Re: ZX-Blue Plaques?
Posted: Wed Aug 05, 2020 8:41 pm
Shortly before lockdown (yes, hi, everyone, I'm back from doing the charity thing and just about ready to plunge back into retrogaming - bear with me!), I had a stand-up gig in Telford, Shropshire. Takes me a while to get there, so I had the afternoon off and I have been planning a video feature on the three main Spectrum magazines, so I thought I'd record all my links outside Crash's former HQ in King Street, Ludlow.
In Crash's heyday, the ground floor was a branch of Victoria Wine, a chain of liquor shops that went under about a decade ago. Nowadays it's some health food and vitamins store called The Grape Tree, as you may have seen earlier in this thread. I popped in for a snack on my drive over to Telford (and that was quite a way away).
I've been in 14 Rathbone Place for a job interview, for what it became after Dennis Publishing vacated it - the HQ of Nickelodeon UK/Paramount Channel. All their admin and television studios were crammed into that small multi-storey place, and by spooky coincidence, the chap interviewing me was Eddie McKendrick - the former publisher of Crash, who told me he had been one of the many Lloyd Mangrams. (Also going for the same job was Paul Rose/Mr Biffo of Digitiser fame - he told me of the tiny salary on offer, glad I didn't it!)
Despite SU being in north London, I've never been anywhere near their former HQ, not even when in my clubbing days down at Fabric, which isn't far away.
I popped over to the Baron Of Beef after visiting Cambridge Centre For Computing History at the Spectrum's 35th anniversary...
I occasionally have to travel through Kempston on the way to work. Not that I've done that lately (mostly WFH), but could manage a photo of the Kempston joystick place this week. (Ironically, a company that used to make peripherals for the Spectrum and many other 8-bit and 16-bit computers back in the day, is one of our clients, and it's nothing to do with Kempston.)
I sometimes run round the Finedon Road Industrial Estate in Wellingborough, and my usual 5K route takes me round one of the many UK bases Activision had - Units 3 & 4, Lloyd Close - in the 8-bit era. However, I don't think it was a hub for programming, more like admin. The skip outside it used to have many returned cassettes, regularly raided by kids from the nearby council estate. You'd see a lot of children with Hacker badges.
At some point in the 1990s, Sir Clive Sinclair was selling small kit radios using an address in Wellingborough at the Denington Industrial Estate. Can't think where now, but, wow, that's a come down. Everything there is grotty, circa 1960s.
In Crash's heyday, the ground floor was a branch of Victoria Wine, a chain of liquor shops that went under about a decade ago. Nowadays it's some health food and vitamins store called The Grape Tree, as you may have seen earlier in this thread. I popped in for a snack on my drive over to Telford (and that was quite a way away).
I've been in 14 Rathbone Place for a job interview, for what it became after Dennis Publishing vacated it - the HQ of Nickelodeon UK/Paramount Channel. All their admin and television studios were crammed into that small multi-storey place, and by spooky coincidence, the chap interviewing me was Eddie McKendrick - the former publisher of Crash, who told me he had been one of the many Lloyd Mangrams. (Also going for the same job was Paul Rose/Mr Biffo of Digitiser fame - he told me of the tiny salary on offer, glad I didn't it!)
Despite SU being in north London, I've never been anywhere near their former HQ, not even when in my clubbing days down at Fabric, which isn't far away.
I popped over to the Baron Of Beef after visiting Cambridge Centre For Computing History at the Spectrum's 35th anniversary...
I occasionally have to travel through Kempston on the way to work. Not that I've done that lately (mostly WFH), but could manage a photo of the Kempston joystick place this week. (Ironically, a company that used to make peripherals for the Spectrum and many other 8-bit and 16-bit computers back in the day, is one of our clients, and it's nothing to do with Kempston.)
I sometimes run round the Finedon Road Industrial Estate in Wellingborough, and my usual 5K route takes me round one of the many UK bases Activision had - Units 3 & 4, Lloyd Close - in the 8-bit era. However, I don't think it was a hub for programming, more like admin. The skip outside it used to have many returned cassettes, regularly raided by kids from the nearby council estate. You'd see a lot of children with Hacker badges.
At some point in the 1990s, Sir Clive Sinclair was selling small kit radios using an address in Wellingborough at the Denington Industrial Estate. Can't think where now, but, wow, that's a come down. Everything there is grotty, circa 1960s.