The Kenton Bar Pyramid 1967
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I moved to 26 Apperley Avenue in 1967. I was 9 years old. Some of the families I remember who lived near my street were named Alexander, Aynsley, Emerson and Robson. I remember others but not their family names like Andrew, Stephanie, Jackie, Billy, Alex..
Some of us used to play on the building sites behind Apperley Avenue. It was interesting to see the estate evolving from the ground up. The photographs of the realised architectural model of the estate actually looks like an electronic computer board - something like a mother board I guess, and in a way this kind of thinking would have been ahead of its time in the late 1960's when computers were just beginning to evolve in commerce. I was part of the family named Slater and we were the first to live in number 26. I remember the house as being full of stairs, very tall, lots of hallway and pretty frightening for a 9 year old. I also remember the streets to be full of young people and I was one of them. The pyramid was beautiful with cascading water over its tiny marble tiles into a moat that secured it from the rest of the world - not. Within a few years the water had gone and the moat had been filled in with concrete. I have been inside of the pyramid and it did have water running on its floor. It wasn't deep enough to anyone any damage. It was more a flow of water from one place to the next. The word on the street was that this water flow helped the sewage system somewhat. It was good to speculate on the reason for the pyramid. It seemed to attract all youth from all over the Estate. Within a few years the pyramid had become a meeting place battleground for the local gangs of skinheads who would test the metal pressings in their Dr. Martin boots and Brogue shoes against eachother to see who could wound the "enemy' the most. These gangs would honour the night with chains that they'd use to belt eachother with. It was the gangs who turned the dream of the pyramid into a nightmare. A beautiful landmark of water over sunshined marble became a place to avoid when the sun went down.
I don't remember the estate being separated into the rough heads and the smooth heads. Everyone who lived on the estate wanted a peaceful homelife. It was the crombie wearing gangs who patronised the estate in the early 1970's, attracted by the pyramid as a symbol of war, that changed the nature of Kenton Bar from architectural hope into disfigurement. I guess the fact that the pyramid is now gone illustrates how the home owners on the estate feel about the evolvement of the pyramid as a symbol of war as opposed to a symbol of beauty as it was originally intended. I think the pyramid was designed to offer the community a meeting place where they could sit and enjoy the local produce from the shops, while keeping good company beside a beautiful fountain. I remember how gorgeous it looked and I remember how dark it became because of the gangs. The pyramid was a symbol of youth. It represented a new way of living. I was there in 2008 and I have to admit that I felt sad that the pyramid was gone. It was such a totem of late 1960's and 1970's youth that I guess its cool that its not there anymore. I feel this way because seeing the pyramid in such a delapidated state would only remind our senior citizens of today of how they stuffed it up, should they remember wiht shame the role that they played in bringing the vision of architectual beauty to its knees through the senseless gang warfare they indulged in as teenagers.
I know this person. Still waters run deep!
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