The site of the Staffordshire County war memorial in Stafford.

Before…

And after…

What the heck were the 1970s planners thinking? Were they so bamboozled by ‘architecture-speak’ and vague vision of a socialist utopia, that they were able to fool themselves into think that a concrete slab was somehow an ‘enhancement’ of the site’s character? Or did they just assume that the site was already so ruined by constant heavy traffic (a busy road runs between the park and the new building) and the new modernist British Rail station, that raising such a jarring concrete eyesore next to it wouldn’t matter much? They did at least clean the soot-stained memorial to better match the new building, but the modernist concrete of the office block soon weathered into a mis-matched dullness. It can’t have been the postcard-cheery sight seen above, on a dull grey day in the 1980s.

It’s still there today, accompanying that adjacent all-time classic of modernist concrete-horror, Stafford Station. Only a few scraggy and struggling trees serve to hide it, a bit, in summer.

For those unfamiliar with Stafford, I should add that this is somewhat unrepresentative of the county town, whose centre (a half-mile walk from the station) otherwise still has many appealing qualities for the pedestrian arriving by rail. It’s relatively easy for the savvy walker to avoid most of the modernist grot, both here and in the centre.