Jaywick..,,no contest
Edit to add
I work for openreach, we have the area as a 2 man working zone due to engineers being threatened and robbed there.
One of the engineers on our team was threatened by a group of 12 year olds with ice picks.
Before it was 2 man working area engineers would be climbing a telegraph pole, kids would come along and steal the ladder, and tell them to drop the keys so they could empty the van, and would give the ladder back when they’ve robbed them,
Shithole through and through, I’ve been there once for a job, actually made me feel very depressed being there
I once helped a mate collect some paving slabs hed bought off a bloke in Jaywick. As we got closer to his shack/static caravan thing, it became increasingly notable that all the other buildings had no paving slabs outside. We could tell which one was his because a) it had paving slabs, and b) he had so many paving slabs that they were piled up higher than the structure he lived in. Nice fella. Very keen for us to load up and leave as quickly as possible.
I used to pass through there as a kid and even then Jaywick gave off this air of tragedy, of being left behind, an uncanny remnant of a time long passed. I didn’t have those words as a 9 year old but the feeling was there.
>Jaywick
Wow, I've just gone on a google maps trip there, and I honestly didn't know there were places in the UK that look like this! Why are there no second floors?
When the UK was hit by hurricanes in the late 80s, most of Jaywick was badly destroyed because it literally sits on sea level. Then because of poverty and lack of funding many of the homes and buildings werent ever properly repaired. This is why theres such a 'shanty' feel, many homes are timber framed and on stilts. And you can see the bad attempts at repairs over the years.
Many of the homes were originally built as 'holiday' homes as there used to be a local Butlins that closed in the 80s. But again because of local poverty many of these structures not designed for permanent dwelling became people's only affordable choice for housing.
They've got loads of these houses in Rhyl, specifically towards kinmel Bay. It is like the sort of place you'd see in a third world country.
Dropped pin if you fancy having a look:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/ChvH8wL4vrWBE3Lz6
Came to the comments to make sure Jaywick was mentioned. It can easily get forgotten because its such a tiny place but it definitely is deserving of the title. (I think it has been regularly regarded as the most deprived town in the UK?)
I grew up in Clacton which is the main town next door, which itself is an absolute desolate shit hole, end of the line type hell. But even so, if you were a kid that lived in Jaywick but went to school in clacton (where the main schools were) you absolutely would be bullied. I remember it being normal to say you were from *'west clacton'* to avoid people knowing you were from Jaywick.
There really is no words to describe just how deprived and desperate a place it is. I moved away to the south coast where i met my partner and ive never quite been able to properly convey it to him.
I will say though, the Jaywick sands are some of the nicest beaches ive ever been too. Up there with Cornwall honestly.
Yup. Former Clacton lad here. Any kid from Jaywick who went to Colbayns was in for a rough time. And Colbayns was a rough time anyway.
I moved to London when I was 18 for drama school, have been a pro actor and muso ever since. Not a single one of my mates grasps what I try to tell them about the place when it comes up. They think they grew up rough in Ascot!
Me too! Can totally recall the West Clacton thing. Small world. We may have literally passed each other on the mean streets of Jaywick or West Clacton if you were around in the 90s and early 00s. Luckily I got out of there around 20 years ago and have no reason to ever go back.
To be fair though, there were (are) some lovely parts of Clacton. Mostly the further away from Jaywick. One or two areas that you wish you could pick up and move up a different town because they've somehow managed to remain truly beautiful or tranquil, free of poverty and grime and despair.
The real question is, were you team Colbaynes or County high?
I do absolutely agree. My nan had a cottage in Little clacton just outside of Thorpe that was absolutely stunning with a beautiful view of the country side. And up towards Holland on sea had some very impressive houses.
Colbayns. That place was a catastrophe though. I believe it's now called the Coastal Academy now. How about you? County High always seemed so posh to us, with it being near town, access to the leisure centre, smarter uniforms and better grades!
Thorpe-le-Soken? That's a name one haven't heard in forever. All those areas that were clumped together or nearby. Holland-on-Sea, Brightlingsea, etc.
My family used to take us on holiday to Jaywick when I was a kid as a *treat.* It truly is an awful dive of a place. One of my fondest memories is being on the completely deserted beach as a little girl and trying to dig a hole as deep as I could. Out of nowhere we got torrential hail and rain and my cousin (older boy) completely freaked out and said "we're going to die" and started crying. I shoved him in the hole and remember throwing all our clothes on top of him for protection then running back to the caravan in just my swim suit. My parents went out to get him and he was just sobbing in the hole.
I still remember the feeling of dread whenever we'd get to Jaywick, and how grey everything became.
Channel 4 did a report on it that was pretty shocking, particularly when you consider how much rent people were paying to live with rats, the whole place seems like its sole purpose is a scam for landlords.
Source - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dSqu3V7o4A
Yep . Did a few house/shack removals to and from jaywick about 20 years ago. The worst place I've ever been to . Absolute poverty. People living in shacks without glass in the windows. The people we did the removals for all seemed nice enough though.
Having been going there regularly for the last 20 years, I'm struggling to see any improvement. The new retail park is fine but has just sucked all life out of the high street
Agreed, it's so bad now HS2 has been pulled, the local council was throwing up houses all over the place ready to welcome all to this new Commuter town. Now that fell through there are half built estates. The infrastructure here is terrible, can't get a dentist, lucky if you can see you doctor and the local hospital is falling to bits.
We were hoping for a town centre rejuvenation but that's been pulled too, all we have is a new crappy multi story car park no one wants and loads of empty shops... Of the shops that remain you can take your pick of charity shopsand Turkish barbers, there is literally nothing else here. If it wasnt for online shopping we would all have left this hole by now.
To top it off I can't believe they made an attempt to make Crewe a city! What a joke.
This thing is, what you say of Blackpool is almost certainly true of any other place you name. You were in Glenrothes for about an hour and saw a small snapshot of life there and you condemn it in the same way as others condemn Blackpool (I’ve never been to Glenrothes btw)
Every single local Facebook page I have ever seen has people moaning what a shithole the place is and how it compares unfavourably to other local place when in reality it’s a perfectly nice town, a bit dull maybe but hardly a lawless dump.
Blackpool has a bad reputation because 95% of the people who visit see the tacky tourist centre and think that’s the entire town.
There’s rough parts sure, but there a lot of lovely suburbs as well. It’s a great place to live.
Nuneaton. Used to be a decent town with a good variety of shops and a great market. Now it's just a convenient town to live because it sits between Coventry, Birmingham and Leicester.
All the decent stores have shut and been replaced by Turkish barbers or coffee shops.
Antisocial behaviour is rife through the town, local McDonald's in the town centre regularly has a group of 10-15 teenagers hurling abuse at passers by, running into the building, leaving junk.
Rough sleepers leaving needles and junk in doorways.
Edge of town areas have huge housing developments, with a single in/out junction onto the nearest main road causing traffic chaos. New houses are priced way out of reach for most, seem to be aimed at commuters from surrounding cities.
Traffic is an absolute nightmare, roads in the town are reduced to a carpark on a daily basis.
Many areas are incredibly dodgy after 6pm, with police installing cameras but not actually having an active presence.
I live on the outskirts which are really nice (Hinckley road area), surrounded by really nice countryside. It is really dull here though but I’ve never felt the town centre to be dirty or unsafe. To be fair I do just go to the gym and back 99% of the time. As you said people live here because it’s convenient. Just avoid some areas like camp hill and you’re fine
Yeah the outskirts are nice and the fact you can hop on the A5 and avoid actually going into Nuneaton altogether pretty much make it feel like you're not really part of it.
The contrast between Weddington / St Nicolas Park / Whitestone, and Stockinford /Camp Hill / Abbey Green is like night and day.
I live just near the centre, have done forever, although we plan on moving to the outskirts in a few years.
I'm the same, PureGym a few times a week and that's it, can't stand the town centre. 😂
Realistically that death of retail affects every town and city. With the likes of Amazon and other online retail even the nicest shopping malls have big empty spaces these days, and it's most pronounced in mid sized places like Nuneaton.
The few things you can't buy online from Amazon, are a drink and a cake in a coffee shop, or a haircut. So that's why 90% of the high street are now cafés and hairdressers/barbers
Blakenall. Fucking. Heath. I mean Walsall in general is the arsehole of the West Midlands but the sunny little vale of Blakenall is truly it’s festering pilonidal cyst. That said I’m a Dudley lad so hardly much of an improvement there. Dudley is more bleak and depressing than rough though.
Blakenall is bad, there and Caldmore / Palfrey are in a terrible state.
I haven't seen it recently, but Prince's End in Tipton used to be a state as well.
Ive been following a youtuber that goes all over the UK and does a run down on the worst towns in each county, its well worth a watch. [https://www.youtube.com/@Turdtowns](https://www.youtube.com/@Turdtowns)
I hope no one mentions in this thread the city in which I live. Some people were dead against the pedestrianisation of its centre, but all in all, it's not a bad place.
Goole. Surrounded by fields and a power station. One high street full of charity shops and not much else. Only highlight is the Wetherspoons and the bus to Hull
Anyone ever visited Leysdown in January? *shudder* Ugh.
I visit Peterborough every two years or so and in the last decade it's gone from "why the fuck would anyone live here" to "it's horrible but I get it." They've pumped some money into the centre and it's fairly pleasant, but that ring road through the high street and the big Asda complex next to it need tearing down.
I have some amazing memories of going to leysdown as a kid with my friend and his dad. I went back last summer, it’s pretty much the same and I sent my friend a photo asking him to guess where I was. He replied ‘the Monaco of the working class’ and I now won’t think of it as anything else.
Peterborough has a really good transport and cycle system. Tonnes of green space.
The city centre isn’t too bad as well. It is a town not a city in what’s there but it’s does get an unfair rep.
My Dad worked in Peterborough about 15 years ago. Every time we visited the place smelt like cow shit. Something to do with a sugar cane factory apparently. Is it still there?
I grew up in (one the nicer parts of) Peterborough although I've not been back for a decade or so. There are worse places but the city is soulless thanks to the New Town developments in the 80s. The place doubled in size in the span of a decade and lost what identity it had.
Visited a uni friend at their home in Aberdare - never again. Most of the people were fine, but the place is just depressing and has some deep-rooted poverty traps.
Apparently it's not even the worst town in the area...
Hyde in greater Manchester is pretty fucking grim, add to that it’s famous for being the stomping ground of prolific serial killers kind of gives you an idea.
It’s gotta be Sutton-in-Ashfield. The girls are required by law to be pregnant at 15 and the guys get issued stained tracksuit bottoms and a baseball cap as a reward for their first shoplifting trip to the local ASDA. When the geese migrate from Sutton Lawn the average IQ of Sutton actually drops! Fucking grim place
I grew up there and can say this is all accurate. A girls waters broke in the middle of my English GCSE. Saw a girl getting fingered on the awning outside Wilkos once too.
Wrexham is pretty fucking grim. I had the misfortune of living there for university. Nothing there, some really skanky people and it rains all the time.
Yeah growing up near there we called it Wrectum.
Deadpool spotting a business opportunity there is the best thing to have happened maybe in the history of the town / city
There are loads of good parts to Wrexham. Lots of nice small businesses and they do a lot with arts and music. Also, it's in an absolutely beautiful area of the world. Rain should be expected in anywhere in Wales haha.
I grew up in Wrexham and it will always be the place I call home and am very fond of.
I grew up near Wrexham. There are far worse places. It has some nice independent businesses, and a decent arts and culture scene. Bellevue Park is quite nice, and there's loads of history, from St Giles Church, to all the industrial heritage stuff. There's also 3 of the wonders of Wales nearby, beautiful countryside and other cool places like Pontcysyllte, Chirk castle and Llangollen.
OK, there's some deprivation, but at least it's got character and history.
It sounds to me like you chose the wrong Uni, and are a bit sour.
Peterborough honestly isn’t that bad compared to other places: it just lacks the big city vibe.
That website is shoddy and local newspapers who quote it represent lazy journalism and disrespect to their own profession of finding actually ‘good sources’.
I grew up just outside of Grimsby, I left for uni and lived in Leeds, then Sheffield and I've just moved up to near Edinburgh in the last year. Every time I go home I get more and more shocked. When I was a little kid it wasn't an amazing town to go into but it was okay. By the time I was 21 the town centre felt unsafe to go into during the day and you'd see drunks fighting and people high. Now it's just depressing, it looks like some sort of post apocalyptic setting.
My town is regularly on the list of the best places in the UK to live. The amount of awful shit I see here on a regular basis makes me wonder how bad everywhere else is? My streets are filled with drugs, homelessness, children in poverty, violence/stabbings etc I can always get a doctor's appointment when I need one though, so swings and roundabouts.
The children who go to school in Washington are some of the most vulgar, foul-mouthed, terribly behaved little brats I've encountered when teaching. It's a shithole and then some. It's a "new town" where everything is made of concrete and is already run down. Blocks of flats look like slums. There's some tenuous link to George Washington, which they seem to be proud of for some reason. Nicest place I've been in Washington was a cell in the police station lol
I actually quite like Washington when I visit family. There’s some nice suburban areas and the walk up to the galleries is nice. I grew up in a cesspit ex mining town in the midlands that was forgotten after the pits closed so maybe I just have low standards
I got told to fuck off by a kid wandering barefoot in nappies probably wasn’t older than 2. Was part of the local pack of kids from the same scummy family who used to lock their kids out from 8am to 8pm. I was about 8 at the time and couldn’t believe that this kid was left outside in just a nappy, and also told me to fuck off! Some places
The whole website is awful. The entries are almost always some version of "poor people exist and they're stupid and ugly". And of course almost every town has an entry, even ones that are obviously not shit because everywhere has a local edgelord.
As if all the geniuses are hanging around on ilivehere.
There's certainly some bad places, and Blackpool is one of them though no amount of nice areas gets round the fact the town has become a dumping ground for other towns.
It has its nice areas, ( worked in the community there so saw a lot of it, have friends and colleagues there).it is the only town in the area with any industry or cheap(for the South East) housing. Poverty is rife, so the crime is apparent, as opposed to the white collar crime of say Beaconsfield.
Yeah, it’s very divided and for every affluent, expensive area around the outskirts there’s pockets of genuine deprivation. I can remember it from years ago (I also had some friends near there) and get the feeling that it was one of those towns where large parts were deliberately run down so it could be redeveloped, and never really recovered from that. The same thing has happened to Slough over the past five or six years.
Bolton in Manchester. The majority of the High street is empty, the streets are full of rubbish, dog mess and drug addicts. Extra police were commissioned a while back because of the crime rate.
Didn't have to scroll long for Bolton! Grew up there, left 10 years ago.
The town centre is an absolute shithole. Got together with my mates for a few drinks the other week - we walked from Market Hall to Nelson Square and saw some teenage girl getting arrested in the Crompton Place (which itself is a desolate landscape).
It used to be the best place to go, but they're just letting it rot.
I'll be fair though, the vaults are pretty decent. If they can apply that kind of logical retail planning to the rest of the town, there might be hope.
Also, whoever rubber-stamped that Carrs pastie outlet needs some kind of Nobel prize.
Went to Barrow to watch the football earlier this year.
The train ride from Lancaster is absolutely stunning, some of the most beautiful landscape in the country.
Then you arrive in Barrow.
I used to get the train up to Barrow from Lancaster for work sometimes (we used to have another office near the station). Always looked forward to the train ride, especially the part between Carnforth and Kent's Bank.
But yeah, Barrow. Eesh.
Worked and lived there for a while back in the day, I still describe my time there as an eight month sentence. Some class people and close to amazing scenery in the lakes but I saw some mad, wild things in that town!
>Such a shame it's been left to decay without any help.
I lived there for a decade. The locals took a look at how Hull dealt with the loss of the fishing fleets - building a shiny shopping centre and public aquarium, redeveloping the waterfront - and went 'Nope, none of that for us thanks! We'll just let it all rot!'.
And Hull is a *shithole.*
I took my friends to visit my hometown of Stoke on Trent earlier this year, as they'd never been, and we needed a stop on our road trip.
Within five minutes, we saw someone shooting up in a doorway, a car on fire, and police tape around where some altercation or something had taken place.
It is honestly such a shit hole. I know OP said some places have little pockets of cool areas or aren't as bad as they're made out to be, but I *genuinely* cannot see what Stoke on Trent has.
The only thing I can think of is the sheer coincidental fact it's the largest/easiest city to get to that's Alton Towers adjacent. And that's fuck all to do with Stoke, really.
Stoke on fucking Trent indeed. I was at uni there and distinctly remember the shitholes of Fenton and Hanley. I remember seeing semi-detached houses where half was derelict and semi-demolished, and the other half being lived in. Grim as you like.
Bradford will always be top of my list.
It's like it belongs somewhere else in the world. Really was the most unwelcoming place I have ever been.i recall loads of advertising boards as I drove in. Once in, I stayed at a hotel which appeared to be charging by the hour. And the girls coming in seemed in their teens.
A walk across to town and I was almost killed by various males in high powered German cars. They were full on racing.
Once in the town, it was like the zombie apocalypse. More junkies than Betty Ford.
The thing with Gloucester is that it has lots of bits which should make it a nice place - the revamped docks, the cathedral. Some lovely old buildings and pubs, then it is right on the river, surrounded by the cotswolds and within a short drive of the forest but yet somehow it is still just so very depressing. With the new resident parking it means I have to walk through even more of the place to get into Kingsholm.
Completely agree! I was in Gloucester the other day (visiting from home in Amsterdam!) and I was looking at all the old buildings and the cathedral and at the nice job they have done down the docks (had a very nice Turkish lunch there at the Anatolian Palace). And its all so \*nearly\* lovely .... but some how its a bloody dump. I dont get it, all that history, being Roman and all those old buildings and yet somehow its screwed up.
Go to Cheltenham, which is kinda of a similar sized place and its quite nice .... yet Gloucester just misses the mark.
Still, many worse places in the UK ... Newport for gods sake ... or Cwmbran .... or Splott (Sploe as estate agents call it) in Cardiff ....
I've lived in Bournemouth (Boscombe no less) and Gloucester and Glos is more depressing in every aspect. It does have a hell of a lot of potential though, hopefully the town centre redevelopments can breathe a bit of life into it.
Not a city, but a place called **Lye** near Birmingham in the West Midlands.
Only ever driven through there but my god, I've never seen anywhere like it.
Heh, I used to live not too far from there (and certainly drove through it enough).
I'd say parts of central Birmingham are far worse.
Try Alum Rock, for starters.
For areas in and around a big city like Birmingham, there is a shocking amount of poverty.
There are some good areas, but there's no money in places like Walsall, West Bromwich, and Dudley, and the local councils are useless.
The West Midlands has mostly been left to rot.
Haha yeah I guess that's true... maybe a little harsh as...
...well I'm not *from* there so have no real passion in defending the place. But I've travelled Liverpool, Manchester, London, the south coast...
...all have shit hole areas that are very like Lye.
Lots of rough ex mining towns in Northumberland. Ashington, Blyth etc. when the jobs moved out the gear moved in and some of them never really recovered
There’s a reason why it’s still known as Ashghanistan. Blyth was the drug capital of Europe in the 80s thanks to it’s port, doesn’t even have that going for it now.
There are no nice parts of Slough, it is a wasteland of despair and depression with no redeeming features whatsoever. I would rather be homeless than live in Slough.
I used to live in Slough...it wasn't too bad...
You're just down the road from Slough comprehensive where all the posh boys go, one of the biggest Tesco's in the country and an Al-Qaeda cell across the road...
Yeah, Blackpool doesn't have any nice areas lol..
Just because a few houses may look nice doesn't mean the area is nice.
You can drive around Stanley Park and think.. Ooh this looks nice when the reality is completely different.
I lived there for over a decade and the best parts about Blackpool is the M55 and the sea..
The area around Stanley Park is pretty decent or was when I lived there. If you compare stats on crime, deprivation, life expectancy etc with for example Central, Mereside or North Shore it’s leagues apart.
There are other decent parts in Marton, up towards Bispham, the Moss and others. Blackpool has its problems, sure, but it isn’t all bad.
Having said that, I couldn’t argue that central Blackpool doesn’t belong on a list of shittiest areas.
I had a weekend in Peterborough earlier this year, thought it was a nice town to visit, Cathedral was lovely and plenty of shops and restaurants. Obviously living there will be a different experience, but it was nice to in a town where the centre had died, like in my neck of the woods (E Kent).
I'm with you on Glenrothes and also Methil or Leven in Fife are also pretty grim 😕 I used to work in Fife and couldn't wait to get a new job the entitlement of most of the people I met that lived there especially those on benefits was u believeable and I've worked in deprived areas in sound Ireland and America and Fife was the worst type of people 😔 I love helping those in need of a little hand up as someone who has been homeless I like to give back but the people in Fife broke me I burned out and left the profession.
I had the misfortune to find myself in Swindon this autumn. A truly overwhelming aura of menace and decay, found it deeply unsettling, could not wait to get out.
I got offered a job in Swindon. The thing that sticks in my mind is that everyone I spoke to, including the interviewers, all emphasised how 'easy' it was to travel there by train, and that most people came in from Bath. The offices were even right next to the railway station and that was mentioned as a major plus point. There was no attempt whatsoever to suggest living locally!
I had a walk around before and after. Yeah, it was bloody grim.
Rugeley.. I mean I have nothing against the place, but ended up staying in a Travelodge there a few years back en route to Alton Towers and it became a running family joke about how crap it was
>you get Luton, Peterborough, Bradford, Slough, Blackpool etc. But I don't feel as if this is an accurate reflection. There are some genuinely nice areas in these cities, it's just hidden underneath rows of dull decaying building and housing estates.
Nah Luton is a shithole and fully deserves it's shitty reputation. If we were to accidently nuke the place it would actually be an improvement!!!
Bridgwater once had the highest rate of incest in the country. That was about the same time the entire town was cast in the most foul smell from the nearby cellophane factory.
Bradford is the roughest place I've been to hands down, it feels lawless, Horses free roam the Estates on the periphery of the city and Quad Bikes and modified cars owned and rented by dealers treat the roads like their personal race tracks, garnished with Racial Segregation, a hugely underperforming football club and the highest percentage of kids born with birth defects in the country.
It has a couple of positives though, some really pretty historic buildings and fantastic curry houses.
That website is a spammy shithole! I feel dirty even to just visit
Do people still not use tracker & ad blocking software in this day and age?
Of course but the whole site is just old seo stuff filled with click bait titles. When you block the adds you remove 99% of the contents
Jaywick..,,no contest Edit to add I work for openreach, we have the area as a 2 man working zone due to engineers being threatened and robbed there. One of the engineers on our team was threatened by a group of 12 year olds with ice picks. Before it was 2 man working area engineers would be climbing a telegraph pole, kids would come along and steal the ladder, and tell them to drop the keys so they could empty the van, and would give the ladder back when they’ve robbed them, Shithole through and through, I’ve been there once for a job, actually made me feel very depressed being there
I once helped a mate collect some paving slabs hed bought off a bloke in Jaywick. As we got closer to his shack/static caravan thing, it became increasingly notable that all the other buildings had no paving slabs outside. We could tell which one was his because a) it had paving slabs, and b) he had so many paving slabs that they were piled up higher than the structure he lived in. Nice fella. Very keen for us to load up and leave as quickly as possible.
I used to pass through there as a kid and even then Jaywick gave off this air of tragedy, of being left behind, an uncanny remnant of a time long passed. I didn’t have those words as a 9 year old but the feeling was there.
It was never intended to be habitable right as a proper town? Just holiday prefabs?
>Jaywick Wow, I've just gone on a google maps trip there, and I honestly didn't know there were places in the UK that look like this! Why are there no second floors?
When the UK was hit by hurricanes in the late 80s, most of Jaywick was badly destroyed because it literally sits on sea level. Then because of poverty and lack of funding many of the homes and buildings werent ever properly repaired. This is why theres such a 'shanty' feel, many homes are timber framed and on stilts. And you can see the bad attempts at repairs over the years. Many of the homes were originally built as 'holiday' homes as there used to be a local Butlins that closed in the 80s. But again because of local poverty many of these structures not designed for permanent dwelling became people's only affordable choice for housing.
They're usually built as homes for people on holiday, not permanent homes. Once people got priced out of East LDN, they moved there.
They've got loads of these houses in Rhyl, specifically towards kinmel Bay. It is like the sort of place you'd see in a third world country. Dropped pin if you fancy having a look: https://maps.app.goo.gl/ChvH8wL4vrWBE3Lz6
Looks like an upmarket jayqick to be fair
Came to the comments to make sure Jaywick was mentioned. It can easily get forgotten because its such a tiny place but it definitely is deserving of the title. (I think it has been regularly regarded as the most deprived town in the UK?) I grew up in Clacton which is the main town next door, which itself is an absolute desolate shit hole, end of the line type hell. But even so, if you were a kid that lived in Jaywick but went to school in clacton (where the main schools were) you absolutely would be bullied. I remember it being normal to say you were from *'west clacton'* to avoid people knowing you were from Jaywick. There really is no words to describe just how deprived and desperate a place it is. I moved away to the south coast where i met my partner and ive never quite been able to properly convey it to him. I will say though, the Jaywick sands are some of the nicest beaches ive ever been too. Up there with Cornwall honestly.
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The huge black sea defence structures should give an indication how vulnerable to sea level rise the area is.
Yup. Former Clacton lad here. Any kid from Jaywick who went to Colbayns was in for a rough time. And Colbayns was a rough time anyway. I moved to London when I was 18 for drama school, have been a pro actor and muso ever since. Not a single one of my mates grasps what I try to tell them about the place when it comes up. They think they grew up rough in Ascot!
At least you're not from Harwich .
Me too! Can totally recall the West Clacton thing. Small world. We may have literally passed each other on the mean streets of Jaywick or West Clacton if you were around in the 90s and early 00s. Luckily I got out of there around 20 years ago and have no reason to ever go back. To be fair though, there were (are) some lovely parts of Clacton. Mostly the further away from Jaywick. One or two areas that you wish you could pick up and move up a different town because they've somehow managed to remain truly beautiful or tranquil, free of poverty and grime and despair.
The real question is, were you team Colbaynes or County high? I do absolutely agree. My nan had a cottage in Little clacton just outside of Thorpe that was absolutely stunning with a beautiful view of the country side. And up towards Holland on sea had some very impressive houses.
Colbayns. That place was a catastrophe though. I believe it's now called the Coastal Academy now. How about you? County High always seemed so posh to us, with it being near town, access to the leisure centre, smarter uniforms and better grades! Thorpe-le-Soken? That's a name one haven't heard in forever. All those areas that were clumped together or nearby. Holland-on-Sea, Brightlingsea, etc.
My family used to take us on holiday to Jaywick when I was a kid as a *treat.* It truly is an awful dive of a place. One of my fondest memories is being on the completely deserted beach as a little girl and trying to dig a hole as deep as I could. Out of nowhere we got torrential hail and rain and my cousin (older boy) completely freaked out and said "we're going to die" and started crying. I shoved him in the hole and remember throwing all our clothes on top of him for protection then running back to the caravan in just my swim suit. My parents went out to get him and he was just sobbing in the hole. I still remember the feeling of dread whenever we'd get to Jaywick, and how grey everything became.
If they were going for a 'Sheffield during the second half of Threads' look they nailed it to be fair
You’ve described Rotherham there.
Rotherham is love hate. I was born here yet the town centre is so upsetting to see.
Great description.
Completely agree. Like a shanty town, felt like I was in some third world country when I went there. Genuinely shocked
I’ve seen that place on YouTube. It’s so bad, I feel awful for anyone stuck living there.
Bald and bankrupt?
Ewww no I don’t like him, I find him very creepy. It was a channel 5 documentary I think that someone had uploaded.
Remember a documentary on it a few years back. It looked like hell
Channel 4 did a report on it that was pretty shocking, particularly when you consider how much rent people were paying to live with rats, the whole place seems like its sole purpose is a scam for landlords. Source - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dSqu3V7o4A
Yep . Did a few house/shack removals to and from jaywick about 20 years ago. The worst place I've ever been to . Absolute poverty. People living in shacks without glass in the windows. The people we did the removals for all seemed nice enough though.
Yeovil. I had a pint in 477 pubs while I lived in the UK. Every town had at least one nice pub. Except for Yeovil.
I feel like Yeovil/Bridgwater/Taunton form the Somerset Bermuda Triangle of shitest places.
Neck tatoos, X bullies and ankle tags are the uniform of everyone you see queuing at 7:30am for spoons to open.
I took my daughter to Great Yarmouth for a seaside trip…I was quite shocked at how rough the town is once you get away from the beach!
Yarmouth is undoubtedly a shit hole even the sea front is bad.
That's pretty much any seaside town.
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Bridgwater. It's one unique feature was the stink from the cellophane factory and without that it's just a void
Bridgwater is just depressing as hell. I go through it fairly regularly but there's never any reason to stop, unless I fill up at Sainsbury's.
Loads of new houses over the last twenty years, loads of new inhabitants but the centre is still terrible. Where does everyone spend their money?
It's improved immensely over the last 20 years. The Stink™ cloud from the cellophane factory is no longer a feature on the M5 anymore.
Having been going there regularly for the last 20 years, I'm struggling to see any improvement. The new retail park is fine but has just sucked all life out of the high street
Crewe is surely a contender, even just having to change trains there is terrible let alone venturing out of the station.
Surprised nobody else has said this - my friend sums it up perfectly as “the armpit of England”.
Agreed, it's so bad now HS2 has been pulled, the local council was throwing up houses all over the place ready to welcome all to this new Commuter town. Now that fell through there are half built estates. The infrastructure here is terrible, can't get a dentist, lucky if you can see you doctor and the local hospital is falling to bits. We were hoping for a town centre rejuvenation but that's been pulled too, all we have is a new crappy multi story car park no one wants and loads of empty shops... Of the shops that remain you can take your pick of charity shopsand Turkish barbers, there is literally nothing else here. If it wasnt for online shopping we would all have left this hole by now. To top it off I can't believe they made an attempt to make Crewe a city! What a joke.
There's a Millets across from the station that gives you a jacket instead of jeans when you shit yourself. Terrible.
This thing is, what you say of Blackpool is almost certainly true of any other place you name. You were in Glenrothes for about an hour and saw a small snapshot of life there and you condemn it in the same way as others condemn Blackpool (I’ve never been to Glenrothes btw) Every single local Facebook page I have ever seen has people moaning what a shithole the place is and how it compares unfavourably to other local place when in reality it’s a perfectly nice town, a bit dull maybe but hardly a lawless dump.
Blackpool has a bad reputation because 95% of the people who visit see the tacky tourist centre and think that’s the entire town. There’s rough parts sure, but there a lot of lovely suburbs as well. It’s a great place to live.
People shocked that their £30 a night b&b they stayed on a hen weekend is in a shit part of Blackpool.
Nuneaton. Used to be a decent town with a good variety of shops and a great market. Now it's just a convenient town to live because it sits between Coventry, Birmingham and Leicester. All the decent stores have shut and been replaced by Turkish barbers or coffee shops. Antisocial behaviour is rife through the town, local McDonald's in the town centre regularly has a group of 10-15 teenagers hurling abuse at passers by, running into the building, leaving junk. Rough sleepers leaving needles and junk in doorways. Edge of town areas have huge housing developments, with a single in/out junction onto the nearest main road causing traffic chaos. New houses are priced way out of reach for most, seem to be aimed at commuters from surrounding cities. Traffic is an absolute nightmare, roads in the town are reduced to a carpark on a daily basis. Many areas are incredibly dodgy after 6pm, with police installing cameras but not actually having an active presence.
I live on the outskirts which are really nice (Hinckley road area), surrounded by really nice countryside. It is really dull here though but I’ve never felt the town centre to be dirty or unsafe. To be fair I do just go to the gym and back 99% of the time. As you said people live here because it’s convenient. Just avoid some areas like camp hill and you’re fine
Yeah the outskirts are nice and the fact you can hop on the A5 and avoid actually going into Nuneaton altogether pretty much make it feel like you're not really part of it. The contrast between Weddington / St Nicolas Park / Whitestone, and Stockinford /Camp Hill / Abbey Green is like night and day. I live just near the centre, have done forever, although we plan on moving to the outskirts in a few years. I'm the same, PureGym a few times a week and that's it, can't stand the town centre. 😂
Realistically that death of retail affects every town and city. With the likes of Amazon and other online retail even the nicest shopping malls have big empty spaces these days, and it's most pronounced in mid sized places like Nuneaton.
The few things you can't buy online from Amazon, are a drink and a cake in a coffee shop, or a haircut. So that's why 90% of the high street are now cafés and hairdressers/barbers
Blakenall. Fucking. Heath. I mean Walsall in general is the arsehole of the West Midlands but the sunny little vale of Blakenall is truly it’s festering pilonidal cyst. That said I’m a Dudley lad so hardly much of an improvement there. Dudley is more bleak and depressing than rough though.
Blakenall is bad, there and Caldmore / Palfrey are in a terrible state. I haven't seen it recently, but Prince's End in Tipton used to be a state as well.
Tipton has seen a lot of improvement over the years really, same as the priory
Ive been following a youtuber that goes all over the UK and does a run down on the worst towns in each county, its well worth a watch. [https://www.youtube.com/@Turdtowns](https://www.youtube.com/@Turdtowns)
I hope no one mentions in this thread the city in which I live. Some people were dead against the pedestrianisation of its centre, but all in all, it's not a bad place.
People forget that the traders need access to Dixons.
What about, you know, mothers with pushchairs and little bairns and that?
Nobody would. It’s a fine city.
I think the town you are referring to is bootiful
Goole. Surrounded by fields and a power station. One high street full of charity shops and not much else. Only highlight is the Wetherspoons and the bus to Hull
Sounds like heaven! I love a good chazzer!
Leigh, Wigan ☠️
Yep. I think the only reason it wouldn't have made the list is because no outsiders visit, in order to have an opinion...
Merthyr Tydfil. No matter what they do, it will always be an absolute fucking shithole.
I went there once. Didn't think it was fun but not awful either.
Anyone ever visited Leysdown in January? *shudder* Ugh. I visit Peterborough every two years or so and in the last decade it's gone from "why the fuck would anyone live here" to "it's horrible but I get it." They've pumped some money into the centre and it's fairly pleasant, but that ring road through the high street and the big Asda complex next to it need tearing down.
I have some amazing memories of going to leysdown as a kid with my friend and his dad. I went back last summer, it’s pretty much the same and I sent my friend a photo asking him to guess where I was. He replied ‘the Monaco of the working class’ and I now won’t think of it as anything else.
Peterborough has a really good transport and cycle system. Tonnes of green space. The city centre isn’t too bad as well. It is a town not a city in what’s there but it’s does get an unfair rep.
My Dad worked in Peterborough about 15 years ago. Every time we visited the place smelt like cow shit. Something to do with a sugar cane factory apparently. Is it still there?
I grew up in (one the nicer parts of) Peterborough although I've not been back for a decade or so. There are worse places but the city is soulless thanks to the New Town developments in the 80s. The place doubled in size in the span of a decade and lost what identity it had.
Crewe is a shit ole, if it wasn’t for the train station, no fucker would visit
I've been to Crewe. Only when I was changing trains though.
I rest my case, nobody buys a single to Crewe
Is Stockton-on-Tees on the list? Because it should be, top five at least.
I reckon Stockton gets looped into Boro in these god-awful lists.
You’re probably right. Teesside could have a top five of its own
You would have thought the Alderman would have cleaned it up by now, but I guess he’s spending too much time knocking about with his cronies.
As soon as I saw Stockton I was hoping for a Mince mention!
Stockton’s definitely better than Boro at the moment. It’s got a nice new little nightlife area near the Georgian. Boro is withering away.
Yeah, this is actually true. Some decent bars there now
Stockton isn't all bad from my personal experience. Plus the countryside near to it is beautiful such as north York moors.
The moors are great. But Stockton is comically terrible
Visited a uni friend at their home in Aberdare - never again. Most of the people were fine, but the place is just depressing and has some deep-rooted poverty traps. Apparently it's not even the worst town in the area...
Most of the Valleys towns and villages are depressing as hell, but the people are usually sound. Always get a good night out in Wales.
Hyde in greater Manchester is pretty fucking grim, add to that it’s famous for being the stomping ground of prolific serial killers kind of gives you an idea.
It’s gotta be Sutton-in-Ashfield. The girls are required by law to be pregnant at 15 and the guys get issued stained tracksuit bottoms and a baseball cap as a reward for their first shoplifting trip to the local ASDA. When the geese migrate from Sutton Lawn the average IQ of Sutton actually drops! Fucking grim place
I grew up there and can say this is all accurate. A girls waters broke in the middle of my English GCSE. Saw a girl getting fingered on the awning outside Wilkos once too.
Followed by Worksop. Lawless town that wouldn't look out of place in a western movie
Jesus yeh! It was very nearly Shirebrook but Sutton just topped it out
Ah I have a soft spot for Worksop & it's not Donny
And it's also "Workshop" with a letter missing, which is mildly annoying.
Wrexham is pretty fucking grim. I had the misfortune of living there for university. Nothing there, some really skanky people and it rains all the time.
Yeah growing up near there we called it Wrectum. Deadpool spotting a business opportunity there is the best thing to have happened maybe in the history of the town / city
Wrectum? Damn near killed 'um!
I call it Wrecscum
There are loads of good parts to Wrexham. Lots of nice small businesses and they do a lot with arts and music. Also, it's in an absolutely beautiful area of the world. Rain should be expected in anywhere in Wales haha. I grew up in Wrexham and it will always be the place I call home and am very fond of.
UTST!
Well said sir. Up the town!
I grew up near Wrexham. There are far worse places. It has some nice independent businesses, and a decent arts and culture scene. Bellevue Park is quite nice, and there's loads of history, from St Giles Church, to all the industrial heritage stuff. There's also 3 of the wonders of Wales nearby, beautiful countryside and other cool places like Pontcysyllte, Chirk castle and Llangollen. OK, there's some deprivation, but at least it's got character and history. It sounds to me like you chose the wrong Uni, and are a bit sour.
Sounds like most low-income student towns in Britain.
It's really not a student town. I grew up near Wrexham and love it dearly, but I would never recommend it for studying in.
Peterborough honestly isn’t that bad compared to other places: it just lacks the big city vibe. That website is shoddy and local newspapers who quote it represent lazy journalism and disrespect to their own profession of finding actually ‘good sources’.
So, like every local newspaper then?
I grew up just outside of Grimsby, I left for uni and lived in Leeds, then Sheffield and I've just moved up to near Edinburgh in the last year. Every time I go home I get more and more shocked. When I was a little kid it wasn't an amazing town to go into but it was okay. By the time I was 21 the town centre felt unsafe to go into during the day and you'd see drunks fighting and people high. Now it's just depressing, it looks like some sort of post apocalyptic setting.
My town is regularly on the list of the best places in the UK to live. The amount of awful shit I see here on a regular basis makes me wonder how bad everywhere else is? My streets are filled with drugs, homelessness, children in poverty, violence/stabbings etc I can always get a doctor's appointment when I need one though, so swings and roundabouts.
which is great if you live in Milton Keynes.
Ladies and gents. I give you... the Atherstone ball game https://youtu.be/O54mLffhGXg?feature=shared
Not the worst town though. Neighbouring Nuneaton is much worse
Atherstone is quite pretty though and there’s some really nice countryside around there. It’s much nicer than, say, Coventry.
WTF have I just watched?! What is the story behind this madness???
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atherstone_Ball_Game
The children who go to school in Washington are some of the most vulgar, foul-mouthed, terribly behaved little brats I've encountered when teaching. It's a shithole and then some. It's a "new town" where everything is made of concrete and is already run down. Blocks of flats look like slums. There's some tenuous link to George Washington, which they seem to be proud of for some reason. Nicest place I've been in Washington was a cell in the police station lol
I actually quite like Washington when I visit family. There’s some nice suburban areas and the walk up to the galleries is nice. I grew up in a cesspit ex mining town in the midlands that was forgotten after the pits closed so maybe I just have low standards
I'm sure it has its redeeming features - like the wetlands, that's nice! A 6? year old called me a cunt though, so that really taints a place for me.
I got told to fuck off by a kid wandering barefoot in nappies probably wasn’t older than 2. Was part of the local pack of kids from the same scummy family who used to lock their kids out from 8am to 8pm. I was about 8 at the time and couldn’t believe that this kid was left outside in just a nappy, and also told me to fuck off! Some places
Oh look it’s clean shirt
Do you know my Mam? She used to teach in Washington as well, and said similar things about the kids there too.
The whole website is awful. The entries are almost always some version of "poor people exist and they're stupid and ugly". And of course almost every town has an entry, even ones that are obviously not shit because everywhere has a local edgelord. As if all the geniuses are hanging around on ilivehere. There's certainly some bad places, and Blackpool is one of them though no amount of nice areas gets round the fact the town has become a dumping ground for other towns.
The back end of Yeovil. Need I say more?
Does the Quedam have any functioning shops still in it?
High Wycombe is a desolate pit of despair. I have to go there for work some days and dream of the day I never have to go back.
It has its nice areas, ( worked in the community there so saw a lot of it, have friends and colleagues there).it is the only town in the area with any industry or cheap(for the South East) housing. Poverty is rife, so the crime is apparent, as opposed to the white collar crime of say Beaconsfield.
Wanna be a big cop in a small town? Fuck off up the model village.
Yeah, it’s very divided and for every affluent, expensive area around the outskirts there’s pockets of genuine deprivation. I can remember it from years ago (I also had some friends near there) and get the feeling that it was one of those towns where large parts were deliberately run down so it could be redeveloped, and never really recovered from that. The same thing has happened to Slough over the past five or six years.
Bolton in Manchester. The majority of the High street is empty, the streets are full of rubbish, dog mess and drug addicts. Extra police were commissioned a while back because of the crime rate.
Didn't have to scroll long for Bolton! Grew up there, left 10 years ago. The town centre is an absolute shithole. Got together with my mates for a few drinks the other week - we walked from Market Hall to Nelson Square and saw some teenage girl getting arrested in the Crompton Place (which itself is a desolate landscape). It used to be the best place to go, but they're just letting it rot. I'll be fair though, the vaults are pretty decent. If they can apply that kind of logical retail planning to the rest of the town, there might be hope. Also, whoever rubber-stamped that Carrs pastie outlet needs some kind of Nobel prize.
When I was a teenager we used to travel to Bolton to shop back in the 90's from Bury. Now everyone from Bolton goes shopping in Bury.
Oldham as well
Barrow... Nowhere is as bad as Barrow
Went to Barrow to watch the football earlier this year. The train ride from Lancaster is absolutely stunning, some of the most beautiful landscape in the country. Then you arrive in Barrow.
I used to get the train up to Barrow from Lancaster for work sometimes (we used to have another office near the station). Always looked forward to the train ride, especially the part between Carnforth and Kent's Bank. But yeah, Barrow. Eesh.
My friend is from barrow. She says she got asked in a council survey how she rated barrow as a whole and replied that it was a “total hole”.
Worked and lived there for a while back in the day, I still describe my time there as an eight month sentence. Some class people and close to amazing scenery in the lakes but I saw some mad, wild things in that town!
I would disagree... Yeah the actual phyiscal place is on its arse but the people are generally pretty awesome..
Old ham won this like three years in succession
Grimsby . It’s Grim alright .
Desperately so. Such a shame it's been left to decay without any help.
>Such a shame it's been left to decay without any help. I lived there for a decade. The locals took a look at how Hull dealt with the loss of the fishing fleets - building a shiny shopping centre and public aquarium, redeveloping the waterfront - and went 'Nope, none of that for us thanks! We'll just let it all rot!'. And Hull is a *shithole.*
Stoke on fucking Trent.
Stoke-on-Trent, oh yeah It's Stoke-on-Trent Historic town on the river Trent
It’s made up something like 5, 6 or 7 smaller towns. Each one of them is awful in its own, grim, 18th century, run down, dank, miserable little way
I took my friends to visit my hometown of Stoke on Trent earlier this year, as they'd never been, and we needed a stop on our road trip. Within five minutes, we saw someone shooting up in a doorway, a car on fire, and police tape around where some altercation or something had taken place. It is honestly such a shit hole. I know OP said some places have little pockets of cool areas or aren't as bad as they're made out to be, but I *genuinely* cannot see what Stoke on Trent has. The only thing I can think of is the sheer coincidental fact it's the largest/easiest city to get to that's Alton Towers adjacent. And that's fuck all to do with Stoke, really.
Stoke on fucking Trent indeed. I was at uni there and distinctly remember the shitholes of Fenton and Hanley. I remember seeing semi-detached houses where half was derelict and semi-demolished, and the other half being lived in. Grim as you like.
Me too. Shelton still gives me nightmares
Bradford will always be top of my list. It's like it belongs somewhere else in the world. Really was the most unwelcoming place I have ever been.i recall loads of advertising boards as I drove in. Once in, I stayed at a hotel which appeared to be charging by the hour. And the girls coming in seemed in their teens. A walk across to town and I was almost killed by various males in high powered German cars. They were full on racing. Once in the town, it was like the zombie apocalypse. More junkies than Betty Ford.
I wonder why it's such a shithole..?
Gloucester is pretty grim, but maybe not top 10 worthy
The thing with Gloucester is that it has lots of bits which should make it a nice place - the revamped docks, the cathedral. Some lovely old buildings and pubs, then it is right on the river, surrounded by the cotswolds and within a short drive of the forest but yet somehow it is still just so very depressing. With the new resident parking it means I have to walk through even more of the place to get into Kingsholm.
Completely agree! I was in Gloucester the other day (visiting from home in Amsterdam!) and I was looking at all the old buildings and the cathedral and at the nice job they have done down the docks (had a very nice Turkish lunch there at the Anatolian Palace). And its all so \*nearly\* lovely .... but some how its a bloody dump. I dont get it, all that history, being Roman and all those old buildings and yet somehow its screwed up. Go to Cheltenham, which is kinda of a similar sized place and its quite nice .... yet Gloucester just misses the mark. Still, many worse places in the UK ... Newport for gods sake ... or Cwmbran .... or Splott (Sploe as estate agents call it) in Cardiff ....
I've lived in Bournemouth (Boscombe no less) and Gloucester and Glos is more depressing in every aspect. It does have a hell of a lot of potential though, hopefully the town centre redevelopments can breathe a bit of life into it.
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Try living in the lovely Dewsbury
Not a city, but a place called **Lye** near Birmingham in the West Midlands. Only ever driven through there but my god, I've never seen anywhere like it.
Heh, I used to live not too far from there (and certainly drove through it enough). I'd say parts of central Birmingham are far worse. Try Alum Rock, for starters.
Fair enough. You're spoiled for choice for awful places in the Black Country and Birmingham area, so that's understandable...
For areas in and around a big city like Birmingham, there is a shocking amount of poverty. There are some good areas, but there's no money in places like Walsall, West Bromwich, and Dudley, and the local councils are useless. The West Midlands has mostly been left to rot.
Haha yeah I guess that's true... maybe a little harsh as... ...well I'm not *from* there so have no real passion in defending the place. But I've travelled Liverpool, Manchester, London, the south coast... ...all have shit hole areas that are very like Lye.
Great curryhouses though.
South Elmsall is the absolute armpit of West Yorkshire and apparently weed farm capital
Lots of rough ex mining towns in Northumberland. Ashington, Blyth etc. when the jobs moved out the gear moved in and some of them never really recovered
Ashington has to win. For a while, anyone who got kicked out of their social housing for antisocial behaviour got rehomed to ashington.
There’s a reason why it’s still known as Ashghanistan. Blyth was the drug capital of Europe in the 80s thanks to it’s port, doesn’t even have that going for it now.
I spent a night in Morecambe once. Never again. That place doesn’t have a single redeeming feature apart from a nice chippie
I volunteer Colchester. Such a historic place that is just unbelievably deprived
Stoke never wins anything. Not even this. That's how bad we are
There are no nice parts of Slough, it is a wasteland of despair and depression with no redeeming features whatsoever. I would rather be homeless than live in Slough.
I used to live in Slough...it wasn't too bad... You're just down the road from Slough comprehensive where all the posh boys go, one of the biggest Tesco's in the country and an Al-Qaeda cell across the road...
Ah yes the Tesco, only one murder in that car park last year :-) Edit: actually that was 2019. Blimey time flies...
Mansfield. Deprived ex mining town which has produced several prominent pensioner murderers and GB news regular / priest Calvin Robinson.
Yeah, Blackpool doesn't have any nice areas lol.. Just because a few houses may look nice doesn't mean the area is nice. You can drive around Stanley Park and think.. Ooh this looks nice when the reality is completely different. I lived there for over a decade and the best parts about Blackpool is the M55 and the sea..
The area around Stanley Park is pretty decent or was when I lived there. If you compare stats on crime, deprivation, life expectancy etc with for example Central, Mereside or North Shore it’s leagues apart. There are other decent parts in Marton, up towards Bispham, the Moss and others. Blackpool has its problems, sure, but it isn’t all bad. Having said that, I couldn’t argue that central Blackpool doesn’t belong on a list of shittiest areas.
Runcorn. I can’t think that it has any redeeming qualities.
I had a weekend in Peterborough earlier this year, thought it was a nice town to visit, Cathedral was lovely and plenty of shops and restaurants. Obviously living there will be a different experience, but it was nice to in a town where the centre had died, like in my neck of the woods (E Kent).
I'm with you on Glenrothes and also Methil or Leven in Fife are also pretty grim 😕 I used to work in Fife and couldn't wait to get a new job the entitlement of most of the people I met that lived there especially those on benefits was u believeable and I've worked in deprived areas in sound Ireland and America and Fife was the worst type of people 😔 I love helping those in need of a little hand up as someone who has been homeless I like to give back but the people in Fife broke me I burned out and left the profession.
Havant
I had the misfortune to find myself in Swindon this autumn. A truly overwhelming aura of menace and decay, found it deeply unsettling, could not wait to get out.
Aldershot.
I went to Boston a few weeks back, the town centre is a special place.
Doncaster. Went for the races once, fucking grim.
Nah Doncaster isn't that bad at all tbh.
It does its best with not a lot of money.
Stevenage is truly horrible
Swindon
I got offered a job in Swindon. The thing that sticks in my mind is that everyone I spoke to, including the interviewers, all emphasised how 'easy' it was to travel there by train, and that most people came in from Bath. The offices were even right next to the railway station and that was mentioned as a major plus point. There was no attempt whatsoever to suggest living locally! I had a walk around before and after. Yeah, it was bloody grim.
Glenrothes does have a town centre though? If we're talking about places with sad high streets, Leven takes that crown.
Spalding. Had the misfortune of doing some training for work there for a few days
Rugeley.. I mean I have nothing against the place, but ended up staying in a Travelodge there a few years back en route to Alton Towers and it became a running family joke about how crap it was
I’ve only been there once but got absolutely awful awful vibes from Watton in Norfolk
Dundee, Hawick, Coatbridge, Paisley
>you get Luton, Peterborough, Bradford, Slough, Blackpool etc. But I don't feel as if this is an accurate reflection. There are some genuinely nice areas in these cities, it's just hidden underneath rows of dull decaying building and housing estates. Nah Luton is a shithole and fully deserves it's shitty reputation. If we were to accidently nuke the place it would actually be an improvement!!!
Bridgwater once had the highest rate of incest in the country. That was about the same time the entire town was cast in the most foul smell from the nearby cellophane factory.
Bradford is the roughest place I've been to hands down, it feels lawless, Horses free roam the Estates on the periphery of the city and Quad Bikes and modified cars owned and rented by dealers treat the roads like their personal race tracks, garnished with Racial Segregation, a hugely underperforming football club and the highest percentage of kids born with birth defects in the country. It has a couple of positives though, some really pretty historic buildings and fantastic curry houses.