Tyneside in 1965:

T was 1965 - halfway through the decade that will be forever labelled the 'swinging sixties'. Youth culture was thriving, pop music was exploding, and fashion was being transformed - with London leading the way in liberation, psychedelia, and bold self-expression.

- By DAVID MORTON

On Tyneside, just 20 years after the end of World War II, the process of change mightn't have been so radical, but it was in the air. In common with regions across the country, numerous blocks of high-rise flats, or 'streets in the sky', were taking shape. The so-called '14 storeys' at Willington Quay on the Coast Road between North Shields and

Wallsend were a prime example of this new, postwar, low-cost, mass-produced housing stock. The three blocks had been built in 1960 at a cost of £750,000. In the 1976 feature film, The Likely Lads, the character Terry Collier - as played by actor James Bolam - purportedly lived there. After falling into disrepair, the flats were finally demolished in 1989, having had a lifespan of less than 30 years.