New Town Old Town...

Here's a handful of films about postwar new towns and their old town problems – how to integrate historic villages and towns into new ones being built.

The first is from Hemel Hempstead in 1969. Here the Civic Trust was helping restore the old town, as the new one was coming to completion. We see the Georgian shop fronts and houses being restored, alongside the postwar splendour of the new. The Pathe voice-over talks of making the old town fit for the space age, and here everything looks clean and colourful and well tended.

In this next film we see the village of Milton Keynes in North Buckinghmshire, a home to 150 people, about to become part of the largest post war new town. The narrator shows us Harlow by contrast, which is looking to the 1970s in its spirit of modernity.

Then there's this 1946 film of minister Lewis Silkin, Mr New Town, visting the village of Stevenage. It captures the feelings of unrest and fear among the residents on hearing a new town was to be built on their doorstep. None so fantatical as resident E M Forster, though, who wrote and spoke out against the idea. The station was rebranded 'Silkingrad' for the trip, and the minister looks pretty uncomfortable throughout the film.