Old shops of Shrewsbury

Anybody remember Wildings or Standish Taylor – or Owen Owen or Maddox’s?

Come to that, does anybody remember Timothy Whites?

I only ask because as I wander around the old town, I often think of the stores that have come and gone.

Very often the buildings are still there, of course, but they have been taken over and revamped almost beyond recognition.

Like an antique string of pearls, our town, much used and sometimes abused over the years, will occasionally lose one of its number. But as one familiar name rolls off into history, it will be replaced in time with a shiny newcomer.

Now Wildings conjures up special memories for me. My sister used to work there as a young girl and I would often pop in and say hello.

Wildings – in Castle Street – was a bookshop and stationers which also sold art equipment and had (downstairs in the basement) its very own record department. This was a semi-secret place which never seemed anything like as popular as it should have been.

And well into the 1970s this wonderful little record department had booths in which you could listen to LPs or singles before deciding whether or not to part with your hard-earned cash and actually make a purchase.

These slightly musty sound-proof booths were already quite ancient by this time – built surely for the sounds of Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra rather than for those of The Strawbs, Lindisfarne, David Bowie, Supertramp, Roxy Music and American songwriter Don McLean – some of the artists I was into in those days.

I mention Don McLean in that list because I have very vivid memories of buying from Wildings his 1974 LP, Homeless Brother. I listened to it all the way through in one of those sound-proof booths and I well remember thinking: “This is a bit cheeky. If I don’t buy the record now, they’ll think I’m taking the mick.”

xhed

Happily, I loved the record so it was not really such a big decision to buy it. And – to this day – it is still a favourite.

Wildings was a much-loved old shop but it was never going to survive as the bigger stores grew ever-bigger.

Standish Taylor was a quirky up-market gift shop a stone’s throw from Shrewsbury Library.

I had not quite realised how expensive this shop was until one day (I must have been about 18 at the time) I popped in to buy my girlfriend a present. I was (and still am) a big softie and I was going to buy her a cuddly Paddington Bear.

I can only think I had completely misread the price when I first spied Paddington (complete with his Wellington boots and floppy hat) through the shop’s window. Because when the assitant told me just how much our furry friend cost, it was yours truly who was almost blown all the way to Darkest Peru.

Owen Owen and Maddox’s – well they were almost the same thing.

And this is where we are made aware that Shrewsbury of course represents layer upon layer upon layer of history.

Because just as we are getting all teary-eyed about Maddox’s we should remind ourselves that it (as a building) only came along in the late 19th century and – in so doing – replaced an elaborate timber-framed building dating from the early 17th century. Clearly, big-scale vandalism and a total lack of sympathy for the historic townscape is by no means a recent thing!

Anyway. Maddox’s was a grand department store which for decades was well-known in the county town. You name it, it sold it.

The building (on the corner of High Street and Pride Hill) is still there.

It was taken over for a while by Owen Owen, a Liverpool-based operator of department stores across the UK.

Now, the thing I remember most about Owen Owen was that it had a really charming coffee shop and restaurant. We used to go there a lot when the children were young, we grown-ups sipping our coffee, the lads playing with their plastic dinosaurs from the Early Learning Centre.

In 2007, Owen Owen entered administration and another familiar name disappeared from the High Street.

And finally from my list, Timothy Whites. This was a large shop, very similar in many ways to WH Smith. Timothy Whites (like Wildings) had its own record department and I well remember buying many an album from here – including Country Life by Roxy Music.

I will never forget this episode because the cover of Country Life depicts two very sexy, scantily-clad ladies, and I was actually almost too embarrassed to take the record up to the counter to pay for it.

But somehow I conjured up the courage.

It’s amazing what comes back to you as you walk around the town centre.