Faded Grandeur

The weather was pants, windy and wet.  I went for a wander around the town looking for some inspiration. 
Whitehaven, once a fine Georgian Town which prospered from mining, a busy port exporting coal and importing commodities including Rum from the West Indies and a large Chemical Industry. All now gone.  
The town was a New Town in the 17th Century, designed on a grid pattern, it was a design copied by subsequent planners particularly in America. Buildings were required to be 3 stories high, laid out in broad streets.  Over the centuries , the grandeur was lost somewhat due to the expansion of the town and unsympathetic development.
However many of the original building remain, (there are over 170 listed buildings in Whitehaven) albeit many in a dilapidated state, the prosperity has long since gone and out of town centre retail and internet convenience has done for the old town centre.
And so to my blip,  triggered by an abandoned shop in King Street, "This could..." Got me thinking and a short stroll around some examples of the faded grandeur of the town. The blue house shows what can be done if resources are committed.

ps the building bottom left in Roper Street deserved inclusion for it's rainwater drainpipe alone, the hopper is engraved TRI 1740, and the wall brackets all have individual cast relief sculptures. I found out TRI was Thomas Ritson, a plumber evidently proud of his work 284 years ago...