Why this, why now?
Ok my little cotton buds I'll tell you. It's because 168 was the number on Edith Walk that we moved into when this building opened, and today is day 168 as it says up there in the title zone, it really is as tenuous as that. As well as being the first into 168 Edith Walk I was also the last person to go in it after gaining entry to the block during demolition, risking life and limb, clambering about on bits of dangling reinforced concrete at great height.
There would probably have been some irony in me falling off as it would have been not far from where the same thing happened to a friend many years earlier. If you ever walk through a patch of sand at the bottom of a tall building then spare a thought for the person whose remains it is soaking up. That isn't a joke. Suppressed memories, like the seeds of a poppy germinating in disturbed ground or the Magicicada septendecim emerging after 17 years, can come back suddenly out of the blue right under your picnic blanket to give you a bit of a fright. Anyway, let's leave any unpleasantness behind us, onward and upward, or in this case downward.
With the skill of a William Henry Fox Talbot, a Man Ray or a Dorothea Lange, all forced to work under less than ideal conditions with chemicals in constantly varying temperatures, these images were acquired by stealth and some other stuff, the details of which may not be released due to the fifty-year rule. That's not an excuse for the crap images, honestly.
The front side here facing toward Infirmary Road from the Langsett Road end.
The end where the Midland Bank used to be before it became a housing office, the office is round the other side and further up the hill. Honestly, don't ask me for directions what does your satnav say? If you look carefully you might just be able to make out one of Noddy Holder's discarded stack heels from the intro to Slade in Flame - here's Kermode luvving the film up.
The bike and sidecar in that clip are going up, then down Whitehouse Lane, then coming back towards Whitehouse Lane over the back of Kelvin. They drive past the flight of stairs at the end, that's the stairs shown below in a heap, before going round the front and emerging out of the car park where we used to play. The film makes the place look more
If you've only lived in suburbia in a semi, and had the constraints of middle class ambition and the dream of attending Central Saint Martins, then you've missed far too much. Give up your natural finishes, your harmonious interaction with the surrounding landscape, your bi-fold doors and go and live somewhere that more encompasses the Bauhaus ethic for goodness sake, live a little, go back to the 1970s and one of these magnificent structures.
Mmm, lots of juicy rubble, probably now forming part of the motorway network along with pulped Mills and Boon romantic novels.
In the words of Alan Partridge, "I've no idea what that is." Looks vaguely like something after the blitz.
Back in the past, looking out of my bedroom window at night I could see fires, furnaces a factories all over the place, it was a great view. The sound never died down, there was always the noise of the hammers - that's big fuck-off hammers for belting huge white-hot steel blooms, not the things you knock nails in with. At one time my dad worked on the hammers with his dad, lobbing huge pieces of steel around, "it's all in the timing". My timing was perfect and I managed to avoid all interaction with the steel industry other than IT related work, no legs burned-clean-off-by-white-hot-steel here, oh no.
Reinforced concrete is surprisingly difficult stuff to deconstruct, it remains strong and maintains structural integrity even when there's quite a bit of it missing (can it have structural integrity if much is missing?) Clambering about at great height on what were the tiniest bits of it didn't have much effect other than it gently bending and bouncing, really, you had to be there - pretty sure it was perfectly safe, no one ever dies dicking about on demolition sites...
The ball and chain chipped through a large section of the nearside of the building before then working its way along the length to get through to the far side.
Fun factoids:
The name of the style of architecture, Brutalist, is derived from the French béton brut (raw concrete) the name used by Le Corbusier to describe his choice of material.
The height of Kelvin Flats was 43m compared to Hyde Park Flats (block B) which towered over them at 56m, whereas the relatively diminutive Park Hill Flats come in at just 39m.
43m is the same height as the Blue Cross Centre in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada.
Construction of the flats was completed in 1969 with the flats being occupied in sections from the Albert Terrace Road end while internal work was finalised.
Demolition started in March 1995 and was completed in 1996.
My grandmother lived on the flats from start to finish and loved the place, she didn't want to move. They didn't demolish the building around her and she did actually move out.
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