FOR those of a certain age, the Eighties seem as though they were just yesterday. Astonishingly, thirty years have passed since the decade of Thatcher, the miner's strike, big shoulder pads and even bigger hair.

Much has changed in those three decades - no-one, back then, would have had a clue what a Smartphone was. And as for Facebook - what's that, we might have asked, a posh word for a photo album?

Much, however, has remained the same. We found these images of Pickering in the 1980s in an old folder in our archives labelled: “Pickering businesses - hotels, pubs, cafes and restaurants”. They were all taken in the 1980s and give a snapshot of life in the North Yorkshire market town three decades ago. Some of the businesses have changed, and there's a new generation treading the town's streets today, with a whole new set of problems and preoccupations. But many of the buildings remain today pretty much as they were then...

Stephen Lewis