Residents reveal their memories of the town's formative years at Washington 60 roadshows

Dr Jude Murphy reveals some of the things people have been talking about at the Washington 60 Memories Roadshows.

Transcript

00:00 Okay, will you just tell me a bit about what the Roadshow events are all about and what's

00:03 been brought in?

00:04 That's grand.

00:05 Well, the Roadshow events have been designed to get people thinking about their memories

00:10 for the sake of producing podcasts and photo collages.

00:16 All about their memories of what it was like to live in Washington before the New Town

00:21 came about, after, what it was like to grow up in the New Town and what it's like now

00:26 actually to get younger people involved, what it's like to grow up in Washington now that

00:32 the idea of it being a New Town is a thing of the past really.

00:36 So people have been bringing in all kinds of images.

00:39 This one woman today has brought in a whole load of street signs that she's photographed,

00:43 some from the past but obviously things that she's been photographing now as she's thinking

00:48 about how things have changed.

00:51 We've had people telling stories of their time down the pits.

00:55 We've had stories of people working in Saver Centre when it was all brand new and it was

01:00 the future.

01:02 We've had people talking about working at the Development Corporation, works outings,

01:09 the notorious, they had barbecues and all kinds of things.

01:12 The work-life balance in the Development Corporation sounds like it was great to be honest.

01:17 So there's lots of those kinds of stories but also lots of stories about the change

01:21 in landscape.

01:23 People who've maybe regretted the change from agriculture to being built over.

01:29 There was one guy who is actually an artist and he observed that when he does art things

01:36 with kids, kids will still draw a house with a chimney in spite of the fact you look around

01:42 Washington and hardly any of the houses have chimneys.

01:45 That's quite an interesting sort of past present thing that's been happening.

01:50 We've had people talking about where they were when Elvis died.

01:57 The fact that the RCA Records plant really got a new boost as a result of Elvis dying.

02:03 RCA Records was on the verge of closing and then suddenly they had to press a lot of records.

02:10 So there's lots of things like that.

02:11 We've had a woman talking about her time working in Timex and looking next door and they were

02:17 working on gyroscopes for the space programme.

02:21 Lots and lots of really interesting things like that.

02:24 An awful lot of people talking about working lives but also about some of the pubs and

02:30 the clubs and sometimes how they were sort of tied to their local pub and club because

02:36 the public transport maybe wasn't all that it should be.

02:41 A lot of people talking about the shops as well and the cinemas.

02:45 There was a cinema at Concord I think.

02:48 But I think there were others as well and people regretting the fact that now we don't

02:52 have one actually and I think that's a shame.