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In the interwar years, although Basingstoke did not escape the effects of the 1920 and 1930sDepression (for example, there were layoffs at Thornycroft), the town continued to grow naturallywith council housing being built at Kingsclere Rd, Grove Rd and South Ham, private development atEastrop and Deep Lane, and ribbon development along Winchester Rd and Worting Rd. Smallerscale, but still significant development was also happening in the three nearby ‘dormitory’ villages,Old Basing, Worting and Kempshott (all within two to three miles of the town).The Town Council actively promoted the town as a place for industry 34 and succeeded in attractingKelvin, Bottomley & Baird (later Kelvin Hughes, then Smiths Industries) manufacturers of aircraftinstruments and Eli Lilly, pharmaceuticals, to the town by the outbreak of WW2.Basingstoke got off relatively lightly from bombing during World War Two; early in the war ChurchSquare, St Michael’s and the Wesleyan Methodist churches were extensively damaged and in separateraids Solbys Rd, Burgess Rd and Cliddesden Rd were also attacked. In 1944 a V1 aimed atThornycrofts fell harmlessly (not counting the many broken windows) where Milestones Museum isnow.The 1944 Abercrombie report on post-war reconstruction identified Basingstoke as a potential site fordispersal of some of London’s population. This had the effect of putting ‘planning blight’ on thecentral area; owners generally were not willing to invest in rebuilding/improving their properties, sofor the period up to the Town Development scheme the shopping areas remained basically as theywere before World War Two. The exceptions to this statement were the opening in the late 1950s of adepartmental store and supermarket on the west side of New St by the Basingstoke Co-operativeSociety 35 and a major car showroom and garage for Jacksons on the corner of Wote St and Basing Rd.Figure 14 New Street c. 1980© Sid PennyThe Co-op stores became a victim of the central area redevelopment as the main shopping areamoved away from the older area to the new shopping centre. The Co-op stores were demolished in34 Eric Stokes, The Making of Basingstoke, Basingstoke Archaeological & Historical Society, 2008,p140-1.35 Barbara Applin, The Co-op and Basingstoke, Basingstoke Archaeological & Historical Society, 2012, 90.15