Sunday 27 September 2020

Gloucester re-imagined - Kings Square

I visited Gloucester this week whilst my car was being serviced. As a child and a teenager and most of my adult life, Gloucester has been our nearest City and with child 1 living there also, it's somewhere we still visit.

I don't like Gloucester City Centre and usually prefer to spend my time on the outskirts. But as a teen I would go to the cinema, to the left of this photo and loved nothing more than shopping in Debenhams which is to my right.

Gloucester has seen a lot of development over the years with the docks being turned into shopping, restaurants and apartments and new retail parks being established. There are quite a few empty stores/buildings in the city since the closure of BHS amongst others.

Kings Square used to have seating, water features and I remember the stepping stones over the water. It's been an ice rink, held small funfairs, markets etc, but in 2006 they drained the water after vandalism and this week it looked like this.


The plans as seen below appear to be to reintroduce the water features to the area, but I've no idea of the timescale involved.

This is what it looked like in 1979 photo used from Gloucestershire Live. I've taken my photo from the right of Debenhams department store, looking back this way.

It'll be a while before I go back into the City centre, but It'll be interesting to see how it develops and how long it takes.

Have you visited this area? Do you remember it looking like this? 




13 comments:

  1. King's Square looks terrible at the moment! I'd forgotten what it looked like in the 70s. There has been a lot of positive changes in Gloucester over the last 10 years or so, but King's Square hasn't quite happened yet. There has been a lot of talk about the developments, but I don't know the timescales either. No doubt whatever they were, they will have been put on hold for a while, thanks to Covid.

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    1. Am hoping they can turn Gloucester around soon or the city centre will just die

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  2. Such a shame it's fallen by the wayside.

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  3. I don't really know Gloucester to be honest (Cheltenham, yes, but not Gloucester). Driven past it many a time but not sure I've ever been to the centre. Whatever happens - and it clearly needs development - bet it'll take longer than it would in Dubai!

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    1. I'm not sure why they're redoing it almost the same as it was before because that didn't work

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  4. Oh dear, it does look very run down. x

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  5. It doesn't look very appealing, just hope the work is actually carried out to bring it back to former glory

    Thank you for linking up to #MySundayPhoto

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    1. I'm not sure there's much hope left for Gloucester

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  6. It doesn't look very appealing, just hope the work is actually carried out to bring it back to former glory

    Thank you for linking up to #MySundayPhoto

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  7. It looks so sad - hope they redo it soon #MySundayPhoto

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