ONCE in a while, especially when leafing through copies of the Guardian from 50 or 100 years ago, a writer could be forgiven for wanting to be transported to a previous age.

When life was not necessarily simpler but certainly fresher. And the good ideas were still boxed up and ready to be unleashed on an unsuspecting world.

This daydream came to mind after our esteemed deputy editor Gareth Dunning forwarded on a tantalising titbit, culled from these pages half a century ago (Gareth’s own leader-writing work – temperate and uncredited – often sits on the printed version of this screed, fact fans).

Anyway, planning consultants in London, ahead of the New Town even dawning, had published a 64-page masterplan of how a ‘Greater Warrington’ would emerge, from humble beginnings, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

In an extraordinary bout of prescience, the soothsayers predicted that the new county borough, then part of Lancashire, would take in about 22,340 acres of land, and boast a population of 205,000, or thereabouts.

And so it came to pass, with local government mandarins carving out pieces of the old Runcorn Rural District and Golborne Urban District, the entirety of Warrington Rural and Lymm Urban districts and even a sliver of Whiston Rural District, to form an (unholy) alliance with the original town provinces in 1974.

One Cllr Fred Philips, of Warrington Urban District Council, which took in everywhere from Burtonwood, Penketh and Great Sankey to Poulton with Fearnhead, Woolston and Winwick , was adamant that the villages would be better off remaining under the yoke of Lancashire’s County Hall.

Similar sentiments were expressed by Runcorn Rural District Council, which stood to lose territory under the tentative expansionist arrangements, proposed in the mid-1960s.

History shows that the parishes of Appleton, Grappenhall, Hatton, Stockton Heath, Stretton and Walton would go on to form the hotly-contested ‘Greater Warrington’ ideal.

But Podium can’t help wondering, in retrospect, for villagers in Daresbury, Moore and Preston Brook who now form part of the Liverpool City Region, under their Halton overlords, whether the super-borough concept wasn’t perhaps a slightly better fit, in the long run.

n And all this talk of yesteryear dovetails nicely with this week’s top story, as the main post office in Warrington is set to move into WHSmith, from its prime spot in The Old Fish Market.

Given the gradual fall from relevance of our mail service, in the digital age, it’s not this column’s to muster much false outrage at the decision.

In truth the Post Office, as a PLC, has been rolling out similar proposals across the north west for some little time, even for their ‘crown’ locations, which were supposed to be sacrosanct.

Just like our High Street banks, who in many ways lead the way when it comes to abandoning great swathes of the British Isles, there’s little stomach for the convenience or customer service roles you might like to have once attached to our major civic institutions.

And it’s not as if Smiths, every inch another Great British fixture one might feel, will be anything other than be ultra-professional concerning its new lodger. Even if they are tucked away in the back corner like most of them under the ‘partnership’.

You need Smiths to function to its best capabilities to lead the fightback against the scourge of Kindles and other digital book-a-likes, leading us off into the next circle of Hell.

Another High Street casualty then, our post offices, like Woolworth’s, BHS and Ethel Austin before them. Long live Primark, TK Maxx and Lidl – they could be our shopping flag bearers by 2020.