The shop frozen in time for 91 years...’I have some customers who have been coming in here for decades. I’m on to the grandchildren of some of them now’
SINCE ITS OPENING DAY BACK IN 1930
room, on a worn and well-loved armchair tucked at the back of the shop.
His backdrop is a wall of greetings cards - “they’re all only £1,” he makes sure to tell us. By his feet are neatly displayed jigsaw puzzles, to his sides walls of myriad art supplies which, he says, are what he’s mostly known for.
“Yes the shop has been here since circa 1930. It belonged to Mr Heaps until 1955 and then Mr Hooley took it on. I arrived at the age of 23 in 1968 to work here and I loved it.
“By 1979 Mr Hooley was ready to retire and he asked me to take on the shop and I was delighted to. It was my life.”
In many ways the town of Long Eaton, on the Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire border, has changed beyond recognition and Stuart has seen much of that.
While there’s the very distinct feeling that Stuart is not one to mince his words, he does choose them carefully when describing the Long Eaton of today, but something in his body language gives away a sadness over some of the changes, a feeling that’s perhaps only usual for someone who wears their town and their place in it like a second skin.
“Oh so much has changed in all these years, yes,” he sighs
“Losing the Co-op across the road had a big impact. I lost a lot of foot fall when that went and it changed this little area a bit.
“The big supermarkets coming in have changed things too, it’s not about the competition, I don’t worry about that because I’ve got no overheads, but they change the nature of a place a bit and the way people shop. You can park for free in the big shops so people go there and then don’t go anywhere else. They get what they want in there.”
But while new ways of shopping
STUART’S SHOP HAS BARELY CHANGED
have come to the masses, there’s still a core of customers that give Heaps a reason to open its doors every day.
“My customers are very loyal,” says Stuart. “I have some people who’ve been coming in here for decades.
I’m on to the grandchildren of some of them now, I know them that well.
“Mind you, I’ve known some of them that long, they’ve started telling me the same stories I’ve heard before,” he laughs before quipping “I’m too old for it now, I don’t have the patience, I just say ‘you’ve already told me!’
Stuart laughs at the anecdote, showing his back and forth with his customers happens with fondness rather that frustration.
The shop is almost packed to the rafters with stock and it’s hard not to wonder how he shifts it, but he says it’s “one of the last independent stores in Long Eaton where you can buy pretty much anything.”
There’s a huge selection of jigsaws, painting by numbers and children’s art sets as well as walls and walls of paints, pencils, paper clips, canvases, paint brushes and more. He also sells items it might be tricky to find elsewhere, like candle wicks and plaster of paris and an array of maps that even he admits “people don’t need as much now, what with satnav,” yet they’re clearly part of store’s fabric.
The shop’s fittings have barely changed in 100 years, the bumpy walls and cracked corners affectionately and expectedly showing the building’s Grade-I listed age.
The shop has been here since circa 1930...I arrived at the age of 23 in 1968 to work here and I loved it. Stuart Danvers
Over his time there, Stuart has simply become part of those fixtures and fittings, still donning a tie each morning for a day at work, still he says, never being sure what each day might bring.
“I’ve just kept going, I’ve been here so long that any changes happen gradually really, you don’t notice, time just goes by.
“All the nearby nightclubs have gone now which is good. They used to stay open until 4am and the building would shake all night. I’d heard glass shattering but got used to not bothering unless the shop alarm was going off.”
One of the biggest events, Stuart recalls with sorrow, was the Long Eaton teabag factory fire of 1971. Flames tore through the building, just across the road from the shop, and the whole area was in chaos.
“I remember there was an Evening Post seller on the corner outside and he came running in to tell us the factory was going up and I didn’t believe him! But of course it was. I saw the whole gable end of the building fall away in flames and women on the top floors screaming. People were shouting ‘don’t jump.’
He also recalls a time when a gang of youngsters roughed the shop up a little, entering en-masse and tearing into stock when Stuart took them to task. He installed cameras after that, but that’s the extent of the shop’s modernisation.
“Oh the customer’s say ‘don’t change Stuart’ and I won’t - I’d just be the same as everywhere else then, wouldn’t I?” he says.
Astonishingly he still uses a 1930s cash register and behind the counter is a wall lamp which also hails from the 30s. It doesn’t work but that doesn’t matter.
One of the only things to annoy Stuart about his 50-odd years in the job is when customers come in looking for something specific, having been to dozens of other stores first.
“They’ll say, ‘Do you know Stuart I’ve been everywhere for one of these and I knew you’d have one,’ so I think, ‘Well, why didn’t you come here in the first place then?” He grins widely and something in that smile says he still thrives on the challenge of meeting their needs.
And this little corner of Derbyshire, unchanged for so long, isn’t likely to change for some time yet either. Asked if he’ll ever hang up his hat, Stuart thinks for a second or so before quietly answering: “Only if I get bored. And I’m not bored yet.”