead and recently worked in Durham. I felt posh passing through some of the areas there. There are some very deprived places in County Durham, it was quite eye opening.
John: Yes, I know the feeling ... having lived in London where everybody has a job (if they want one) and money to spend ... 😢
Consett is good comper do Stanley :)
I was braced for Consett to appear as well but in perspective, it's a nice place in comparison to those on this list.
At 2:11 I got off with a bird in that parking spot with the bmw in it.
I love co Durham, people are lovely and the countryside is absolutely stunning.
Was it your sister?
Typically Bishop move right there. 😂
Indeed yes, beautiful countryside.
You're right about the countryside.
These programs should be shown on national television.when people down south think of Durham they think of the cathedral and city and not the forgotten towns surrounding like all councils across the country city areas come first
Being a well travelled person, and from Wheatley Hill, i can tell you I’d rather live in Wheatley hill than London, which is a shit hole. You went down the high street, which has some problems, however 95% of the residents are normal working class people and there is a great community spirit.
Mate, i was brought up in Trimdon and grandparents from Wheatley hill and youre talking shite. Its a dystopian hellhole. Atleast in London there are jobs, places to Eat, transport, people!!
@@zaphodbeeblebrox9109 I spent a fair amount of time in Woolwich, which only redeeming feature is the ferry out of it. As far as transport in Wheatley hill, a lot of people have cars, believe it or not, it sits between the two major roads in the northeast. Failing that, the 22 is pretty regular through the village. As far as dystopian goes, I’d rather walk my dog to the fishing club than through Notting Hill.
@@Westerhousen each to thier own. Id rather take a run through longleat in a suit made of rotting meat than go back to durham
"Why does anyone stay in a town that is dying?"
Have fun selling a house in a dying town and managing to buy a house somewhere better. Many people are stuck in the places they live because of basic economics.
The whole country is fucked
Not compared to the USA you guys look ok not great but ok
@@jillclarke7264 rose tinted spectacles luv.
Go down south it’s Wey better than the north east lad 😂
Honestly it's not.
Much of the South East and some of the big cities are thriving.
@@Rizzlez169 the South you say?; where the crime is higher, the costs or living are higher, and you still live under the tyranny of the same government as the rest of England.... yeah, unless you're rich, I doubt it very highly.
These videos should be compulsory viewing for parliament just before PMs question time. A sad state of affairs that is going to get worse.
Cheers for highlighting how bad things have got in our declining country.
I agree, it's the Government's job to fix places like this.
Good to have you back. Most of the populace would not realise how much is broken in this country.
TurdTowns is the best narrated, filmed and background-musicked channel in the UK. AUTHENTIC!!!
Jeez, communist Russia looks more appealing than most of those places 😢
Living in County Durham myself, Chernobyl reactor 4 looks more appealing
The more I see of these places, the more Wolverhampton isn't that bad after all (though it's still horrible). Used to live in Paignton & it nearly killed me 😮
@@Greggp1989I liked the look of Chernobyl too after I saw it on C5. I would be radioactive within 30 seconds though ...
It has its advantages. The countryside is beautiful. The... political agitators of the modern world are much thiner on the ground than other places... it is about as far away from the post apocalyptic nuclear crator of London as you can get and still be in England, and housing is cheap by comparison.
St. Kilda looks appealing!
Durham is made up mainly of former pit villages. I live nearby so you could take a wild guess what could be number 1.
As a local I’d say Stanley is the worst Turdtown round here.
I used to live in Consett....Stanley felt like going somewhere fancy, lol.
@johnsmith8906 compared to Consett it still is.
Yeah and a once turd area of London got millions spent on it and is now very desirable. That area is Docklands. So why can’t Fishburn Easington Horden Dorden Consett Crook etc etc etc have the same level of expenditure spent on them.
Cross Rail HS2 YES but the Leemside Line? No. New tubes for the Piccadilly line but how long has the Tyne abd Wear metro had to wait. Extention to the C Northern Line? Not a problem, extention to Tyne and Wear Metro would cost too much.
London gets what London wants but County Durham can go fuck its self it seems.
I have lived all over Durham County, Stanley is nowhere near the worst in fact north Durham overall tends to be better than south.
@Ratisha_Official very true.
Hartlepool is a very friendy town with miles of beautiful coastline, a marina, surrounded by countryside, and decent pubs.
I might go down to mega-rich London and just shoot footage of the slums, then say they represent London.
Yeah, Pools (and Peterlee) don't deserve to be on this list. Plenty worse places.
Yeah to be fair hartlepool has plenty of decent areas and things going for it. I worked with the team that rebuilt Rodney St and Carr Street about 7 years ago. Every town has rough areas but not many have the coast, marina etc like you say. Every pit village in Co. Durham is literally just like the worst part of a town with nothing else
i went to Hartlepool a few months ago any my mood was soured for the rest of the week. vile place.
The marina is a dump, also most of the coastal places are just like Blackpool, but with lots of factories and smoking chimneys in the background. There are some beautiful Victorian and Edwardian houses however in Hartlepool, I will give it that.
I don't think TurdTowns is trying to mock people's homes he's just showing that there are rough areas and dying towns and that we as a rich country should have done better.
Since the county boundary changes in 1974 Hartlepool hasn't been in Co. Durham.
It's still part of county Durham. It's just got an independent town council
@@cultfiction3865 No it isn't. When you leave Hartlepool you clearly see the blue and gold "County Durham 'Land of the Prince Bishops' sign marking the county boundary. From 1974 until its demise, Hartlepool was in Cleveland county.
@@conversemackem8653 It is in county Durham. Go look up Wikipedia. It's a unitary authority but still part of county Durham
@@cultfiction3865 Wikipedia, as everyone knows is the fountain of bona fide information! 😂😂😂
@@conversemackem8653ignore the official boundary line if wikipedia said it you know it has to be right 😂
Absolutely loved this video. My home county. Born & bred in Shildon. Its certainly a strange feeling watching a video where I recognise so many of the places.
Where B&M is now used to be a Morrisons & before that was a large Co-op supermarket but with Bishop Auckland being so close most people did their big shops there. Now it will be done in Tindale retail park.
I remember there being occasions where the buses wouldn't even go through Eldon Lane or certain bits of Bishop Auckland like Woodhouse Close. Can't blame them really when the windows would get put out or on one occasion a firework set off inside the bus.
We built the new co-op opposite the old people's home about 5 years ago. Was a nightmare, cabins getting broken into, £200,000 machines getting smashed for £10 worth of red diesel. But the locals were really nice and embarrassed about it. There's good and bad everywhere
I remember when B&M used to be a Netto! Trolly full of shopping for the loose change in your pocket.
@@akkinak that's right. I totally forgot about Netto. I quite liked that.
@@philipsutton5652 Netto was great, and there are still a few good small shops in the street. Its a shame some of the nicer areas of the town were not filmed. There is the railway museum too although there is something unsettling about living in a town whose heritage has become a museum in your own lifetime!
Many, many years ago, when I was a police officer, we got called to Eldon Lane after a suspicious incident. Someone had put fireworks into a dog waste bin, and they, and it, exploded. The front of one poor women's house was covered in dog mess. And as for her Nissan Micra. The smell was something to behold too
Probably an improvement? Ha ha.
@theshamanarchist5441 not really she was so distraught. Poor girl
Oddly enough, thats the least strange thing that's ever happened in Eldon.
unironically that mightve been the most that little town has ever seen since the second world war
Just great to see you back! Love your content. Welcome back to YT!
I genuinely makes me so cross what the councils and the government have done to our once beautiful county! They’re building all these awful, bad quality, still vastly overpriced homes when there is all these homes that could be fixed up and given life again. It’s heartbreaking
A lot of these old abandoned homes were built good and strong too, not like many of today's new builds which commonly have major issues very early on in their lives. Apparently the best bricks in the area used to be made in Eldon.
The houses are falling down. I know spend11.7million pounds on a bus station in a town with no shops?
Quite, but the new one doesn't leak when it [frequently] rains round here . . . . although doors and shutters fail and loos go out of use . . .
Lol 😍
@@EllieMaes-Grandad The roof of the new bus station at Durham did leak though, and the same company is building the new one in Bish.
I'm absolutely gobsmacked that Stanley wasn't even in the list 😂😂
I built them houses behind the tesco extra in Stanley. I thought it was OK. Never lived there though
It's not on the list only because Stanley has 2 Gregg's there now; which increased the morale of the residents there by a 50% margin. 😅
@@TheGunner6698 shit it was consett I meant not Stanley
or No Place
It really makes me sad to see my home county this way. I’m from Sherburn Village, County Durham and attended school in Durham City. I’d left to live in London with another part of my family. I’d gone back in 2006 to take care of my Grandmother and found work in a call centre in Peterlee. I wonder if that place is still there. I came back to London in 2010 and have ventured up there just a handful of times to reminisce.
There appears to be a pattern of people leaving for work and not going back.
Meanwhile the ones who stay complain about incomers.
I live within 7 miles of 3 of these towns and cannot disagree with your assessment of them .Years and years of social deprivation ,lack of investment in economic projects has left them in a desperate state of disrepair .
Absolutely hilarious 🤣😂 I live and travel all over the North East and you have spoke the truth about certain parts of Durham , believe me , there's plenty more dumps in the Durham area .
Alright MarkyD, you found my town! For what its worth, apparently Peterlee shopping centre have some sort of "plan", and all the shops were more kicked out than left - to allow this plan to be carried out. Not entirely sure I believe them, but its owned by a private company (not the council) so there's basically bugger all anyone can do about it. The rest of the town isn't so bad really: Sure, there's some bad bits, but even your video spotted that there's loads of nice open green spaces. There's also quite a lot of jobs from the 3 industrial estates and the business park, plus its 10miles from Sunderland, Hartlepool and Durham, which is handy.
You are right though, most people who live here have no reason to go to the town centre, I pretty much never go there unless I need something specific (post office, argos, hair cut mostly).
Newton aycliffe should have got on here its a grim, depressing flat place that doesn't possess any character. Its one of those towns so bleak that it causes everywhere else to look fascinating and wonderful. So in one sense it does serve a useful purpose
I wouldn't live there rent free, my sister and best mate live there but there's nothing there. The shopping centre has been upgraded but the pubs are miles apart so you can't go on a pub crawl. I'd describe it as a cow pat spread out. 😢
@@kevinadamson5768 Only pub near the "town centre" [where lots of shops are closed down] is the former British Legion club.
@@kevinadamson5768 Completely agree despite its posh estates round woodham it's still a dismal place
@@cultfiction3865 it is mate.
Durham County Council hates the entire county, we have derelict towns all over the place but they wont/cant make adjustments to business rates to allow start ups to find their feet and thrive. they just want as much money as they can get their hands on. which is another problem, people pay more in council tax in some towns in county durham than some of the wealthiest parts of london...
Lone ponderer.
I guarantee you that people in Co Durham don't pay higher council tax than people in London.
Why would anyone start a business in Durham?
@@Samuel-hd3cpthey do, out of 345 councils in the UK Durham is the 13th highest. Gateshead, Middlesbrough, Hartlepool, Northumberland and Stockton on Tees are all up there too. Wandsworth and Westminster pay next to fuck all.
Good to see you back
The north-east is only getting worse. Very sad.
It needs to be handed back to the Jutes & Vikings (i.e. Denmark & Norway)
Birtley resident here.
Thanks for not picking on us! 🤣
Birtley isn’t in County Durham lol, it’s classed as Gateshead
Good to see you back on top form. Shocking that such places exist and good for you to making the sensible point of helping the housing crises. Went to Shildon to visit "Locomotion" railway museum. Went buy buss and left by train. We did walk around the are a bit by the museum and it was dirty, abandoned and disserted, we did not feel safe.
Seems DCC need to employ more litter pickers...mind even around Newcastle airport near the hotels there is a lot of rubbish...
The museum is on the outskirts of the town next to what used to be a load of factories, not the best part of the town to be honest.
An old friend of mine's parents bought a house in Bishop Auckland about 10 years back, they got a 4 bedroom house with a huge back garden and an allotment for £10,000. With that said, there is a lot of downsides that come with buying those cheap properties. Nobody wants to sell a home for that price, so if they're doing it, there has to be good reason.
Welcome back! I was worried that you didn't make it out of the Valleys alive, or got caught up with the crime bosses pulling the strings in Twerton 😁
If the people are united and trust one another, then the poverty is easier to bear I guess. The one thing that will destroy whatever is left of these old mining communities is having a load of shifty-looking men from Afghan & Syria places dumped on them.
And London...!
English: and the Govt. won't care where they dump them . . . 🙄
The government will dump them where it's cheap.
But basically what you're saying is that it's all the fault of people who aren't actually there yet?
You're going to vote Reform and nothing is going to improve.
Seeing Eldon Lane genuinely made me sad and almost brought me to tears. All of this hasn’t been the result of SOMETHING gone wrong, it’s the result of SOMEONE doing wrong (deliberately imo)
I don’t understand what it is with the people who run this country. When they decide that something needs to go (I.e mining, shipyards, steelworks etc), they cut it loose and then just shrug their shoulders and say “well, thanks for your service.” And make zero effort to retrain and reinvest in an area. And this is the result.
I'm from Bishop Auckland, it's completely spot on that the council have completely ruined the town by allowing this many shops to close, it's essentially 2 main supermarkets at the very top of the main street and nothing else, will probably only get worse as time goes on too
I always maintained that the 'levelling up' scheme also meant a transfer of the South's problem people.
It won't be long before these towns are overrun with other 'visitors' - it's actually the inevitable ending for them.
It was a con. Like Brexit. I say, you, Northern oik. We're not the problem, we're British, Queen and country and all that. It's Johnny foreigner who's made things terrible. Vote for us and we will give ourselves, I mean yourselves, control and we'll make everything great like it used to be.
Charlatans, the lot of them.
But we’ve got £20Billion to send to UKrain
😢
The problem with these towns is, people won’t move there if there is no jobs.
but if you remote work you can have a 4 bed detached for £220k, which many have done. A few years back you could get the same in bishop auckland, newton aycliffe etc for about £150k.
Thus will people without jobs [unemployable incomers] be dumped there.
That's not the problem really. Some of them do have jobs (Peterlee has 3 industrial estates and a business park). Many of these places are a short hop to a place with jobs. Most people can drive 20mins or so each way without too much fuss.
Too many absentee landlords, allowing houses to get into this state. They won't have even set foot in the County.
I love these videos but feckin hell, they make you depressed about the direction the country is going. There is so much you could do for many of these places
I'm from shildon, you should have mentioned that Bishop Auckland Shildon and Eldon lane border each other, a couple of interesting facts shildon is the cradle of the railways, this is where the passenger railways first started and has a fantastic museum, Eldon lane had the same number of residents until the 60s as shildon at around 8000 at the time, and of course Bishop Auckland is steeped in rich history from Auckland castle having the second largest private chapple second only to the Vatican and it was the birthplace of Stan laurel.
I’m County Durham born and bred. I was born in Bishop Middleham, I’ve lived in Sedgefield and Trimdon Village and I now reside in Hartlepool (Seaton Carew). It’s a predominantly beautiful county with some lovely countryside and pretty villages and towns. I know that’s not the point of this channel, and believe me, I’m angry about what’s happened to my home county. The rot set in with Thatcher.
However, I’m glad, in some twisted, perverse way that people think Hartlepool is a sh*thole because it truly isn’t. It has bad areas but so does any town. The fact that people think it’s so grotty keeps them away and that’s fine by me. It’s our little corner of the world.
Bishop Middleham -> Hartlepool . . . . what went wrong?
@@EllieMaes-Grandad men 😂
These people know nothing of how Hartlepool is almost like a mini-city, not a town. Seaton, West, Owton Manor, Fens, Headland, West View, etc. It's textured, to say the least
@@MrMarkellettexactly!
I'm from Bishop and you are spot on, used to be great when I was growing up but nothing left now
Delighted that you are back, and on top caustic form!
He's not being caustic, he's just telling the plain truth! These places are so awful, he's probably over praising them a bit!!
@@timbounds7190 Matter of opinion! The dictionary definition is "sarcastic in a scathing and bitter way", which seems entirely appropriate to me...
@@polymath9372 OK Yes...I guess the point is that there really aren't the words to describe how awful these places are - believe me, I've lived in that area. I live in Teesside now, which is pretty appalling in parts, but its Elysian Fields compared to these bits of Durham.
My home County, I truly love it ❤️ if I can help it, I will never leave!
I live in Peterlee, and the derelict shops are down to Praxis, the landlords who bought them all up and have extortionate rent rates so very few can afford to keep running.
The council continually make decisions that negativity affect the the town. There are LOADS of jobs here since there is a pretty big infuriating estate where CATERPILLAR/NSK along with many others and a lot here refuse to work.
It's a huge shame since it has great potential, we just need investment and for people who actually care in the council.
Eldon Lane is in Bishop Auckland, it's just another area of the same.
I moved to this area in 2015 and quite frankly practically the WHOLE of Co.Durham needs demolishing and re-built. The Government have totally neglected these areas for DECADES and it could be such a super county if only money were poured into it - but alas, that will never happen. The Govt. deos nothing outside Greater London or North of Watford.
People live here because they can't move since they are on benefits and can't afford to. From your list Horden is the worst.
Hard to argue with anything said here. And to add insult to injury we have the 10th highest average level of council tax in England
"What's the point of a bus station?"
Because people living in Bishop often need to travel to other locations for various reasons, such as work for one.
Even though people complain about it I just wonder would people have preferred it to how it was? Plus he also forget to mention Vinovium house has gone to the planning commitee to die a death. To be honest I think the locals would rather see it torn down instead of housing third world trash
There was nothing wrong with the old bus station, it had plenty of room for the buses to turn around, pickup/drop off and park up for layovers. It was never busy with people so no need to have a big flashy building to put them in. All it needed was resurfaced, or even just some of the brickwork redone in the places it had taken a battering from the buses. The stands were fine as they were. The new station will require higher maintenance and like Durham will need staff there through the day, which the old station did not.
@@fenrir7969 Might make it a safer place. I'm from Stanley and I've had a lot of dangerous experiences in bus stations.
@@Molotov_Milkshake personally the old bus station need change it hadn’t be touched in years and it showed. People may say this or that but having a bus station that is modern and not an eye sore can’t be a bad thing? There’s also it helping Kynren regarding transportation which is often overlooked. Also knocking down vinovium house will make bishop a much better place trust me. I highly doubt anything will be done to it since it’s clear what a certain Manchester developer wants to do with it, and counsellors on the planning committee won’t commit suicide with the locals next year, which is why it’ll just hang there since local pressure won’t allow it to be developed either ( 400 objections).
@@thomashowe1509 I agree. I went to Bishop bus station back in like 2004 and it didn't seem like a safe or nice place back then (the bus station I mean specifically). It felt kind of similar to the one in Consett at the time. Bishop needs to make things nicer for tourists because it does get plenty, as you said, because of Kynren. It's a big local draw for Bishop.
We were sent to Horden during the Firemans Strike, Christmas 1977, when i was in the Army, manning the Green Goddesses. I remember both Coal and Milk being delivered to houses by Horse and Carts, all cobbled streets, like a 30's time warp. People were great, but the Town has had bad luck since then.
In the 60s a lot of villages dropped into an expanding grounp of category D villages and at that point any expenditure other than absolute minimum was prohibited, no investment at all and these places were left to decline as everything around the mining and steel industries declined. No real thought or money was put into these places and they were essentially abandoned. I know of no real strategy of redevelopment. 60 years on it has an odd forgotten feeling as the objective of closing the mines was fulfilled and the communities forgotten.
It’s sad to see all these towns dying - growing up in the 70’s I’ve seen this happen everywhere, ‘the death of the high street’ so to speak. Councils charging to park is the biggest nail in the coffin in this age, why would you pay to park in your own town when you can go to a out of town retail park, do all your shopping in one place for free.
Grew up in Wallsend and now live elsewhere, Wallsend once busy and bustling high street is now a shell of its former. Charity shops, vape and bookies with a smattering of take aways….. such a shame
I'm sure these delapidated towns with no oppotunities or jobs will be greatly enriched by the gov dumping large numbers of immigrants that don't speak english to further dilute the already tiny job markets and won't just result in mass slums
Yep, that’s who the politicians want you to blame to hide the real reason why this country is in the mud, and that’s the endemic levels of corruption and bribery
Given the demographics of these towns are 98% white. (E.g Bishop Auckland) Your comment is invalid
I have a feeling that Co.Durham has all the necessary potential to become a huge sponge for incomers. "Investment" will be expensive refurbishment of houses for them.
Durham City (and area) is now becoming awash with women in headscarves and 'African' faces; just sayin’.
Look if you're willing to travel thousands of miles and risk your life for a better life, you're not going to stay in county Durham on the dole.
They'll go to London and Leeds to find work. Families might stay in Durham, but the economically active will leave.
@@Samuel-hd3cp Haha good one mate, they're more than happy to live in shitty towns on the dole, or rather live in shitty towns dealing drugs under the table while staying on the dole or running a "barber shop" tax free with rebates from the council for "training" their 3 dozen cousins
I propose that we relocate parliament to Eldon Lane.
The people of Ethiopia are organising a rock concert to provide aid for some of these places
They are all Labour constituencies!
Yes they are, and rightly so, can't you see why? Probably because they want change after what 14 years of austerity has done to this country? It was Thatcherism that turned these places how they are.
Hartlepool switched to Tory you dimwit. It's like you have no concept of how a ruling party controls funding to change political allegiance. You sure you're not from there?
Makes no difference. Last 5 years North West Durham has it's first Tory MP and not a single penny of levelling up cash made it up here.
Thatcher destroyed the collieries, of course they are Labour.
Good to see you back sir
A friend of mine obtained a list of Durham County Councillor’s wages it was abhorrent at the top end as much as 180,000 pa. and loads of them on 80,000 poor lads having to manage on 80,000. ………….disgusting
I emigrated to what many would consider a ‘3rd world’ country with 6x less gdp. Yet the standard of living pales in contrast. It’s mental. I thought the UK was meant to be one of the richest countries in the world.
The houses aren't habitable thats why they are abandoned. I have lived in most of these places at some point. If your looking for a tiny one (more a village than town) with a fun name there is 'No place' which is across the road from 'Hellhole'. Just a quick walk from the much more popular and expensive Beamish. Its only 3 streets, no shop but a pub and allotments/horse fields and surprisingly a school which apparently had only 8 students when I lived there. When they built the bypass between Beamish and Stanley it cut off No Place so most non local people passing don't know its there and no council claims it (this is a result that it was privately owned by the mines but when the mines closed councils still class it as private land) so there are pot hole you could swim in and we use to just throw old bricks and stuff in to try and fill them up. It does however have a sea view despite being approx. 15 miles in land thanks to its 'mountainous' position.
The Beamish Mary is a good place.
I moved down to London from the North East and I was surprised how much is being invested in London and new developments are being built in London than the North East
Durham was the county that voted in Bliar. You reap what you sow! It was ignored after the Tories closed the pits and then continued to be ignored by Bliar. Its got so much potential but likely to be continually used as a dumping ground.
'The county'? I think there might have been more. And ah yes, the Tories have been in power for something like 80 of the past 120 years but it's mainly Labour to blame.
@@sadlamp6796both out of the same pot. represented themselves not country or voters.
Grew up in Wheatley Hill.. drive through it now very rarely.. remember front street been busy, thriving.. I knew every shop keeper, everyone knew me, my parents, grandparents etc.. didn't dare do much wrong.. knew what I would be in for.. went downhill quickly mid - late 90s... there's still good ppl there... like every village..
I live in Blackhall Colliery, County Durham, just a village down from Horden, very like most the places covered. Same here, so many empty houses, I live in between vacant houses each side.
I live near Bishop Auckland it was a popular Market Town. It's history is very important. It's been pulled to bits right at the moment. Now it's full of nail bars,charity shops, barbers, pawn shops, etc , it's a disgrace. Even down to the listed buildings aren't been protected. Well done for the video very informative.