Rotherham: Portas, shops, promotion and Digimap for Schools...

Rotherham is my home town, although it's a few years since I've been back.... the last time I nearly got stuck in the snow...
It has undergone quite a lot of changes over the last few decades. It was visited by Jamie Oliver, in 2008 who tried to improve the diet in the town and famously led to mums passing food through the school fence in Rawmarsh.

The BBC revisited 4 years on in this article


Mary Portas carried out a review of High Streets, which I mentioned in the resources I created, and as a result of this Rotherham now has a new grant to try to improve the nature of the shops that are found in the town centre. It has been awarded several hundred thousand pounds to encourage new shops to the town.


Last year, I produced a resource for Digimap for the Schools which focussed on Rotherham and shopping as part of a larger set of resources for the digital OS map streaming serviced. Download the resource and 'visit Rotherham' using maps and Google Earth.

I was grateful to RIDO for letting me have access to a range of documents relating to the plans to redevelop the town centre. One major change has been the relocation of quite a few major buildings such as the town's library to the opposite end of town than it used to be.

There is also now a new football stadium which has been completed - and coincidentally the football team were promoted this year too. You can try out an activity where you choose a possible new site for the football team (which was written before the new stadium was built) on the GA website.

Writing this has triggered an urge to go back and visit as soon as I can. I'm up in the area later in the year for some work at the GA, so I'll pop into Rotherham and let you know how I get on and put some pictures here...

The picture at the top of the post is of the Cross Keys, where I used to have the odd pint and chip butty. It was taken in the 1960's.... I'm not quite old enough to have been drinking it quite that far back...

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