What now for Cambridge?

LookitwasonlywhenI realised Adrian Barclay was relocating his trendy salon Venom right out of Cambridge Place that it dawned on me that the whole inner city arcade might be going in the great centre city rebuild.

Now I know you cannot have an omelette without breaking eggs but truly that arcade is quite the prettiest building in the city which is probably why Trevor Thayer once sold it so easily to the visiting Duchess of Bedford who has since sold it back.

Haven’t noticed its charm?

Cross Esk St, stand opposite and look over and see why Lynley Dear set her Hollywood School of Dressmaking, in her novel of the same name, right there, up the yellow and blue stripey stairs once everybody knew – knew because it was once the heart of the city beating with a high pedestrian count as shoppers went from Esk to Tay and back again.

Cambridge Place, the city’s first commercial arcade, was home to many boutique type retail outlets, mostly run by Southland families with an interest in keeping standards high. Where now Venom cuts and colours, Olwen Rae had her Lewis beauty salon, its polished chequered floors linked by an open stair.

Mrs Rae trained many hairdressers who went on to win national awards and often to set up their own salons here and elsewhere.

Opposite her, the Dave Cheyne family ran the Arcade lending library remarkable for its open-all-hours (till seven on a Saturday evening) and for the range of books available.

In pre-TV days people took books away in wrapper-covered half dozen lots. Romances, westerns, mysteries. And readers enjoyed the staff, the children of Dave and Mrs Cheyne who helped them run the business.

Near the Esk St end of the Arcade, Cyril and Nell Jackson and later son Peter and his wife Robin ran a shoe shop named for a seemingly imaginary Mr Boyce.

Cyril, and in time Peter, then known as young Mr Boyce.

Jewellers are still at the Esk St end of the arcade – Warburtons as was, Skelts nowadays – and till recently Bells cake kitchen at the other, opposite a narrow doorway leading upstairs to the Tudor Lounge run by Herbert Haynes as a tearoom, a wedding breakfast venue and on winter nights a cosy fire-lit retreat for members of the Southland branch of the Royal Over-Seas League.

Morrisons Mantles, Cambridge Place art salon, all gone; more to go.

Get ready, set, go for change ahead.