Not West Bridgford No. 3

Like all affluent suburbs, West Bridgford is well provided with retail facilities, and among its shopping parades are those in Melton, Loughborough and Abbey Roads, Compton Acres, Hilton Crescent and Trent Boulevard. The principal shopping thoroughfare is Central Avenue, which leads off Tudor Square, with businesses now creeping into the ends of Rectory, Albert, Bridgford, Davies and above all Gordon Road.

Traditionally, Central Avenue boasted all the usual run of shops for food and household items, including a Co-op, and the Tudor Cinema. Since the turn of the millennium the emphasis has changed, not as in so many places downwards in the direction of pound shops and charity shops, but towards refreshment. In this small area there are well over a dozen coffee shops, bars and restaurants catering for the well-heeled population, plus a handful of travel agents, opticians, florists, building societies, pharmacies, and other businesses. As an evening venue, Central Avenue offers an attractive and relatively quiet alternative to the centre of Nottingham.

 
Unusually, compared with most shopping streets, Central Avenue is not completely hemmed in by shops, and for part of its eastern side is bordered by what has long been known as the “croquet lawn”, in effect an extension of Bridgford Park. Once lined by giant poplars, in Springtime magnificent blossoms are now to be found here, and the area continues to rebuff the encroachment of car parking and other philistine developments, which would destroy much of the attractiveness that brings people here in the first place. Another location that features such an arrangement of adjacent greenery is the east London suburb of Wanstead, and the accompanying  illustration shows Wanstead High Street, E.11. Wanstead has an ambience, a pleasant “feel”, very similar to that of West Bridgford, although it enjoys the additional attraction of having its own tube station..

Not West Bridgford No. 2

A variant on “Not West Bridgford No. 1”, here we have another shopping parade with strong resemblances to those in West Bridgford, in particular Central Avenue and Loughborough Road. This one happens to be in affluent Pinner, in the heart of Metroland in north-west London, and famous as the birthplace of Sir Elton John. 

Shopping is a crucially important activity for suburbanites wherever they live, as this series of illustrations reflects. Just across from the Loughborough Road shops, in 1960, West Bridgford became the site of what was described as Great Britain’s first hypermarket, an American innovation that would drive the shopping experience into the twentieth century. This was The Future.

 
The GEM, with its big red neon logo was, by today’s standards, a pretty average supermarket, although I recall that it sold furniture, including beds, as well as food and general household items. In due course it became Asda, then a homely British label, and a store that was always well stocked and pleasant to use. For many years the store front faced south, onto the car park, but subsequently, with the new designation as Asda-Walmart, everything became bigger, the layout rotated through 90 degrees to face the east, and traditional shoppers perhaps soon discovered that American ownership of “the future of retail” left something to be desired. Shopping will also be the theme in the third “Not West Bridgford”, to be posted in the near future.