Albion Row, Althorpe Street, John Street and Satchwell Street are among former thoroughfares to have disappeared, or changed beyond recognition over the past century.

Some were slums, cleared for the good of the town and the people living in them, others made way for shopping centres, car parks and modern developments.

Historian Alan Griffin has been helping collate residents’ memories of many of these streets at Bath Place Community Venture.

He said: “In the mid 19th century most of the worst housing was in the courts between Regent Street and Clarendon Square and some of these remained until the mid 1930s.”

Covent Garden Market was one of these. Its name has been preserved at the multi-storey car park but the area was once one of the most densely populated parts of Leamington. The market itself was established in 1828, but by the mid 19th century the area was a badly drained and overcrowded slum.

The market had fallen into disuse by 1947 and the terraced houses, which had characteristic porches extending across the pavement, were demolished in the mid 1960s.

Althorpe Street in Old Town was another working-class street cleared in the 1950s. One photograph was used in the Royal Leamington Spa Development Plan in 1947 with the caption “to live in these surroundings cannot produce good citizens or healthy children.”

Historian Richard King has researched streets around Wise Street and Wise Terrace. Wise Street, today mostly industrial, once had a pub called the Star, which closed in the 1960s. At its end a series of houses called Albion Row faced the canal.

Behind these was a power station belonging to the Midland Electric Light and Power Company and running parallel with this was Brewery Terrace, named after the Regent Brewery that had stood in Wise Street before 1840. Albion Row was demolished in around 1957.

Modern developments have covered many historic streets. A road called Satchwell Street with a pub called the Silver Jubilee once ran where the Royal Priors shopping centre stands today and flat-building changed the course of some roads. Shrubland Street in Old Town once ran up to Tachbrook Road, but was shortened in the 1950s when the Christine Ledger Square tower block was built.

Some residential streets are still standing today, but are now largely taken up with by shops and businesses. Russell Street, Tavistock Street, Windsor Street and Brook Street are among those that people still alive today may have grown up in.

The Courier would like to hear from anyone with memories of life in Leamington or Warwick’s lost streets. Call the newsroom on 457720.