'Life in Dudley has been 40 years of hurt' - Mark Andrews on why his beloved town has been damaged by Merry Hill

I won't bore you with the reason the date sticks in my memory - it's really not very relevant. But I'll never forget what I saw. In the space of just over 14 months, a bustling town centre had been turned into the biggest flea market I had ever seen.

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Sainsbury's had closed the previous summer, so there was little reason for anyone to venture up to the Tridient Centre any more. The Cook's and Debenhams department stores had been closed for a while, the former a boarded-up eyesore, the latter was at least in partial use. But it was the market place where the real damage had been done. The former BHS and Littlewoods stores had both been converted into temporary-looking clearance stores, with next-to-nothing in them that the average person wanted to buy, and now it was the recently closed Marks & Spencer that had been turned into a giant purveyor of tatty lamp-shades and shop-soiled flat-pack furniture. The exodus to Merry Hill was almost complete. 

A few weeks later the council put on a funfair, in a half-hearted effort to draw people in, but the only thing it really achieved was to heap more ridicule on the town. The popular joke was that even Oxfam was looking to move to Merry Hill.

Up until that time, I had grown up in a town that had seen only optimism. The Black Country Museum had opened in 1976, and the following year Dudley had been shortlisted for city status - in those days candidates were chosen by the Government. In the end the accolade went to Derby, but it seemed inevitable that sooner or later Dudley would become a city.