ON SATURDAY I was making my way to Lansdown via The Shambles and came across a poster which was advertising the Annual Summer Exhibition of Stroud Local History Society which for my luck was within St Lawrence Parish Church and secondly was on now as the exhibition was due to close tomorrow and I had less than an hour before closing today.

I then started to view the exhibition of Stroud and the surrounding villages which I found very fascinating and informative.

Working my way through, a couple of elements of the exhibition stood out.

The main one being that Stroud town centre has lost a considerable number of its former buildings to make way for further development, commercial industrial estates and road widening schemes.

Looking at the former buildings lost to time, makes one wonder what if they had not been knocked down, a piece of our heritage would have been saved and was there really a necessity to knock them down in the first place?

It’s as if in the 1960s and 1970s there was little time by the council to really consider the long term plans for the town.

Some will recall the protests to protect the bottom of the High Street and the trees in Stratford Road, both of which were saved due to the efforts of locals with a common goal of preservation.

The same was seen more recently with the Hill Paul building which was saved from demolition in 2000/2001.

The other noticeable entry was a couple who in 1965 were seeking to purchase their first home.

His salary was £17-10S per week, or £910 per year.

The wife’s pay did not count towards a mortgage.

At the time you could purchase a newly built property at Callowell, off Farmhill Lane for £3,175 for a two bedroom semi-detached bungalow with garage, or £3,325 for a three bedroom semi with a garage or £3,850 for a detached three bedroom with garage.

Put another way 4.2 times salary bought you a detached three bedroom house.

In today’s money if we assumed an average salary of say £28,000 then 4.2 times = £117,600 which buys you today if you’re lucky a one bedroom flat.

Today, you’re looking more at just over £300,000 or 10.7 times average salary, so you can now clearly understand how Millennials can but dream.

Both illustrate well that the action of our ancestors affect us today, just as much as todays actions will effect generations to come.

Mistakes have been made in the past as schools of thought or key influencers at the time have placed their mark on society/planning policy only for the next generation to condemn such actions.

Market forces have gone on unchallenged as prices and the causes of house price inflation have been all too often ignored.

Today, we see over development as developers seek to build too many houses per plot and large gardens are lost to new dwellings.

Once they are built they will remain for centuries.

And once it’s gone and demolished it’s gone for ever.

We as a society, have a duty to protect what we have as the costs to try and re-instate once it’s gone become exponentially unviable.

Locally we only need to look at the Cotswold Canals Trust to see the time, man hours and costs needed to re-instate our past, abandoned in 1954.

Reinstating the canals is seen as a win win goal, just as seeking means to provide affordable housing and pleasant places to live and shop likewise provide a win win philosophy.