Above Bar Southampton

A Memory of Southampton.

We moved to Southampton in early 1950 just after the trams had stopped running - some of the rails were still there. Above Bar along with much of the town had been badly bombed in the war and there were many bomb sites on both sides of the road. Woolworths was a large wooden hut reached by a bridge across a crater. Gradually during the 1950s new buildings sprang up amid the bomb sites until the scene was as in the 1960 picture. The Odeon and building next to it had survived the war but most of the rest was new. Owing to shortages of building materials after the war some of the new buildings were not of the best quality and now 50 plus years later some of their exteriors are already showing their age.