Bracknell college (1:58) was knocked down and rebuilt. It re-opened in 2009, so only 14 years out of date on that one. It looks completely different now. The town centre was demolished and rebuilt. It re-opened 5 years ago. Again it looks so much better now.
I loved going to college in Blackburn back in the 90's and it was fine then - no different from any ordinary town in the UK, it has good places and bad places. Just because the town has council houses and poor areas does not make it ugly. This didn't show the stunning area around Blackburn (which are still classed as Blackburn) like Tockholes and Pleasington.
There some beautiful rural spots around Blackburn, I am fortunate to live close to beautiful scenery and attractive buildings. I think your presenter has sought out the worst possible aspects which gives a very slanted view ....very selective journalism. Your narrator could do with a crash course in pronunciation, very poor.
Hemel Hempstead is not bad at all. It's prosperous and there's an Old Town as well as the not-so-aesthetic sprawl of commercial buildings and mid/late 20th Century housing districts.
Crime-ridden Maidenhead? It’s a really pleasant thames town to live in, not particularly beautiful town centre, true, but the riverside is delightful, currently undergoing a revamp.
It is interesting to listen to someone who appears to value good architecture spending so much time criticising archtects. Therein lies the problem. Since 1947 we have, in this country, embarked on a mass of different schemes whereby we were supposed to plan and design ouselves into a modern world. The truth is that it does not work - the mores, the delights and the great ideas of the present do not seem to manage longevity. As an historical geographer specializing in both town centre dynamics and the evolution of English settlements, it never ceases to amaze me about the arrogance of town planners and urban architects. They impose their ideas and demand that they be appreciated, and of course demand that the rest of us make them work. Just two decades later, the next generation are coming along criticising the work of their predecessors and demanding that they be replaced with something meeting the ideas of the day. Most of the rest of us would call this building in obselescence. The issues with town centres today has more to do with public policy and the failures brought about by the laws of unintended consequences. It has more to do with economics than the built environment. If you look at the most successful towns, they all have areas of deprivation in one form or another (according to the indices of multiple deprivation over the decades (IMD)), but what constitutes a successful town? Is it the state of the architecture or whether it works for the people that live there? My personal feeling is that those towns whose archtiecture has evolved over many centuries are the most beautiful and pleasing to the eye. They may not be the most user friendly in terms of modern access requirements or able to offer the type of premises often demanded of town centre occupiers - so which aspect must we use as the key measure for measuring the success of a town? I am a native of Wiltshire. My home town of Marlborough is a wonderful example of a town that reflects the whole panoply of its historic past - in both architecture and in form and function. The same might be said for our local cathedral city, Salisbury - a city that was planned from inception because the predecessor settlement at Old Sarum was not longer responsive to the needs of the decision makers. Salisbury boasts some wonderful vistas and supreme examples of mediaeval architecture. However, are these really the best towns? Most locals will consider Swindon with utter disdain - but then we have to consider the economics. Why did Swindon evolve during the last century to become the scale it did? Its offering of economic opportunities in a county previously dominated by traditional agrarian economics which were shedding people through mechanisation was a veritable haven for huge numbers of people. Sadly, its expansion was in a period dominated by the very town planners and urban architects who live for the moment and utilised what are now thought of as shoddy materials. So, how must we consider Swindon in relation to its Wiltshire neighbours, or to Oxford off to the East, or the Cotseowlds off to the west and north west? Many of the pretty towns are now entirely unaffordable to large numbers of people. The highest level economic activity has disappeared leaving comparatively low paid work in its place. It is all very well viewing a town and critiquing its visual amentiy - as you are doing in this video, but you need also to be challenging and asking the question why? It is not, as seems to be implied, the fault of the people living in thse places but rather the whole raft of public policy that denied most towns the ability to simply evolve. The core activities of traditional towns were swept away, leaving the towns without a discernable purpose and no longer meeting the needs of the pople living there. It was the town planners and the urban architects who have helped drive that movement!
Swindon's David Murray John tower and Brunel Centre are each among the best of their kind. I'm also.sorry that so much of the work of Casson Conder & Partners has disappeared. The aesthetic disappointment of post-WW2 Swindon is the peripheral housing, much of it designed by the LCC. Swindon's rise to what it is today saw two milestones, neither of them exactly evolutionary. First, the Great Western Railway established its works there, transforming and supplementing the old town on the hill, speculative workers' housing far exceeding the original company town by 1900. Then in 1952, led by the town clerk, it applied for the expanded town scheme, the Conservatives' riposte to Labour's New Towns, precisely to have a cushion should the works decline or close. Highly interventionist for the 1950s but the ongoing economic contraction that followed from about 15 years later made it the norm that local authorities in such large centres of employment consider this aspect of their future.
Old town, Gadebridge park, Grand union canal? Yes. The “newer” part with the Marlows seen as the centre, absolutely not. Sorry I feel nothing but a sense of misery and despair walking through there
Birkenhead was once dubbed the armpit of the North in its heavily industrialised and then blighted state in the 70s and 80s,but it didn't appear any uglier than countless other places we visited when we went there in 1992 and again in 2000.
There's a complete lack of research here ; Bracknell town centre was redeveloped and opened over five years ago , none of what you show exists in the town centre now. Google and You Tube searches would have stopped you embarrassing yourself
If you're going to slag off somewhere, get your facts straight. Rhyl is not and never has been in the county of Flintshire. Denbighshire is a county in its own right. Yes, the sea front is a bit run down, but there has been a huge amount of investment in recent years. Some of your pictures are over 10 years old. If you cannot get things right, then I suggest that you just give up and go away.
The problem with these kinds of 'superlative' lists, is that they must, by definition, be based on opinion. One person's idea of beautiful may not be shared by another
Rhyl was in Flintshire from when the English turned up until 1974. Then Denbighshire and Flintshire were merged to form Clwyd (except for Llandudno that went from Denbighshire to be part of Gwynedd and the bit around Corwen that became part of Clwyd from Merionethshire). In 1996 Clwyd was broken up again to be Denbighshire, Flintshire, Wrexham Maelor and a bit of Conwy County). The border was shifted with the odd effect that the two largest towns in old Denbighshire (Wrexham and Colwyn Bay) aren't in new Denbighshire and the two largest towns of new Denbighshire (Rhyl and Prestatyn) weren't in old Denbighshire. Still "this community in the county of Denbighshire that lies within Flintshire" really doesn't make any sense at all.
These sort of lists are a waste of time. Most places have positive attributes and using photography to support a biased view is unethical. I've been to the UK several times. and could list many places worse than these-at least on appearances and function. What do the residents think? I remember many years ago that Hill was voted the worst town./city in Britain How is it nowadays>
Well, this Englishman uses both. Let's not be too chauvanistic about the means to measure things. I can also convert back to pounds, shillings and pence, but much good that does me!
@@gunner678 It may be easy but is it practical? I can happily work in acres, roods and perches, I understand furlongs and other measures, but whilst I understand them and can convert them I can see absolutely no advantage over the simplicity of a decimal system. This clinging to pints and miles is not a piece of enhanced patriotism, it is a nonsensical piece of simple chauvanism.
@@johnorchard4 I done an electrical/mechanical engineering apprenticeship 50 year ago. I am fully conversant with both metric and imperial measures and SI units. I would much prefer if everything was metric. But that is not the point . This country measures distances in miles, our road signs and speed limits are in miles per hour. So, getting back to what I originally said, if you are going to talk about distances in the UK, use the correct terms.
Those Downtown in those places do look kind of strange! Blackburn of them I would at least love to visit so I can see that Stadium where those Blackburn Rovers play their home games of Football which we also call Soccer in America. The State I live in the USA Gets WAY TOO MUCH RAIN. And I NEVER Tolerate the rain. So I for places to live would prefer to live where I can have less rain. But your Nation of the United Kingdom in general I’ll happily go to at least to visit. As long as I am able to go on a time of the year rainy days are not likely to happen!
I cannot argue with Slough being near to the top spot. The town centre itself is absolutely appalling. The council recently went bankrupt and so there's little chance of any improvement any time soon. The people were very nice, but all thought their town centre was utterly soullessly dreadful. Surprised to NOT see Skelmersdale or Milton Keynes at least mentioned. That is perhaps a bit unfair as they are effectively "new towns" so they only really have sixties architecture to play with, which was never going to be good. Also Harlow was dreadful when I had to be there a few years ago. Not OLD Harlow. That was nice. But Harlow itself. Again a sixties abortion. I have to say that more often than not in the video though, the narrator said some part of this or that place was dreadful, but then the image was shown, quite often, of actually quite a nice, even fairly historic and attractive building. It just detracted a bit from the effect the originator was trying to convey perhaps I thought. But basically I couldn't massively fault your suggestions overall.
Quite agree although Slough, at one time, had a large number of buildings with architectural and/or historical interest, however, the council's modernisation drive was most noticeable when the local rag ran a story about the loss of a historical building being replaced by an office block - the historical building was a garage built on the site of herschels house.
@@leonardpierce7276 Yes, some older residents I spoke to, did say that the soulless monstrosities that are the current town centre, were once quite lovely and historic, but the council and the seventies and eighties got in the way.
The poet John Bretenan wrote a poem encouraging the Germans to bomb Slough although the locals probably woukd have regarded that as a civic improvement initiative !!!
I take it this is tongue in cheek... Hemel Hempstead is nowhere near being the ugliest town, as seen in the pictures used. Port Talbot? Stevenage? Colchester? Bedford? Blackpool?
I don't think Birmingham qualifies because it is a city. I was there a couple of years ago for the first time since the 1990s & it had changed so much that I didn't recognise the place.
Go up onto those hills outside Burnley on a fine day and you get a great view of the rolling landscape that surrounds it. When I was there in 2001 there were still some of those old mill chimneys dotted around that Fred Dibnah hadn't got to yet,giving it that that archetypal rugged northern feel.
Hatfield’s not that bad “ the town centre has never been that great but compared to neighbouring WGC on the plus side it has loads of car showrooms now .
Bracknell, Maidenhead and Slough are only a short distance from where the Queen lives at Windsor. Surprised about Fort William the main town in the beautiful Scottish Highlands with Inverness. Not surprised about towns near Glasgow such as Cumbernauld, Paisley, Hamilton, East Kilbride, Motherwell.
This is without question the stupidest video I've ever come across on You-Tube. Of course it certainly would help if the narrator had a reasonable command of the English language and could pronounce the names properly. Fort William ?? really ?? my Canadian wife on her first visit to Scotland thought that Fort William was a beautiful town ,, I agree. All you really have with this rather stupid clip is someone's opinion, that's all you have. Take one hundred individuals and ask them ,,, guaranteed ever answer will be different. Similar to the post that a chip shop in London was " the best fish and chips in the U.K. " ,, the individual by self admission had never been to Scotland nor Ireland nor Wales.
Bracknell doesn't seem to have a soul. It's a rambling group of buildings that don't really compliment each other. I was at the joint services Staff College there years ago and I really missed the old Camberley campus and the town.
Fort William should not be on the list, you missed Bridgwater it is the joke of the West Country and we hate it. I have been to Fort William and people of the highland literally have nothing so this is a vital hub for them,
I must admit I wasn't terribly struck on Bridgwater when we stopped there in 2003 on our way to Minehead. It didn't look particularly ugly from what I saw,but I found it somehow a little depressing.
This is one of the problems with these simplistic generalisations, such as is presented by this video. The narrator mentions in one town a couple of factors measured by the Index of Multiple Deprivation - he cited, from memory, crime and income. The irony about the IMD measures is that another relateds to accessibility. This includes the idea of affordability in the area. So, the most desirable places almost always have great scores on income and crime, but fail miserably on accessibility.
In truth they have been demolishing much of the architecture of the 1960s and replacing it with architecture of the 2010/20s - which means that by 2080 people will be saying, god, what awful stuff that is we need to demolish it and start again! It does nothing for the performance of the town and less for the environment.
At least there's none of the towns I have ever lived in on this list . And I was born and raised in Hull which was previously No1 in the list of Crap towns a few years ago and I was quite proud of that ironic accolade.
Having been born in Blackburn and lived here most of my life, I agree that there are many problems here. However, there are surrounding towns with much bigger problems , proven by the fact Blackburn attracts visitors and shoppers from these surrounding areas as it has benefitted from recent regeneration. Better research would have easily discovered this.
I do believe Cumbernauld centre is used as a perfect example of how not to plan a town centre for Architectural students. I have been there. A mate of mine lives there. That shopping centre monstrosity is breathtakingly ugly
@@markhealey3831 I went through there on a road trip about 5 years ago (I’d stopped in the Tesco) and couldn’t believe how horrible the place looked. I live quite close to Cwmbran and I actually thought it made Cwmbran look lovely 😳
Stoke-on-Trent is made up of six towns, probably all make the top ten, Tunstall (dump), Burslem (hell hole), Hanley (spice ridden), Fenton (dead) Stoke (deprived) and Longton (Keep driving)...my home town.
I saw a bit of Burslem as a visiting team supporter at an FA Cup tie at Port Vale in 1988. It was interesting to see some vast vats and other remnants of the old pottery industry,as well as rows of little old workers' cottages with their rooftops descending down hilly little roads.
I have lived in Crawley all my life, where I live is quite pleasant, but the town centre is dire, and building the mall was a monstrous white elephant.
@@tigermoth61 I lived in Burgess Hill, and worked in Crawley a few years ago. I have to admit there are some nice parts of Crawley, but the centre isn't great, and there are some scary parts! But I did have a lot of friends there. However I live in Central Scotland now, which has quite a few ugly places, but you don't have to travel far to get to the nice bits!
You forgot to put Yeovil on top. They got what you need and nothing is done to wrap that up in something remotely nice. Very strange because the area might be considered nice.
What are your criteria for ugliness and beauty, respectively? Vox populi, architects, your own, subjective opinion? I find no obvious connection between the video itself and your commentary; the latter seems to consist of rather condescending remarks about towns that, for various reasons, seem to struggle with an economic downturn. Does that, in itself, merit the label "ugly"?
I think it would be easier to do a list of towns in the UK which aren't ugly. There are some lovely places, but about 90% of towns are shit. I live in a small town and even that's a complete dive.
We spent a night at the Inverlochy Castle Hotel there,and very nice it was too. While there I consumed the most expensive glass of whisky I've ever purchased,about £8 in 2005 prices.
Lol you can't include squaddie land....... (but I know what you mean, I can think of a few garrison towns not far off the mark. Then again several that are very nice, but Aldershot I agree).
The football ground has a nice little parkland attached to the end at the top of the hill,a couple of quaint old stands - one with a long red-and-blue-striped roof and one with a barrel roof - and one of the most hideous grey/brown concrete office/works building monstrosities behind one side.
@@jamesbarker5535 that's just as fair as you think. Because I never get to see the ugly side of Bracknell when I visit on New Year's Eve or on New Year's Day
Maidenhead is Theresa May’s constituency and very wealthy. Blackburn is not all bad, it has a nice park in the centre and a nice cathedral. Luton is awful.
@@gunner678 I already agree, but my Parents and I never get to see the ugly side of Bracknell when visiting Bracknell on New Year's Eve or on New Year's Day.
Famous for being the home town of the Jackson 5 brothers,Michael and all,and their sisters and family. I read a wonderfully damning piece about Gary in the comments on the Crap Towns website from a US correspondent a good decade and a half ago. Among the things he said was that the place was enveloped in a brown metallic haze/smog,that the air tasted of battery acid,that the police wouldn't let them park their coach in a certain place in case its wheels were stolen or something like that,and that Gary was the only place said correspondent had seen children walking about in the street without shoes on and that he'd travelled extensively in Africa and the Middle East.
'Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough, the cabbages are blooming now'....... good list but I can only assume that you did not include Newport in South Wales, because it is a city (for some bloody reason). Ugly aimless place!
Can we please have the distances in miles? Kilometres are used for sporting events and very little else! So erm, where is Coatbridge? Swansea? Barrow-in-Furness - and Milton Keynes??
Swansea doesn’t belong on that list, they have many parks and the beach as well as more middle class areas with lots of students and amenities like Uplands and Sketty with the scenic Gower nearby. The grey concrete parts of the North of Swansea are somewhat less impressive, admittedly.
Bracknell college (1:58) was knocked down and rebuilt. It re-opened in 2009, so only 14 years out of date on that one.
It looks completely different now.
The town centre was demolished and rebuilt. It re-opened 5 years ago. Again it looks so much better now.
centre of Bracknell has been completly redeveloped the pictures shown are 5 years out of date
ikr I live in bracknell
I'd like to know where you get your info because Maidenhead is certainly not knife crime riddled what the hell .
I'm not from Scotland but Fort William was on the west coast of Scotland when I visited, has it been moved?
I loved going to college in Blackburn back in the 90's and it was fine then - no different from any ordinary town in the UK, it has good places and bad places. Just because the town has council houses and poor areas does not make it ugly. This didn't show the stunning area around Blackburn (which are still classed as Blackburn) like Tockholes and Pleasington.
There some beautiful rural spots around Blackburn, I am fortunate to live close to beautiful scenery and attractive buildings. I think your presenter has sought out the worst possible aspects which gives a very slanted view ....very selective journalism. Your narrator could do with a crash course in pronunciation, very poor.
Lovely round there
Walsall, Wolverhampton, Stoke?
West Bromwich is much more worst than any other town in the west Midlands 👍
Slough should definitely be top of this list
Hemel Hempstead looks great to me. I'm not sure at all of your appraisal.
Hemel Hempstead is not bad at all. It's prosperous and there's an Old Town as well as the not-so-aesthetic sprawl of commercial buildings and mid/late 20th Century housing districts.
Everything you said about Bracknell is out of date. The college has been rebuilt, and the town centre regenerated. You need to do better research
No how about Oldham in Lancashire, worst town ever, you would drive through it.
Of all the Lancashire towns,Oldham and Rochdale have had a particularly poor time of it in the last decade or two.
Some of these places look alright, you should take a look at Haverhill in Suffolk
1.coventry foles hill
2.coventry ball hill
3.coventry
As a city, Coventry fails to qualify for a list of towns.
Crime-ridden Maidenhead? It’s a really pleasant thames town to live in, not particularly beautiful town centre, true, but the riverside is delightful, currently undergoing a revamp.
Swindon? Portsmouth? Andover? Weston Super Mare? Barrow-in-Furness? Southampton? Colchester? Plymouth? Etc etc
Weston isn't that bad, better than other places such as, most of the West Midlands
It is interesting to listen to someone who appears to value good architecture spending so much time criticising archtects. Therein lies the problem. Since 1947 we have, in this country, embarked on a mass of different schemes whereby we were supposed to plan and design ouselves into a modern world. The truth is that it does not work - the mores, the delights and the great ideas of the present do not seem to manage longevity.
As an historical geographer specializing in both town centre dynamics and the evolution of English settlements, it never ceases to amaze me about the arrogance of town planners and urban architects. They impose their ideas and demand that they be appreciated, and of course demand that the rest of us make them work. Just two decades later, the next generation are coming along criticising the work of their predecessors and demanding that they be replaced with something meeting the ideas of the day. Most of the rest of us would call this building in obselescence.
The issues with town centres today has more to do with public policy and the failures brought about by the laws of unintended consequences. It has more to do with economics than the built environment.
If you look at the most successful towns, they all have areas of deprivation in one form or another (according to the indices of multiple deprivation over the decades (IMD)), but what constitutes a successful town? Is it the state of the architecture or whether it works for the people that live there?
My personal feeling is that those towns whose archtiecture has evolved over many centuries are the most beautiful and pleasing to the eye. They may not be the most user friendly in terms of modern access requirements or able to offer the type of premises often demanded of town centre occupiers - so which aspect must we use as the key measure for measuring the success of a town?
I am a native of Wiltshire. My home town of Marlborough is a wonderful example of a town that reflects the whole panoply of its historic past - in both architecture and in form and function. The same might be said for our local cathedral city, Salisbury - a city that was planned from inception because the predecessor settlement at Old Sarum was not longer responsive to the needs of the decision makers. Salisbury boasts some wonderful vistas and supreme examples of mediaeval architecture. However, are these really the best towns? Most locals will consider Swindon with utter disdain - but then we have to consider the economics. Why did Swindon evolve during the last century to become the scale it did? Its offering of economic opportunities in a county previously dominated by traditional agrarian economics which were shedding people through mechanisation was a veritable haven for huge numbers of people. Sadly, its expansion was in a period dominated by the very town planners and urban architects who live for the moment and utilised what are now thought of as shoddy materials. So, how must we consider Swindon in relation to its Wiltshire neighbours, or to Oxford off to the East, or the Cotseowlds off to the west and north west?
Many of the pretty towns are now entirely unaffordable to large numbers of people. The highest level economic activity has disappeared leaving comparatively low paid work in its place. It is all very well viewing a town and critiquing its visual amentiy - as you are doing in this video, but you need also to be challenging and asking the question why? It is not, as seems to be implied, the fault of the people living in thse places but rather the whole raft of public policy that denied most towns the ability to simply evolve. The core activities of traditional towns were swept away, leaving the towns without a discernable purpose and no longer meeting the needs of the pople living there. It was the town planners and the urban architects who have helped drive that movement!
Swindon's David Murray John tower and Brunel Centre are each among the best of their kind. I'm also.sorry that so much of the work of Casson Conder & Partners has disappeared. The aesthetic disappointment of post-WW2 Swindon is the peripheral housing, much of it designed by the LCC.
Swindon's rise to what it is today saw two milestones, neither of them exactly evolutionary. First, the Great Western Railway established its works there, transforming and supplementing the old town on the hill, speculative workers' housing far exceeding the original company town by 1900. Then in 1952, led by the town clerk, it applied for the expanded town scheme, the Conservatives' riposte to Labour's New Towns, precisely to have a cushion should the works decline or close. Highly interventionist for the 1950s but the ongoing economic contraction that followed from about 15 years later made it the norm that local authorities in such large centres of employment consider this aspect of their future.
Hemel Hempstead is actually quite attractive
Old town, Gadebridge park, Grand union canal? Yes. The “newer” part with the Marlows seen as the centre, absolutely not. Sorry I feel nothing but a sense of misery and despair walking through there
Maidenhead is a pleasant place to live if you can afford the house prices.
those pictures of bracknell are like 5 years out of date bracknells town center has been redeveloped, i would know because i live there
My Top 10:
No.10 - Highbridge, Somerset
No.9 - Blackwater, Hampshire
No.8 - Slough, Berkshire
No.7 - Frimley, Surrey
No.6 - Pangbourne, Berkshire
No.5 - Westward Ho!, Devon
No.4 - Ascot, Berkshire
No.3 - Bideford, Devon
No.2 - Thatcham, Berkshire
No.1 - High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire
Who here was thinking, I wonder if my home town/city was going to feature?
wasn't expecting my town 👍 (Denny) nobody knows we exist so it was a,,, pleasant (?) surprise
Terrible commentary.
Agreed. An Englishman talking about ‘kilometres’ and ‘realtors’.
How about Ellesmere Port, Rock Ferry or Birkenhead?
These aren't towns...they're boroughs...
Birkenhead was once dubbed the armpit of the North in its heavily industrialised and then blighted state in the 70s and 80s,but it didn't appear any uglier than countless other places we visited when we went there in 1992 and again in 2000.
Croydon, Reading, Bracknell, Milton Keynes.... Please add
Stevenage, Harlow, Crawley, Basildon, Hatfield, Hemel Hempstead, Luton, Watford, Southend on Sea…..
@@Redsleather yes Crawley, oh and Sutton Surrey, Liverpool, Derby, Nottingham, Hastings, Dover, Lowestoft, Peterborough
There's a complete lack of research here ; Bracknell town centre was redeveloped and opened over five years ago , none of what you show exists in the town centre now. Google and You Tube searches would have stopped you embarrassing yourself
If these towns are ugly than goes to show how crazy it is here in the US. Chester PA makes all these towns look like a golf country club
This guy’s judgmental attitude annoys me. Makes me wonder where he lives.. Balmoral? Kensington palace?
@ Doris Waddington - He lives in the Ukraine!
Luton should definitely be on that list. Hideous hole......
If you're going to slag off somewhere, get your facts straight. Rhyl is not and never has been in the county of Flintshire. Denbighshire is a county in its own right. Yes, the sea front is a bit run down, but there has been a huge amount of investment in recent years. Some of your pictures are over 10 years old. If you cannot get things right, then I suggest that you just give up and go away.
The problem with these kinds of 'superlative' lists, is that they must, by definition, be based on opinion. One person's idea of beautiful may not be shared by another
Rhyl was in Flintshire from when the English turned up until 1974. Then Denbighshire and Flintshire were merged to form Clwyd (except for Llandudno that went from Denbighshire to be part of Gwynedd and the bit around Corwen that became part of Clwyd from Merionethshire). In 1996 Clwyd was broken up again to be Denbighshire, Flintshire, Wrexham Maelor and a bit of Conwy County). The border was shifted with the odd effect that the two largest towns in old Denbighshire (Wrexham and Colwyn Bay) aren't in new Denbighshire and the two largest towns of new Denbighshire (Rhyl and Prestatyn) weren't in old Denbighshire. Still "this community in the county of Denbighshire that lies within Flintshire" really doesn't make any sense at all.
Hi, Thanks for the reply. That is interesting information.
These sort of lists are a waste of time. Most places have positive attributes and using photography to support a biased view is unethical. I've been to the UK several times. and could list many places worse than these-at least on appearances and function. What do the residents think? I remember many years ago that Hill was voted the worst town./city in Britain How is it nowadays>
Why is an Englishman describing distances between places in the UK in kilometres? The UK has always used miles, never kilometres.
Well, this Englishman uses both. Let's not be too chauvanistic about the means to measure things. I can also convert back to pounds, shillings and pence, but much good that does me!
10 k is 6 miles, very easy!
@@gunner678 It may be easy but is it practical? I can happily work in acres, roods and perches, I understand furlongs and other measures, but whilst I understand them and can convert them I can see absolutely no advantage over the simplicity of a decimal system. This clinging to pints and miles is not a piece of enhanced patriotism, it is a nonsensical piece of simple chauvanism.
@@johnorchard4 I done an electrical/mechanical engineering apprenticeship 50 year ago. I am fully conversant with both metric and imperial measures and SI units. I would much prefer if everything was metric. But that is not the point . This country measures distances in miles, our road signs and speed limits are in miles per hour. So, getting back to what I originally said, if you are going to talk about distances in the UK, use the correct terms.
Being a child of the 70s and early 80s meant that I grew up with both systems.
I think the commentary itself ranks as ugly especially bearing in mind the contorted pronunciations grammatical oddities and the tiresome repetition.
Agreed
I live close to Blackburn and have to say that the description given here was far too kind.
Those Downtown in those places do look kind of strange! Blackburn of them I would at least love to visit so I can see that Stadium where those Blackburn Rovers play their home games of Football which we also call Soccer in America. The State I live in the USA Gets WAY TOO MUCH RAIN. And I NEVER Tolerate the rain. So I for places to live would prefer to live where I can have less rain. But your Nation of the United Kingdom in general I’ll happily go to at least to visit. As long as I am able to go on a time of the year rainy days are not likely to happen!
You forgot Croydon.
If you’ve seen The Office( the original Uk 🇬🇧 one). You should know It was set In Slough.
I wish you could search for a place and find if a town/city appears on any list
Dewsbury?
Have a look at Lowestoft!
I cannot argue with Slough being near to the top spot.
The town centre itself is absolutely appalling.
The council recently went bankrupt and so there's little chance of any improvement any time soon.
The people were very nice, but all thought their town centre was utterly soullessly dreadful.
Surprised to NOT see Skelmersdale or Milton Keynes at least mentioned.
That is perhaps a bit unfair as they are effectively "new towns" so they only really have sixties architecture to play with, which was never going to be good.
Also Harlow was dreadful when I had to be there a few years ago.
Not OLD Harlow.
That was nice. But Harlow itself.
Again a sixties abortion.
I have to say that more often than not in the video though, the narrator said some part of this or that place was dreadful, but then the image was shown, quite often, of actually quite a nice, even fairly historic and attractive building.
It just detracted a bit from the effect the originator was trying to convey perhaps I thought.
But basically I couldn't massively fault your suggestions overall.
Quite agree although Slough, at one time, had a large number of buildings with architectural and/or historical interest, however, the council's modernisation drive was most noticeable when the local rag ran a story about the loss of a historical building being replaced by an office block - the historical building was a garage built on the site of herschels house.
@@leonardpierce7276 Yes, some older residents I spoke to, did say that the soulless monstrosities that are the current town centre, were once quite lovely and historic, but the council and the seventies and eighties got in the way.
The poet John Bretenan wrote a poem encouraging the Germans to bomb Slough although the locals probably woukd have regarded that as a civic improvement initiative !!!
@@ronnieince4568 😯😂😂
@@ronnieince4568 Sir John Betjeman (who also wrote Metroland and became Poet Laureate),but yes he famously did.
No mention of Chard? It's absolutely horrible
I take it this is tongue in cheek... Hemel Hempstead is nowhere near being the ugliest town, as seen in the pictures used. Port Talbot? Stevenage? Colchester? Bedford? Blackpool?
Colchester is a city now, not a town. Strange one.
I agree with your list, but Newport also, awful hole!
Colchester may be a lot of things, but it’s nicer to look at than run-down concrete $hitholes like Stevenage
My list
1. Blackpool
2. Scunthorpe
3. Birmingham
4. Rhyl
5. Cumbernauld
6. Burnley
7. Wigan
8. Middlesborough
9. Luton
10. Great Yarmouth
I don't think Birmingham qualifies because it is a city. I was there a couple of years ago for the first time since the 1990s & it had changed so much that I didn't recognise the place.
There’s only one “O” in Middlesbrough- if you’re going to diss a place at least get its name right…
I visited Middlesbrough twice and all the people we met there were wonderfully warm and friendly.
Go up onto those hills outside Burnley on a fine day and you get a great view of the rolling landscape that surrounds it. When I was there in 2001 there were still some of those old mill chimneys dotted around that Fred Dibnah hadn't got to yet,giving it that that archetypal rugged northern feel.
Hatfield Hertfordshire should be on the list
Hatfield’s not that bad “ the town centre has never been that great but compared to neighbouring WGC on the plus side it has loads of car showrooms now .
Hatfield is horrible
Bracknell, Maidenhead and Slough are only a short distance from where the Queen lives at Windsor. Surprised about Fort William the main town in the beautiful Scottish Highlands with Inverness. Not surprised about towns near Glasgow such as Cumbernauld, Paisley, Hamilton, East Kilbride, Motherwell.
This is without question the stupidest video I've ever come across on You-Tube. Of course it certainly would help if the narrator had a reasonable command of the English language and could pronounce the names properly. Fort William ?? really ?? my Canadian wife on her first visit to Scotland thought that Fort William was a beautiful town ,, I agree.
All you really have with this rather stupid clip is someone's opinion, that's all you have. Take one hundred individuals and ask them ,,, guaranteed ever answer will be different.
Similar to the post that a chip shop in London was " the best fish and chips in the U.K. " ,, the individual by self admission had never been to Scotland nor Ireland nor Wales.
Why are you mentioning Paisley, Hamilton, East Kilbride and Motherwell ?? ,,,,, just curious ,,,
I love Inverness, Fort William not so much
Bracknell doesn't seem to have a soul. It's a rambling group of buildings that don't really compliment each other. I was at the joint services Staff College there years ago and I really missed the old Camberley campus and the town.
@@gunner678 Bracknell is not far from Broadmoor.
Fort William should not be on the list, you missed Bridgwater it is the joke of the West Country and we hate it. I have been to Fort William and people of the highland literally have nothing so this is a vital hub for them,
I must admit I wasn't terribly struck on Bridgwater when we stopped there in 2003 on our way to Minehead. It didn't look particularly ugly from what I saw,but I found it somehow a little depressing.
Blackburn was voted the best for First time Buyers
This is one of the problems with these simplistic generalisations, such as is presented by this video. The narrator mentions in one town a couple of factors measured by the Index of Multiple Deprivation - he cited, from memory, crime and income. The irony about the IMD measures is that another relateds to accessibility. This includes the idea of affordability in the area. So, the most desirable places almost always have great scores on income and crime, but fail miserably on accessibility.
Probably because the housing is cheap as the place is a sh*t hole!!!
Hemel Hempstead are you kidding me it’s beautiful there
Ikr
A lot of the architects from the 60s through to now have a lot to answer for.
They must have scraped through their courses.
mostly ugly because of the god awful 1960s+ architecture .. seen croydon england lately ?
In truth they have been demolishing much of the architecture of the 1960s and replacing it with architecture of the 2010/20s - which means that by 2080 people will be saying, god, what awful stuff that is we need to demolish it and start again! It does nothing for the performance of the town and less for the environment.
At least there's none of the towns I have ever lived in on this list . And I was born and raised in Hull which was previously No1 in the list of Crap towns a few years ago and I was quite proud of that ironic accolade.
Oh, please - get rid of kilometres! We are in the UK and have MILES!
Wycombe
Burnley
Luton
Barrow
Dewsbury shannon matthews
I thought a picture of Port Talbot with the steel works in the background was going to appear here, it probably should do.
Having been born in Blackburn and lived here most of my life, I agree that there are many problems here. However, there are surrounding towns with much bigger problems , proven by the fact Blackburn attracts visitors and shoppers from these surrounding areas as it has benefitted from recent regeneration. Better research would have easily discovered this.
Think Blackburn deserves top spot. Leister is also mostly ugly as hell.
Leicester is a city though. That disqualifies it from a list of towns.
@@TheRip72 Oh my bad.
I dunno, my home town of Newport Gwent scores well :)))
In fairness to Cumbernauld, whilst it may be ugly the A8011 which goes through it is a fantastic drive
It's the M80 which passes through. Cumbernauld not the A8011. I should know as i live in the town.
@@h2ik373 Does it? I thought it was the other way round
Fort William is nice. I like it. This list seems random. And clichéd which makes it a bit silly in my view.
I do believe Cumbernauld centre is used as a perfect example of how not to plan a town centre for Architectural students. I have been there. A mate of mine lives there. That shopping centre monstrosity is breathtakingly ugly
@@markhealey3831 I went through there on a road trip about 5 years ago (I’d stopped in the Tesco) and couldn’t believe how horrible the place looked. I live quite close to Cwmbran and I actually thought it made Cwmbran look lovely 😳
Stoke-on-Trent is made up of six towns, probably all make the top ten, Tunstall (dump), Burslem (hell hole), Hanley (spice ridden), Fenton (dead) Stoke (deprived) and Longton (Keep driving)...my home town.
I saw a bit of Burslem as a visiting team supporter at an FA Cup tie at Port Vale in 1988. It was interesting to see some vast vats and other remnants of the old pottery industry,as well as rows of little old workers' cottages with their rooftops descending down hilly little roads.
Spice-ridden, I like that description.
Hmmm,unfortunately I don't think he means the condiment,seasoning and marinating variety.
Slough is Horrible I am so glad I have left
I’m from Slough aswell and i want to leave aswell 😂😂😂
What about Crawley?
Crawley is is ok,live in Peckham or Stockwell
I have lived in Crawley all my life, where I live is quite pleasant, but the town centre is dire, and building the mall was a monstrous white elephant.
@@tigermoth61 I lived in Burgess Hill, and worked in Crawley a few years ago. I have to admit there are some nice parts of Crawley, but the centre isn't great, and there are some scary parts! But I did have a lot of friends there. However I live in Central Scotland now, which has quite a few ugly places, but you don't have to travel far to get to the nice bits!
You forgot to put Yeovil on top. They got what you need and nothing is done to wrap that up in something remotely nice. Very strange because the area might be considered nice.
I live in wolverhampton lovely place 😍
Live in Darlaston near Walsall that needs a mention surely
Arnold in nottingham is the very worse for having its heart ripped out.
I'd love to see a tally of the towns that have appeared the most times on this channel.
Not been to Basildon Essex🙄
Grays too
Spoken like a person who never visited grimsby
Rhyl is a lot nicer than Walsall which was not mentioned on this list
Thamesmead?
What are your criteria for ugliness and beauty, respectively? Vox populi, architects, your own, subjective opinion? I find no obvious connection between the video itself and your commentary; the latter seems to consist of rather condescending remarks about towns that, for various reasons, seem to struggle with an economic downturn. Does that, in itself, merit the label "ugly"?
I thought it was going to be the town's with the ugliest people!
Have you been to Slough?
There would be too much competition even limiting the list to nine volumes.
I think Sunderland would have been no. 1 if they hadn't have called it a 'ehem'... city!
I think it would be easier to do a list of towns in the UK which aren't ugly. There are some lovely places, but about 90% of towns are shit. I live in a small town and even that's a complete dive.
Fort William is beautiful!
We spent a night at the Inverlochy Castle Hotel there,and very nice it was too. While there I consumed the most expensive glass of whisky I've ever purchased,about £8 in 2005 prices.
Beautiful or not, it's not as ugly as Stoke.
To be fair to all the towns on here this list is just Bollocks 🤷♂️😂
If you are going to claim these are ugly towns you need to give evidence. None of your photos show these are ugly towns.
Yet again Aldershot unfairly misses out on the shit list of undesirable places to live.
Lol you can't include squaddie land....... (but I know what you mean, I can think of a few garrison towns not far off the mark. Then again several that are very nice, but Aldershot I agree).
The football ground has a nice little parkland attached to the end at the top of the hill,a couple of quaint old stands - one with a long red-and-blue-striped roof and one with a barrel roof - and one of the most hideous grey/brown concrete office/works building monstrosities behind one side.
This guy must have something againts Berkshire
It's probably the architecture.
Chippenham Wiltshire
Bracknell is 9th in the top 10 Ugliest Towns in the UK? I never see any criminals or knife criminals when My parents and I visit Bracknell.
The point of the video is the visual appeal or the aesthetics of a place. It's not about crime.
@@jamesbarker5535 that's just as fair as you think. Because I never get to see the ugly side of Bracknell when I visit on New Year's Eve or on New Year's Day
Maidenhead is Theresa May’s constituency and very wealthy. Blackburn is not all bad, it has a nice park in the centre and a nice cathedral. Luton is awful.
It's just ugly.
@@gunner678 I already agree, but my Parents and I never get to see the ugly side of Bracknell when visiting Bracknell on New Year's Eve or on New Year's Day.
I knew it, I love in Slough!
I think you need to travel more 👎
Bracknell????????? Noooooo way.
Not true.
Town City is amazing
Why isn’t Middlesbrough on this list .....
Plenty of places in Northern Ireland could've made this list
Larne💀
Why concentrate too much in London
Try Peckham or Stockwell
Peckham isn't bad these days, since the Trotters moved on.
@@gunner678 Hahaha
A very arbitrary list....looks to have been compiled by outside contributors....
Brits ! You want UGLY? Take a trip to Gary, Indiana, USA
I saw a recent video of Gary, it seems deserted, does anyone live there?
USA in general these days my friend.
Famous for being the home town of the Jackson 5 brothers,Michael and all,and their sisters and family. I read a wonderfully damning piece about Gary in the comments on the Crap Towns website from a US correspondent a good decade and a half ago. Among the things he said was that the place was enveloped in a brown metallic haze/smog,that the air tasted of battery acid,that the police wouldn't let them park their coach in a certain place in case its wheels were stolen or something like that,and that Gary was the only place said correspondent had seen children walking about in the street without shoes on and that he'd travelled extensively in Africa and the Middle East.
Why Rhyl it’s nice I’ve been? It’s nit in the entire uk there is more ugly ones (unsubscribe) and it’s not disgusting
Harlow Essex
Bracknell is a lovely town
'Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough, the cabbages are blooming now'....... good list but I can only assume that you did not include Newport in South Wales, because it is a city (for some bloody reason). Ugly aimless place!
A bad list, badly presented.
Can we please have the distances in miles? Kilometres are used for sporting events and very little else! So erm, where is Coatbridge? Swansea? Barrow-in-Furness - and Milton Keynes??
Milton Keynes was remove from any list of towns earlier this year by being granted city status.
Just remember ten k equals six miles. Easy!
8 kilometres = 5 miles.
Swansea doesn’t belong on that list, they have many parks and the beach as well as more middle class areas with lots of students and amenities like Uplands and Sketty with the scenic Gower nearby. The grey concrete parts of the North of Swansea are somewhat less impressive, admittedly.
@@overlordnat I went there once on a day when it rained absolute cats and dogs,so it wasn't the ideal choice of time to take in the sights!
Clearly never been to Fort William.
I live i n braknell it isnt that bad
Swindon
Pity your talking out ya backside. There a hell of a lot more worse places than these on this list.
11. Yeovil