Days of the New Town exhibition opens at Padgate Library on 15th September 2021

The exhibition Days of the New Town: Remembering Padgate’s New Town Expansion Years opens to the public at Padgate Library, Insall Road, Warrington on 15th September 2021, 2pm. It will be free to visit throughout the coming months. The photographs recall the years Padgate and its surroundings changed forever as they became New Town expansion areas from the early 1970’s onward under the stewardship of Warrington and Runcorn New Town Development Corporation.

The photos are accompanied by an exhibition guide which features a foreword and specially commissioned poem from acclaimed poet Ian McMillan, whose first poet-in residence gig was at Padgate Arts Centre when it first opened in the early 1980’s.

The exhibition is a chance for residents to recall the early hopeful days of the New Town. Visitors will see images from one of the last New Town Development Corporations in the UK in the throes of creating spaces for a new community.

The exhibition is the first time images from the Warrington New Town Development Corporation archive have been shown in public. Delayed by the pandemic, but following on from the 50th anniversary of Warrington’s designation as a New Town in 2018, Poulton with Fearnhead Parish Council and York St John University have provided the funding to mount the exhibition of photographs digitised specially by the Local Archive office in Chester.

Padgate Library,
Insall Road,
Warrington,
WA2 0HD

Padgate Library contact phone number: 01925 818096

For more information on Padgate Library opening hours: https://livewirewarrington.co.uk/leisure-and-library-opening-hours

LiveWire Warrington Libraries Covid 19 information: https://livewirewarrington.co.uk/news/2480-livewire-libraries-update-from-monday-19th-july

Author: daysofthenewtown

I'm Susan Fitzpatrick, I am a lecturer in Human Geography at York St John University. My research interests revolve around how the idea of community is constructed in cultural, housing and regeneration policy. I am currently looking at the ways we can understand the evolution of the New Town in the UK, and how place making and identity intersect with the design principles of the New Town of Warrington, particularly the ecological planing approach pursued in the area of Birchwood.

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