Mrs H 🇬🇧 ... I'm a Nana now but doesn't anyone else crave how life use to be... Middlesbrough my home & always will be... The best years of my life yet we had nothing worth bragging about...We where all equal back then...

I grew up in Wicklow Street (still standing) and the closest I got to Cannon Street (a mile away) was St. Michael's School but a lot of this imagery is resonant with me.  Obviously Jesus does not save..... I think the man with the white stick limping along the apocalyptic abandoned street is the lucky one -at least he cannot see the disintegration around him.  Lampposts were our trees too, and we used to tie ropes around them and swing just like this.  Cobbled alleys, drainpipes and abandoned buildings were our playgrounds too.  I remember going around the alleyways catching blue bottle flies in a shrimping net and putting them into a milk bottle thinking I was ridding the world of germs!  I still remember how they felt careening into the palm of my hand covering the top of the bottle.  Those hooded children at 5.33 of the clip, whose rust-coloured jackets almost blend into the bricks behind them as if they were camouflage, looking like something out of an Aphex Twins video...?  Wow.  These clips are as artistic as a Picasso painting to me.  Thank you.

That felt like I'd just been dragged through some apocalyptic nightmare 😵‍💫

Its great that someone filmed this otherwise it would be completely be forgotten now. Thank you.

And people think it’s tough now ! I was 13 at this time, remember Newport even though I was from Portrack Stockton. Memories still vivid today

Very artistic and atmospheric.

❤ This is so sad,that old lady standing at her door ,probably spent all er life there,but watching children play and get mucky,those were the days xx

Oh this brings back memories we didn't move from there until January 1974 it didn't seem that bad living through it

Lived in Melbourne Street just off Newport Road. Those back alleys and lamp posts brought back some memories.  Went to Newport school until going to Berwick Hills to live in late 50's. Then to Australia late 63. When I go to England try and get to this part of town.  So different now. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

Great documentary filming reminds me of Bridgeton in Glasgow exactly at the same time in '72 looked like this, the bricked up tenement flats where we lived, looks desolate and harsh looking at it now, but for me as an 8 year old it was just a great big adventure finding cats that given birth to kittens all over the place making ''saps'' bread steeped in milk and taking them to the kittens me and my big brother found and feeding  them sure we were covered in flea bites, but you didn't care at least you had done something good in helping baby kittens, best days amongst the sadness of my childhood, it helped me through it now on reflection, thanks for posting this Derek, all the best.

Lived in Edith Street, left early 74 to work in Shetland,  came back in summer of 75 to find our house empty and smashed up, they had moved to near Albert Park.....before the days of house telephones ( mail only to communicate)......people just wouldn't get it these days....we didn't have much but overall we were happy...

Little lad with wellies on in rain I wore mine in the summer

Tough times we all got it so much easier now

The Jesus Saves sign always amused me in the mid-60's as I wanted to know at which bank Jesus saved and how much he had accumulated over his time in Cannon St. Mmmm... always was a bit of a renegade...ha!  Great video... thanks for uploading. My Gran around the corner near there on Lamport St.. loved the area as a kid in the 50's.

My father was a pharmacist with a shop on Newport Road.  They knocked down the houses of the customers and waited for the shops to go out of business.

Jeez, being born in 2002 n seeing this compared to what boro is now

Excellent to see this again after 40 years. I was in Mbro High School at the time it was made and a couple of years younger than Derek. All hail our visionary Art Teacher, Tom Hume, who encourage us kids to make movies like this! The soundtrack is by "Tonto's Expanding Head Band". Well, it was the seventies...

Thanks for the video, very enjoyable
I lived on Theodore Street for a while  with my gran in the mid 60's. I went to Archibald infant school and fondly remember the Sunday school there too.
For years into my adulthood, I had reoccurring nightmares about Newport Bridge even though I had no fear of being on the bridge at all 😊

I was watching this and thinking I left Newport in Jan 1973 to join the Army at 15 and was wondering at the run down housing and thinking I don´t recognise this desolation.
But I was from Newport Gwent and now realise why so many recruits were from this area.
Maybe the title should reflect this?

Great video, it wasn't so doom laden back then. Great community. I remember New Year's Eve was a big deal. People used to "first foot" when the ships sounded their horns and traditionally a bag or sock containing a small piece of coal and fat was handed over to the person who let you in at midnight. There was a club with a great history on Newport road from Sloop's, the Bier Keller, the Rock Garden (saw The Damned there) and The Arena with others inbetween. Newport Bridge was always my favourite bridge, the chains and counterweights can still be seen though it's been bolted down for decades.