I WAS interested to read your feature on Northallerton High Street 50 years ago (D&S Times, October 7), especially the comments on the removal of overhead electricity wires and the replacement of the old metal litter bins with “attractive concrete containers”.

Unfortunately, no sooner is one sort of clutter removed than another takes its place.

I refer to the clutter of parking signs which festoon the Applegarth car park and residential areas on the south side of town. Eric Pickles pledged a war on highway signs but unfortunately he was deposed from the Government before his edict had effect – one for the current environment supremo, perhaps.

The “attractive concrete containers” are no more, removed in the last major high street revamp around 1987, replaced by retro cast ironlooking (in reality fibre-glass) bins. No doubt these will be replaced by whatever is fashionable in due course in the next round of enhancement.

The adverts from 1966 show how local businesses dominated the town centre.

Only a handful of them survive in the High Street, the locals largely displaced by national chains, with latterly an emphasis on coffee and phone shops, undreamt of in 1966 during the era of state monopoly on telephones.

This loss of the local element in retailing, while regrettable, is probably inevitable, as national chains fight for market share and turn their attention to ever smaller towns; even Bedale, that most retro of small towns, has recently gained a chain coffee shop. Is this a straw in the wind?

Tony Robinson, Northallerton