Over recent times they’ve cleared
This part of the Old Town,
Dozing and burning and smashing
The slum lanes and streets down
For years leaving brownfield sites
Unsightly flattened derelict ground.
Now old street names are returning
With construction work all around.
Apartments and houses appearing
Newly built on a sympathetic scale
Blocks and rows of warm red brick
Completed and offered up for sale.
It’s a gentrification process
A planned reseeding with life
To bring this once deserted area
Very quickly back to life.
Once centred around shipping
But with those docks long gone
This city is now changing
As things are at last moving on
The old Fruit Market now devoted
More as an area for living and leisure
Still a City Of Water but in the Centre
Now focussed on boating for pleasure
