Author name: Richard Clarke

Bransholme public housing estate benefitted from a more thoughtful approach than had been the case at Orchard Park. For one thing, large areas of open ‘green’ space were left undeveloped thus giving much of the estate an expansive, rather than congested, feel, although in immediate localities the ‘terrace’ format was retained. However, these ample open […]

(I wanted to add two pictures of white flowering wild flowers currently (see blog 37), daisies and jack-by -the-hedge, this one of the vernacular names for this plant. However, this site as set-up does not like photos from my phone rather than camera, it wouldn’t upload the picture of daisies at all and the one

(This is post number 39 because the last one should have been number 38, not 37 again). With a development like Orchard Park Estate it’s hard to think of it just in an historical context as reputation-wise it comes with so much baggage. Ironically it’s the East European tenants who take it at face value

The photo above, Wikipedia credit ukhousing/images/8/8b/IMAG0239, shows Mildane, one of Orchard Park Estate’s 10 tower block housing units built in the 1960s. Until their staged demolition since 2002 these tower blocks formed a bold feature in the landscape visible across much of Humberside, this emphasising one of the potential advantages of tower block living –

Just a one blog break from the above title. The photo above shows a band of cow parsley growing along a hedge bottom beside the set-aside headland of an arable field. Early to mid May is the time when cow parsley suddenly seems to grow upwards a few inches overnight and come into flower with

(Above, Harold Wilson by an unknown photographer). Coming forward in time to the 1960s the ‘modernist’ movement dominated the scene. This was the decade when everything was going to become different typified by plastic household objects, mass car ownership, central heating, motorways, diesel trains, washing machines, ‘cubist’ building plans and prefabrication, these much influenced by