Denton Designs

30 Rodney Street, Liverpool, L1

When Imagine software went bang in 1984 it's ex-employees scattered across Liverpool; some went to Odin, some to Software Projects, and six went off and set up Denton Designs, their own development house. Steve Cain, Ally Noble, John Gibson, Karen Davies, Graham Everitt, and Ian Weatherburn were the original six. Karen Davies later told CRASH: 'We just sat down and rang round the major software companies offering our services... We were surprised at the reaction we got from companies -it was invariably favourable. Business wise people were naturally a bit wary at first, because of the Imagine reputation, but as programmers and artists we had a good grounding and reputation, and people had heard of us through the Imagine name." (June 1985 page 30)

Elite

Anchor House, Anchor Road, Aldridge, Walsall, WS9

The spiritual home of this blog is Anchor Road, Walsall. I've written before about my long fascination with the artwork on Elite's 1987 job advert and it's Gerry Anderson-esque vision of Anchor Road as the Moonbase Alpha of the Midlands. A trip to Anchor House was inevitable at some point. It just took slightly longer than expected because The Great Petrol Panic of autumn 2021 put paid to my first set of plans. It's going to be a while before the Travel Tube brings us to Anchor Road and before that address, before in fact Elite was even called Elite, the company had a more humble origin.