underbank
Established Member
Obviously when it would have had a greengrocer, a baker and a butcher next to it that would have been workable, but minus those (which started to die much earlier)
We had a newsagents shop in a "cluster" from the mid 70s to mid 90s. Our cluster included a grocers, butchers, greengrocers, off licence, post office, bakers, chemist, hairdressers and wool/knitting shop at the entrance to a huge 1920s housing estate. Within the same housing estate were other shops, including a couple of other grocers, a couple of sweet shops, another newsagents, all just one-offs on random street corners. We bought the shop, I think around 1974, so that "model" of local shops was still very much with us up to the mid 70s at least. We didn't live at the shop, we lived in another area which was very similar. On a Saturday morning, you literally couldn't move on the pavements outside, each shop had a queue out of the door and people just went from shop to shop.
I'd say it was between the mid 70s and mid 80s that the rot set it as the chains started opening large stores in the town centres but still within the town centre not out of town. I remember the first we lost was the greengrocer and then a couple of years later we lost the bakers, and then the shops not in our cluster closed down one by one, leaving just our cluster. We all suffered drop in trade due to the town centre chain stores, but muddled on and we benefitted from gaining some trade from the other shops as they closed, i.e. we, as a newsagents, started selling wider range especially kid's sweets as the sweet shops had closed which made up for the loss of business we suffered to the High St chains. We all carried on until a huge out of town Asda opened up, in the late 1980s. That was the death knell. First to close was the butchers, and that caused a knock on effect due to loss of trade, the grocers was next as they lost business due to people not coming for the butchers next door, and so on. By 1995, we were the last man standing which was basically because of our home delivery paper rounds (one thing that the High Street stores and Asda don't do!) - the chemist and post office had closed because people didn't come to the butchers, grocers anymore! What was once a thriving and busy shopping cluster was then very quiet indeed. We couldn't carry on with just paper rounds, so we sold them to another newsagent and shut the shop. A couple of the cluster were converted to living accommodation, but the cluster now consists of a takeaway, an off licence, a tanning studio, a tattooist and a hairdresser/nail bar, so a pretty typical consist of today!