Derby city centre in the 1980s: A mix of chain and independent stores, and where a Swiss Cottage potato was height of elegance
NICOLA RIPPON explains how a weekend trip to town as a teenager made her feel daring, adult and just a bit edgy
‘THE past is a foreign country – they do things differently there,’ so wrote L P Hartley. If, right now, you were to be suddenly dropped into the centre of the Derby of 1985, you might well agree.
In fact, for those of us who grew up in the days when Madonna dressed in charity shop chic, and Zoom was a song by Fat Larry’s Band, life itself was very different.
It was, well, much more parochial than today.
No Twitter, no mobile phones, no way of casually chatting to someone on the other side of the world.
Back in the mid-1980s, most of our horizons stretched no further than Derby’s city centre. So much has changed in that relatively short time that it really does now seem like another place.
As a teenager, a Saturday morning trip to town was always fun. It was the place where I grew up.
The place I bought my first solo meal out. To you a Swiss Cottage jacket potato, to me the height of elegance.
It was also where I found my “style”, such as it was, and where I bought my first makeup and jewellery. Where I felt daring, and adult and just a bit edgy.
I’d meet a friend off the bus outside Primark on Babington Lane and we’d trot down to Woolworths, or Jan’s Jewels in the market, where our meagre budgets stretched further.
Most of our morning, though, was spent walking up and down St Peter’s Street. I loved its mix of chain stores and independent businesses.
Many of the shops are long gone. Some to Derbion, others disappearing entirely or renamed, like the Midland Bank, at the very foot of the hill. Just opposite was Richard Shops, which was more expensive than Primark, and the kind of place I was taken by my mum to buy a new “best” dress.
Every few months my mum would take me into Contessa where I’d have the embarrassing experience of being fitted for a bra. Mum had been trained as a corsetier by the Co-op and proper-fitting underwear was always one of her priorities.
At Athena you could buy posters and artwork. It seemed like every household had at least one framed Athena print somewhere or other.
You could buy music posters alongside fine art, and several girls I knew had their Pierrot prints on a bedroom wall.
There were a large number of travel agents like Pickford’s, Horizon and Hogg Robinson. And Smith’s dry cleaners on the corner of St Peter’s Church Yard, and Ratners jewellers too.
Although we’d long had an indoor shopping centre, no-one seemed put off by inclement weather and, even on rainy days, long queues used to form outside Dewhurst’s the butcher. There seemed to be many more shoe shops than there are today, with Lilley and Skinner, Stead and Simpson and Peter Lord among those you no longer see.
Quite a lot of the shops were places you were likely to visit only with your parents. Roseby’s was one.
Its stock in trade was bedding, curtains and towels. Another was Edwards’ China Store near Babington Lane, although I did spend more time there than most teens, because my mum was the manager.
Also towards the top of St Peter’s Street was British Home Stores.
I wasn’t one of the cool kids who used the indie record shops, so my favourite haunt was HMV.
Long before the huge store on Albion Street opened, this was where I’d go to spend a bit of birthday money. Further down, on the corner of East Street, was Granada TV Rental where families could not only hire the latest televisions, but video recorders too. Most households had only one telly and even those who owned their own, usually rented the VCR players because they were so very expensive.
Right at the top of St Peter’s Street, in premises now operated by Waterstones, was Babington’s Tea Rooms and Restaurant. That opened in the middle of the decade and replaced the shoe shops and factory shops that had moved away. It was quite a grand place – you went for a special treat - with a bit of an oldfashioned feel and a traditional menu. It was very popular, too, particularly around Christmas time.
In recent years St Peter’s Street has received a lot of bad publicity. Many of the businesses have moved out, some yet to be replaced, and almost all the familiar high street shops are gone. Yet, particularly on a sunny day, it remains a busy pedestrian thoroughfare. It would be nice to think that, as the world slowly begins to wake up from its enforced slumber, St Peter’s Street will find new, and sustainable, ways to serve Derbeians.