21
February
Sunday
morning, and this is the first time I have had the computer on since I closed
down last Thursday. Friday I was feeling more than a little ropey, yesterday we
were in town having a walk through the market and doing a bit of shopping. I say,
‘the market’ fairly loosely these days. There isn’t the number of stalls there
was even just five years ago. As for the 1950/60s, there’s just no comparisons
at all. I remember there being two tool stores at least; a
kitchen-ware/crockery stall; far more fruit and veg stalls and more clothes
stalls than anything else.
And don’t
forget Cheap Jacks, the book stall on the corner of Queens Road and Stratford
Street. There was a massive flower/plant stall on the opposite end of Stratford
Street too. And my favourite stall, the sweetie stall, which is still there.
The stalls were on both sides of the street, and stretched from Dougdale Street
to the Market Place, along one side of Bridge Street and then along on side of
Abbey Street to the end of the Co-op building (soon to close). It was a
wonderful market, even if traffic was allowed to drive through it. Fortunately,
there wasn’t a lot of it. Now it starts from outside the Ropewalk shopping
centre along both sides of Queens Road and Market Place, one side of Bridge
Street and Abbey Street as far as Stratford Street.
I
remember the shops on Queens Road too, shops like Reg Haddon’s, the book shop
where Iceland is now. Woolworths, a large store that once had a provisions
counter selling cheeses, cooked meats, bacon, sausage and so on; and oh yes,
broken biscuits. I still think that the closing of that counter was the start
of the problems for Woollies. It’s now a 99p store. And how about Tesco’s; yes,
we had a large two story Tesco’s in the town centre, all those Green Shield
Stamps, remember those. When they opened the new one in Bed’th they promised
the Queens Road store would remain open. Well, it did, for just over 12 months
as I recall.
Another
larger store was J C Smiths with its three entrances; one on Bridge Street, one
on Newdigate Street and the third on Harefield Road. Smith was a department
store, it’s still there but changed name to Debenhams. However, as Smiths, it
too had a provisions counter by the Newdigate Street entrance. That counter has
gone now too. Marks & Sparks has gone and is now a £1 shop, a second £1
shop in town.
It’s all
rather sad to see how our town is quickly going downhill. Now we only have one
town centre high street butchers’, which happily is a good one. If you want
fresh fish, then it’s Asda or Sainsburys, but both are not really town centre
stores. We do have a lot of charity shops and even more empty shops, including some
in the new Ropewalk place, with more empty shops to come, including the whole
of Co-op department store and food hall. There now just one in-store bakery, Three
Cooks, opposite Iceland, and one green grocer, Caves’, next door to our one and
only bookshop, Waterstones.
And yet
our council is claiming to be in talks with a number of big name stores to come
into town because according to them, we need more shopping opportunities here.
A lot of us is not so sure. Now come on folks, regular readers of this blog
will know that I am always ready to blame the tories for whatever is wrong;
however, here in Dorktown, it is not the tories, no. We have a labour council,
a labour council that will not listen to we town’s people say about what we
really want.
What we
really want is less spent on daydreaming arty-farty statues and coats of paint
to try to hide the dirty and gunge. We want empty shops to be filled and used;
we want less charity shops and a much larger choice of local shops for us to
use. Why are they closing so quickly? Rent and rates are far too high, even the
market rents are increasing too much. We do not want an increase in parking
charges, which when it goes ahead will drive more people to out of town
shopping centres. Morrisons is only a few miles away, Tesco Extra is slightly
more than that but the one in Bed’th has just been improved. If this town will
not supply them, then we will go to where we can get what we want and need. It
would also help to keep the town centre clean and tidy.
And do
you know what we really, really want? We want a real ring road to take through
traffic out of the town centre instead of through the middle of it.
Today’s
photo has to be of our part of our town centre …
Bridge Street looking to Market Place
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