The comfort of concrete

The approach to Cumbernauld town centre, in the early 1970s.

Cumbernauld town centre does not, to put it mildly, get a good press – but I'll always have massive affection for the place, in all its harsh, leaky, concrete-heavy glory.

Built in phases starting in 1963, it's a towering, brutalist gathering of mismatched clumps which looks like it was jammed together by a band of Lego-obsessed giants of varying talent and temperament. It was named 'Britain's most hated building' in 2005, twice voted Scotland's worst town centre by the Carbuncle Awards, and now faces demolition to make way for something (hopefully) better suited for 21st century life and beyond.

Despite its reputation and current state, though, the centre will always hold a special place in my heart – and I suspect many others who grew up in Cumbernauld would say the same.

The town centre is all over my very earliest memories: My mum buying me a pair of plastic sunglasses in the Market Hall after playgroup, and me insisting on wearing them on the walk home 'to protect my eyes from the rain'. Drinking Cresta ('It's frothy man!') in the cafe upstairs at Scan bookshop (to this day, the smell of coffee and doughnuts immediately sends me hurtling back in time to the Scan cafe). Riding the bikes which, for a few pennies, could be rented to keep kids busy while their parents shopped at nearby Galbraiths, once Scotland's biggest supermarket.

A few years later, I'd be on my own bike, cycling up to the centre practically every day after school, heading for level three and the Central Library, riding back with Asterix or Tintin under my arm and then, once the bug had truly bitten, every available 'Doctor Who' hardback, and then bigger, thicker, more complicated books from the grown-up section.

Fast forward to the late 1980s and I'm in the town centre every day of the working week as a young reporter at the Cumbernauld News and Kilsyth Chronicle. Our office, on Tay Walk, occupied a prime spot in the then-bustling centre, an easy drop-in spot for locals to share their stories, seek help or buy prints of school photos. Filling the paper's pages was never a challenge. We could've filled it just with tales from the shops, businesses and community resources around the town centre, never mind the residents of the ever-expanding new town itself.

But that was a long time ago. The Cumbernauld News doesn't even have an office in the town any more, and the businesses still operating in the centre face a radically different shopping culture.

What's happening in Cumbernauld is little different to what's happening in similar centres and malls worldwide, and in no way reflects on its home town which was, and remains, an earthy, vibrant, big and optimistic community. Even so, it was a gloomy experience this week as I made my way through a near-deserted, leaking and damp-scented Phase Four of the centre (which I still think of as 'the new bit', even though it opened in 1981) to an appointment with the optician.

Phase Four of Cumbernauld Town Centre in its bustling heyday, above, and, below, as it is today.

Phase Four was once home to a myriad of high-street names – Dixons, Chelsea Boy, Tandy, Klick Photopoint, William Low, John Menzies – many later felled by changing shopping habits and the financial crash of 2008. Now Phase Four, like the rest of Cumbernauld Town Centre, is hanging by a thread, with many units lying vacant and even some of the charity shops which replaced the big names giving up the ghost.

Up in the older parts of the centre, the grand, steel-fronted former Royal Bank of Scotland building, once a flagship unit, lies empty, and the remaining traders are being huddled together, centralised in preparation for the phased demolition.

Memories followed me at every step of my trip through the various parts of the centre – a reminder not only that my own past is fast drifting into history, but that the same is happening to a certain way of 20th century life, as shopping increasingly moves online and the money once spent within communities now flies straight to a couple of billionaire behemoths and stays there, not circulating back out to build and nourish those communities as it once did.

On the way back to my car, I was heading towards the area where the old Market Hall used to be; where clothes were bought at the stall run by the formidable Mary Nairn, birthday presents picked out at the toy shop on the corner and schoolbags bought for each new term. The Market Hall is, of course, long gone. Where it stood is now a mid-sized branch of Iceland (about the size of the once seemingly enormous Galbraiths).

Just opposite is the spot where, long ago, Templeton's supermarket used to be. We didn't go to Templeton's much – I suspect it was a bit too posh/pricey for the likes of us – but we'd go in sometimes when Mum was shopping with her friend Helen, whose family had ascended just a little higher on the social ladder than we had.

Cumbernauld Town Centre in 1976, with Templeton's on the right and the entrance to the Market Hall just visible at far left.

I was thinking about Mum, and Helen, and Templeton's, and lots of other people and places that are gone now, and how sad it was that the old centre wouldn't be making similar memories for the youngsters of the 21st century, when I saw something that completely changed my mind and my mood.

The old Templeton's unit, latterly a bookmakers and then a kitchen and bathroom showroom, was taken over earlier this year by Creative Space Cumbernauld, which offers creative arts classes for the whole community. As I passed, I could see what looked like a storytelling session for pre-school children going on inside (Katherine and Grant of Creative Space Cumbernauld tell me it was a 'My Little Mess' session!), with the space full of parents/carers with young children on their knees, all focused on the leader of the session, and all with looks of absolute delight on their faces.

There was no mistaking it. The sheer joy in that room made it very, very clear. New memories are still being created in that old, ramshackle town centre. Children of about the age I was when my family first moved to Cumbernauld are going to grow up with unshakable memories of that place, at this time; the kind of memories that, in years to come, will make them smile and want to call up their mum or dad to say: 'Do you remember...?'. It was a beautiful thing to see.

Cumbernauld town centre will change, as all things must. Old parts will go, newer parts will arise. But those memories, still being formed every day, will be precious forever.

You can find out more about Creative Space Cumbernauld here.

For more memories of Cumbernauld and its town centre, go straight to the splendid Concrete Dreams project (and buy their book!).