West End opens

Shopping can be a drag. But it’s a sheer pleasure at Drogheda’s West End Arcade, newly opened this week.

It offers five specialist shops in a centre built by that Drogheda business dynamo Malachy McCloskey and deliciously designed by Turlough McKevitt, well known for his architectural prowess.

The brief to the architect was: draw up something interesting on the traditional style rather than the starkly modern.

The result was sheer elegance in concrete and wood, with none of the square box or claustrophobic styles to be found in many other shopping centres around the country.

The shops are done in Georgian front, with curved windows and using the old fashioned mahogany. A style that is coming back into vogue.

In keeping with the old world character of the arcade there are no neon or plastic signs in sight. Each shop has an old inn type sign dangling from its front. For example the sign over the newsagency is a newspaper and the jewellers a clock.

Enhancing the atmosphere is a genuine old cast iron gas lamp at the end of the arcade which is over 100 years old.