Buildings you've been in that are now demolished

[ooooohnoooooo]

Was thinking (randomly) about buildings I've been in during my life that have now been knocked down. I'm intrigued as to whether I have a disproportionately large number.

It's a bit weird to think that they are not there anymore, especially the really familiar ones that I spent so much time in. All those corridors and rooms long gone into rubble and dust.

Secondary school - demolished in the 90s and is now a housing estate.
My local nightclub where I spent many happy hours dancing, being chatted up, and snogging the locals 🤓 mysteriously burned down after redevelopment planning permission to change it into flats was refused, It's now flats. Of course.

First proper job office where I met my 1st husband. Now a housing estate (a theme is emerging.......)
First 'big job' office, now demolished and is currently a big hole in the ground. Think it's going to be flats.

Am I unusual to have left so many heaps of rubble in my past or do fellow vipers have a similar catalogue of building destruction in their wake?

Would love to hear your flattened-building stories.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlton_Tavern#:~:text=It%20was%20illegally%20demolished%20in,Blitz%20during%20World%20War%20II.

Oh and the womens’ unit where ds2 and my niece were born. It’s flats now. Shame

My home was demolished to allow for the building of Elephant and Castle shopping centre.

Another one with rubble in my past:

The Beach Swimming Baths in Aberdeen, We would visit on our annual stay. at my Grandma’s It was salt water fed, and had the changing rooms around the side with those saloon doors. Very very high board as I remember ( but I was small)

The primary school I went to in the late 1960s/ 70s. It was new then, but has since been replaced.
The secondary school,I went to is about to be demolished.
Like several PPs, the first nightclub I went to, underage, ‘chip pan fire’ now a car park.
The local hotel/ bar/ music venue - now fancy housing estate
The lecture theatre at Uni - new in the early 89s, proved too expensive to heat and repair.
Likewise the ‘new’ library at Uni, now replaced with a more modern version.
What this tells me is that I am quite old, if I am outlasting 1970s architecture.

My secondary school was demolished and there is now an office building on the site. I did my nurse training at a London teaching hospital that was founded in 1740. This was mostly demolished all except for the front block as this was listed. Everything behind this has been rebuilt and it’s now the new Town Hall.

The hospital where my daughters were born.

The City of London. When I was a child I used to walk around the City with my father on Sundays. In the Sixties there were still bomb sites, and the rest of the City would have been easily recognised by Dickens, and quite a bit of it by Pepys, especially the waterfront.

Several of the Docks were still working, the cranes and the warehouses were still there. You could go round the Docks on a small boat and see the sugar and grain being unloaded.

The City started to be redeveloped then, but there were still parts like Bleeding-heart Yard (Little Dorrit) and the railway arches by Holborn in the Eighties which were pretty much unchanged. All gone, now.

Quite a few including three of the four schools I went to, and a big office block containing the head office of a bank in London where I worked in the mid 80's.

The hospital where I was born in Dalston, E8.
It was called the German Hospital as it was set up by German Lutheran nuns, according to a late aunt who used to work there as a sister .
(She met my uncle, my mum's DB, when he visited my mother and I after I was born.)
It was off Graham Road and I believe the area was ostensibly where the original Easternders was supposed to be set. (Not that there is or was, an Albert Sq.)
I thought it had been demolishd but it seems it was closed and just converted to flats. I was surprised to find it on Google maps. Probably very expensive indeed these days.

Twin Towers
Brighton West Pier (suffered a "mysterious" arson attack ... I simply can't imagine who was responsible)
My childhood home - illegally demolished and a horrible, out-of-keeping giant house built on the site without planning permission
A beautiful Victorian swimming bath in Huddersfield

I used to live on the 9th floor of a block of flats that fell over during an earthquake. Glad I'd moved out by then! Two of my old schools - one is a housing estate, the other derelict. The club I spent my best teenage nights in is a block of flats. 😭 Hopefully they've got new non-sticky carpets. Other clubs variously: burnt for insurance scams; redevelopments; demolished as derelict and landbanked. I've been alive a long time though and things change. In a way it's good I've lasted longer than buildings.

This thread is making me think of that song Come Dancing.

Council tried to demolish it in the 60s during a blitz on classic wonderful old buildings that was en vogue at the time.

Thank goodness it was saved. St Pancras was also nearly pulled down, but for everything that was saved there were so many fine old buildings in towns and cities all over the country which were needlessly demolished.

Good question but nothing I've considered until now.

My Infant school
Lower site of Secondary School

Pleasure Island, Liverpool - worked there as a student.

Animation World, Liverpool - worked there too.

The Social Club that we held our evening reception in.

The pub where dh and i met. I worked there whilst at college and he was a customer. We also had friends there and did a lot of our "courting" (as my mum would say!) there. On top of that it, was a very lovely pub with a great history. It's sad as they pulled it down and built houses on the site. We live a couple of roads away from it now and i think of it fondly (and a bit sadly at it's demise) whenever I pass it.

Oh I've remembered another....the site where we had our wedding reception. It was a hall attached to a pub. The pub's still there but the hall is demolished and is now a Travelodge.

The old Wembley

it was iconic

One of the buildings at my secondary school.
Shopping precinct in our local town (it was used to film an episode of Eastenders involving a car crash whilst awaiting demolition).
Fairfax House in Bristol. It's replacement The Galleries (built in the 80s) is going to be demolished and redeveloped.

Pub I used to drink in a lot at c.20 - now a car park. What a waste. It was a lovely building too.

The hospital building I was born in was demolished five years ago, 45 years after the great event.

The world trade centre (2m before)
my primary school
my iold church is a fire gutted shell
Cardi central ice rink
the Empire pool Cardiff
Debenhams Cardiff
Howells Cardiff

The Somerfield supermarket I worked at as a teenager. It’s now a car park. Due to the cheap surfacing where it meets the old Somerfield car park you can see the old plot perfectly, and can ‘walk around’ the store and fairly accurately pinpoint where my working life back in the early 2000s centred around. The checkouts and the tobacco kiosk and the deli counter.

I loved that job and was ever so happy there. I had lots of fun and had some lovely colleagues.

I always feel a pang of nostalgia when I drive into that car park. It was an era of my life and it’s weird to think all those people and that place is just parking spaces now.

Northampton bus station. Spent half of my childhood in there
Worth watching the video of the demolition on You Tube

I think so. (Chris is a Nottingham lad, ex copper) The replaced it with a big ice arena. Built over a road. It's strange seeing it when you can remember what it was before.

Some crackers on here.

I'd forgotten about Wembley - both the old stadium and the arena. Went to loads of gigs there - including Stevie Wonder . Also the old Brighton pier. It was so beautiful

I'd also,forgotten the old college I went to. Even the 'new' block - that famously cost £1m to build in the 1980s has now gone. Flats. Natch.

I guess some of it is progress. Better hospitals and schools, but a lot of it is architectural vandalism.

I've been thinking g about starting to take photos of my local london area as it's changed so much in last 25 years and I wish I'd started sooner. All those Victorian and Edwardian pics of old highs streets are so fascinating and we need a contemporary record (I guess google maps does it but not very artistically!

@Hollythedogwalker I forgot about that Bus Station!

Also, the parts of Dulwich Hospital they knocked down to build a school and new medical centre. For shame.

Sounds like Mr smiths

My secondary school was knocked down and a primary school was built on the site, which my son attends. It was a bit weird the first few times walking him down the very same drive that I used to walk down to school!

There used to be a big Co-op building in my town centre that was a department store and multi-storey carpark. They knocked it down a few years ago and a cinema is currently being built on the site.