1950s Town

I have come up to England's Northeast, and for the third time in my life I have purchased admission to its wonderful, open-air museum at Beamish. We arranged a chapel outing there back in 2018, and a thoroughly good time was had by all (search 'Martin Top Beamish'). Although my favourite area is the Edwardian high street, a new development I was keen to observe: 1950s Town.

The fifties is a decade in which I suspect I would feel more at home. ‘Christian values’ were still mainstream, churches were still being built rather than closing down and Britain was respected. Women looked glamourous in their polka dot dress skirts while the menfolk in their trilbies and brown suits were elegant, even if the trousers were a little baggy.  

Yet as I walked about Fifties Town, the seeds of the subsequent decades’ decay were already evident. There was a TV shop, offering sales or rentals of television sets (‘£2.10.0 deposit with 38 weeks to pay’); the record shop was selling certain albums with risqué sleeves as well as the infamous rock and/or roll music. The picture house at the Grand was showing films on Sundays when people might otherwise have been at church or chapel, and the general increase in material wealth may have created a boredom with spiritual matters hitherto unknown to previous generations.

People like me who tend to glorify and extol the past need reminding that it was not really a golden age, that Christ and His gospel were still rejected, that people found excuses to neglect or belittle the Bible’s vital message. If the 60s witnessed a cultural watershed, the 50s played the midwife.

Many people from the wonderful fifties are now awaiting judgement in hades from the God whose gospel they spurned; people in the godless 20s are even now calling upon the Lord and receiving His salvation.