scummiest town in england you have visited??

Ashton under Lyne.  Copilot seems to disagree.   "Ashton-under-Lyne is a historic market town in Greater Manchester, known for its rich industrial heritage, vibrant markets, and scenic surroundings."

Blackpool often gets a kicking on discussion threads such as this one but still gets over 20m visitors a year which is quite something.
Tourism is worth £2 billion to the local economy

More pedantry - Southampton is also a city....

A couple of mates of mine a few years back would often go to Southsea for the weekend, they loved it. Might say more about them i suppose

survey the 20m blackpool visitors and find put where they are from. because if they are picking blackpool for a break what the fck is home like?

Yes, in the year of the storm in 1986 (I think). I played pool in a joint close to Strangeways Prison.

Middlesbrough - so bad the brasses offer a meal deal

Tipton is depressing

Croydon ...the pitz

Burnham on sea needs bulldozing, poverty on sea.

howard the historic market town is fair enough vibrant markets and scenic surroundings indicates whoever copilot is they have not been to ashton.

long way to go for a game of pool impossible ,anyway plenty of wealth in cheetham hill.

guisbrough quaint market town where hoi Poli of teesside live like most towns the high st is looking a bit rough but that's because they've built a Aldi,MnS,Saintsbury,BnM,lidle in a shopping area 50yds behind it ,no need to visit high st,but it ain't rough in comparison to redcar down the Rd  for example

Paulybad.Sorry to hear about Burnham On Sea. Used to do family holidays in that area in the early seventies. Pontins Brean Sands. I hope no similar reports on Weston Super Mare.

Tommy you will delighted to hear after a period of decline weston was voted a top destination again this year.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-15287033/UKs-town-dubbed-worst-seaside-destination-named-visit-2026.html

You would struggle to find a worse town centre than Newhaven on the south coast, it makes Merthyr look classy !

Off Piste I visited a suburb of Belfast while at the Punchestown festival now that was a throwback to the Past and not in a good way

Paulybad. Thanks for that. Weston was a really nice back in the day. Glad it's reviving.

Not England but may be of interest.  Took a drive into and through Kirriemuir, birthplace of JM Barrie of Peter Pan fame.  Double yellow lines everywhere and the most dirty, hostile looking, almost zombie like males I’ve ever seen ganging up and giving the glare and stare, many with cans, drink in hand.  Was actually scared to stop the car at lights let alone stop and get out.  Must be a nightmare for locals too in a tourist attraction village.

Peterborough...full of those 'yob' types that say banter to everything.

Too many bl00dy louts in this country and time the gloves were off

Why so many depressing places?

I was once told it would be good to be cosmopolitan.

St.Helier   Not scruffy but plenty of empty shops people not prepared to pay massive rents,when many people shopping on line.  Now though many firms will not ship to Jersey. Like elsewhere town is a mess of road works  traffic delays  people complaining    sound familiar ??

Uk is a sh!thole from lands end to John O’ Groats tbh…..

St Helier in Jersey? I'm shocked. I knew someone there some time ago, surname was Langlois.

Ban Filthy takeaway food shops ,, you are financing the Takeover of the UK... Idiots

I'll row in with our man FOYLESWAR.

Croydon is absolutely hideous.

Ex Scouse Boxer Billy Moore has a YouTube channel where he goes to the roughest Towns and Cities in the Country and walks round filming the places and people.
Talks to all sorts, Junkies, Homeless, Prostitutes.
Well worth a watch.
Coming to a place near you or has been.

Your right stringvest

Sad to see Croydon voted on, I lived and worked there in the 70s and thought it was the best of South London suburbs. Some great music pubs, the occasional good show at Fairfield Halls , generally vibrant. Did go back for a day a few years back and was shocked. I paticularly wanted to visit a couple of pubs I frequented previously but one was only open Thursday to Sundays and the other one (used to be my lunch time pub) didn't open until 2 pm which didn't fit. The office block I worked in had been turned into flats. I definitely thought it had gone downhill though in fairness I've seen worse.

Some places up north have gone missing. Redcar,Withernsea,Rotherham.

The question was places you’ve visited salmon and I’ve never visited Rotherham however from what I’ve seen and heard I should think it would be towards the top of anyone’s list.

Impossible 123   Iknow a few Langlois   Eddie was a carpenter brother Rod was a sparks, A A Langlois large haulage contractor.,,

Rhyl is a total shutehole   awful place

Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow
Swarm over, Death!

Come, bombs, and blow to smithereens
Those air-conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans
Tinned minds, tinned breath.

Mess up the mess they call a town —
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week for half-a-crown
For twenty years,

And get that man with double chin
Who'll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women's tears,

And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.

But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It's not their fault that they are mad,
They've tasted Hell.

It's not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It's not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead

And talk of sports and makes of cars
In various bogus Tudor bars
And daren't look up and see the stars
But belch instead.

In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.

Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.

People don’t take pride and care of their town or village tbh…..

Japanese could teach a few…..they even take bags to events and take away their own rubbish….

UK they drop or throw it from a car window….urinate in the street and spit everywhere….

Stoke is actually 6 towns. So has the potential to be 6 times worse than anywhere else.

seaside towns are completely different towns depending on wether you visit in or out of season

Bolton, ffs what fighting and shocking, knockout auditor on you tube, dangerous place it’s just unbelivabe a quite a shock

Where are those lines from?, iawn is it a song, poem?

Just curious, liked it.

salmon spray 08 Dec 25 09:14 
Some places up north have gone missing. Redcar,Withernsea,Rotherham.

...........................

Yes, and there are parts of Sheffield worse than those three.
Add Batley, Dewsbury, Bradford, Oldham, Rochdale, Blackburn
and a few others.
I haven't been to Picadilly Gardens in Manchester centre
but that looks one of the worst areas in any city,
like a dystopian zoo.

Parts of London.  Full of Orcs from Africa and the Caribbean and South Asia.

Leicester's a s**t hole

your talking about these places as though they were once something else, I used to go to all boro away games on inter cities trains in 80,s ,get there early for a mossie around and a pint and likes of cov,Wolverhampton,bristol,Oldham,Barnsley ,city/Salford were all ****,s so to speak back then

Barstool

It's a poem by John Betjeman, "Slough".

From Wiki:

"Slough" is a ten-stanza poem by Sir John Betjeman, first published in his 1937 collection Continual Dew.

The British town of Slough was used as a dump for war surplus materials in the interwar years,[1] and then abruptly became the home of 850 new factories just before World War II.[2] The sudden appearance of this "Trading Estate", which was quickly widely reproduced throughout Britain, prompted the poem. Seeing the new appearance of the town, Betjeman was struck by the "menace of things to come". He later regretted the poem's harshness.[3] The poem is not about Slough specifically, but about the desecration caused by industrialization and modernity in general, with the transformation of Slough being the epitome of these evils.[4] Nevertheless, successive mayors of Slough have objected to the poem.

The poem was published two years before the outbreak of World War II, during which Britain (including Slough itself) experienced actual air raids. Much later, in a guide to English churches, Betjeman referred to some churches as "beyond the tentacles of Slough" and "dangerously near Slough".[5] However, on the centenary of Betjeman's birth in 2006, his daughter apologised for the poem. Candida Lycett Green said her father "regretted having ever written it". During her visit, Lycett Green presented Mayor of Slough David MacIsaac with a book of her father's poems. In it was written: "We love Slough".

Thank you.

went to city in 90,s and ended up in wrong area and went for a drink in Salford and it was literally like taking part in a episode of SHAMELESS,then there was the benefits street show in brum,

Within a few minutes' walk of Slough, you pass the playing fields of Eton. A few minutes more and you'll see the school and the boys in their tailcoats.

Saddo

Piccadilly gardens are an embarrassment to the city I have lived all my life back in the 60s 70s they were nice,there are plans to improve them but whilst that’s a plus I don’t know how they will changed the people who use them.

Machine guns would do, vermin everywhere.

That would be a good solution

agree_with_nick
Eton College boys have only in recent years been allowed to cross the river into Windsor. Once was ran into as the races by  P Harry desperate to get a bet on after the race had started. As far as I know they are still not allowed to go into Slough

morecambe,but end of same **** gan on
as 90 percent of towns across the uk...
there is one or two recessionproof
areas of course, lakes ie- windy, ambleside
bowness, keswick but those areas are slowly
been eradicated via massive tourism, and there
simliar places in yorkie dales n peak district

Anyone been to Hatfield,bit like a zombie movie.

Most of North London is finished as a place to live...

All I have ever known about Slough is that Mars Bars were made there and my granddad used to use the phrase the best thing since Mars Bars.
Has to be plus point for the place, no?

Another vote for Luton here, suspect a few have been to the poker at Grosvenor which is decent enough but don't get lost, you will think your in Bangladesh. The worst hotel there ever stayed in, a Thistle and a really awful Premier Inn.

Loyal

Plus point is you don’t have far to travel to ascot

another for Luton, been couple of times to Kenilkworth Rd, its like the Appalachians

Harrow
Southall
Wembley
Leicester
Birmingham
Luton
Blackburn
Bradford

Must be a link of some kind?

Their Fav day is Friday

they don't like dags neitherrre

All of it

Birkenhead ,,you see them trying to get across the mersey like zombies

Not necessarily scummy, but I was horrified by how run down and grey Ashington was when I was there around 10 years ago

Wouldn't disagree about Blackburn, though there's probably worse

Sunderland, never the best, appeared to be dying on its arse last time I was there a couple of years back

one for the oldies,when jack charlton,s  boring,boring BORO team were in their promotion season ,LUTON were in 2nd place and I went to Kenilworth Rd with my uncle, and we won the championship that day in APRIL by boring LUTON to death  1  v  5

I thought souness was around then

ive rarely been abroad in england, but the few times i have been, ive noticed who one town just blends into the next...you all live ontop of each other, which probabaly explains the social unrest that seems everywhere in that country....

Murdoch came around that time too jimnast.  I’ve never heard Souey talk about him but my perception always was that Bobby kind of mentored him at Ayresome Park, helped him mature.  I’m sure Souness would have benefitted a lot from his experience.
Murdoch would have been worth Meg in this day and age.  Top, top midfielder in his day.

Murdoch coached jnrs like proctor,Johnson,hodgson through the system to 1st team players ,he was my dads fav player,and the rather portly poster boy for boro,s iconic blue and black stripe sky blue shorts and socks,seem to remember him scoring against Sunderland in a  f a cup game on a mudbath at holgate end, think that was the yr we lost at orient in quarter finals

I once saw Murdoch in a Celtic home game, can’t remember the opposition.  He clashed with an opponent on the dugout side halfway line, head to head stuff.  The opponent did the now normal thing of pushing his forehead into his as opposed to a full head-butt.  Murdoch went to “act” as if he had been violently assaulted, hand to brow in agony, but as he did so he looked to his right and the Celtic dugout, where of course big Jock would have been watching. He instantly thought better of it, straightened up and got on with things.  I got the distinct impression at the time that he would have had big Jock to deal with later if he’d collapsed like a wimp to the ground and that that was not a pleasant option. 

Dec 9, 2025 -- 5:17PM, LoyalHoncho wrote:

I once saw Murdoch in a Celtic home game, can’t remember the opposition.

Hounslow.

Reminded me of watching Black Hawk Down at the local IMAX 15 years beforehand.

What is the common denominator......Who is brave enough to find the link.

Imports from lesser lands I expect.

All our lives we have invested our industry and good citizenship in keeping the country we were born into and bred up in and today we have to speak/text/communicate in a code.
That is our life now.

blackpool has to be high on the list - like most of the big seaside holiday towns of the 50s-70s, there time has been and gone

The days that lower earners could afford to visit and graze
at UK seaside/theme park attractions have been and gone.

Circus on the Thames prefers the fodder to live in what resembles a lair imv,mind you some lairs will be better kept tbh….

Visited Grimsby on the way to Beverly races many years ago. Probably similar to a holding bay for the Jeremy Kyle show

Are the towns named here ought to be referred to as ghettos as termed by Ms Braverman, our former home sec? Is it a strong possibility that some of these towns could eventually be known / named by the new "locals" to one of those in their former country eg Thornton Heath -> Bholari? If so, UK Plc could be like Horseracing UK -> a spiral decline.

Holding bay for Jeremy Kyle show

Wallsend…..

Agreed jimnast.  Brilliant! 

Now now Dave,wallsend diamond of the NEast

..these must be the sunlit uplands I was promised.

11kv08 Dec 25 15:45
Anyone been to Hatfield,bit like a zombie movie.

I did my degree there (Uni of Hertfordshire) and lived there for 3 years.

Yes, it's an odd place - alongside some of the poorer areas also home of Hatfield House a bastion of previous wealth/Aristocracy. The Galleria shopping centre I recall also (maybe the zombie reference in part)...

An odd place but I still remember it from those years gone by with a bit of fondness.

Swansea - the pretty **** city

Went thru Hull en route to Beverley 5 or 10 years ago, it didnt seem to be doing very well. Two youths were mooning over the motorway on the way in.

I saw the price tkts/wrist bands for blackpool pleasure beach 2 summers ago and it might have changed again now due to complaints, but grannies and grandad's were charged full price as though they were queuing up to have 6 goes on the biggest rollercoaster ,no walk in tkts/prices available

CORBY was beyond grim about 25 yrs ago,steelworks closed and 1000,s of unemployed jocks everywhere

All about the population imv,they have the choice of taking pride or accepting to live in dirt…..looks like the latter tbh….

All in the upbringing……

Racing down south in past years i walked out of a few B &B establishments because of dirt and sticky floors…..

True saying what you see outside is almost certain to be the same inside……

Never been to Corby, but I do remember reading an article 5-10 years ago and it was listed top of the most improved towns in the UK.

I'd never knowingly stay in somewhere that I thought was going to be awful.

I did have a day in Hastings during the 2016 Euros and thought I'm never going here again.  Whitehaven struck me as the most boring place I'd ever seen when we visited on a school trip once.

We seem a awash with sh.t holes

Probably Widnes in the early 60s .

There were coloured chemical fires burning in the slagheaps .

My childrens' nanny took me to her birth village, just outside Coventry. It was an exquisite village and charming. We then drove through Coventry.

One sure sign you are passing through a “scummy” is when you’re at traffic lights and look across to the walk/don’t walk sign area and see two young girls waiting to cross rid their noses of drips by rubbing them up and down vigorously with their jersey cuffs.  I try not to be a snob but ffs there are some habits which just tell the tale.  Wallyford -East Lothian.

Oh dear.