Magical Mandrakes is enchanting customers
ORMSKIRK may not be the kind of place you might expect to find magic.
Unless you make your way down St Helens Road, that is, where you will find passers-by stopping and staring at the displays in one café in particular.
Mandrakes: A Magical Experience is named after the screaming, humanoid plants in the Harry Potter books and films that can cure those who have been petrified.
“We have a queue out of the door every weekend,” co-owner Aileen Piper, 62, tells me.
“We have to put a stop in, because we know people won’t get in past a certain point!”
Aileen reckons the café gets 300 visitors a day on Saturdays, and seems to be pulling in the numbers even now the summer holidays are over.
I arrive at the shop and café on a rainy Wednesday, and I’m looking a little worse for wear because of it. Thankfully, Mandrakes is the absolute opposite.
The walls are bedecked with antique bottles, packages, stuffed animals with a distinctly magical sheen I can’t quite put my finger on spread over the ornate serving area and tables.
As I’m shown to the back, more of the magic takes over, The Flying Mandrake scarlet train is seen breaking through the wall in a station themed area (reminiscent of Platform 9¾ in the Harry Potter books) with the opposite corner home to the magical mandrakes in their pots and another room dedicated to the dark and mystical potions room.
It’s here that I find Aileen and her business partner Gail Usher, 51, both busy taking bookings, both deep in conversation about new projects. They burst with energy and are keen to show new visitors around, taking them into each room, beaming with pride at their café.
“This is quiet for us,” Aileen tells me, gesturing to the tables that are full and still filling up, despite the weather.
Aileen owned Paris In Time, what Mandrakes was before the magical makeover occurred in July.
Gail said: “It was already a curious café before this, I wouldn’t say quirky, quirky can’t really describe it.
“It was classical and it was classy but it wasn’t family-friendly, that’s the difference with Mandrakes, we’ve kept the beautiful furniture and the decor and reincorporated it.”
Gail became friends with Aileen as she regularly visited Paris In Time and became a well-known customer.
At some point, the idea of reinventing the space into a shop came about and the product choice became wholly obvious.
“We were going to do a Harry Potter-themed shop,” Gail says looking at Aileen.
“The staff were all Harry Potter enthusiasts,” Aileen agrees.
“Our manager has visited Harry Potter studios 16 times, they love it, to be fair to Gail it was her initial feeling that this could drive footfall to Ormskirk and well, she was right.”
Aileen, inspired by her Potterhead staff, and Gail, egged on by her 12-yearold daughter Adriana (another massive Harry Potter fan) decided that Paris In Time needed to change.
Originally, the shop would be the focus and the café and add on but, soon after, the idea to recreate the café as a Harry Potter inspired space emerged.
“We set aside four weeks,” Gail says.
“Me, Aileen and Aileen’s husband Arthur all did it and we just knocked it out, we decided this is is when we will open and we just did it.”
She laughs: “I think I lost a stone doing it, we absolutely knocked our block off!”
Between them, Paris In Time evolved into Mandrakes: A Magical Experience, Adriana and Gail making the little mandrakes themselves, Aileen’s husband Arthur building the Flying Mandrake from scratch and a great deal of charity shop buys, digging and donations led to the splendid decor.
But the decor is not just the only attraction.
Aileen said: “We try and only hire Harry Potter enthusiasts, that way they can be passionate about this and can answer any questions people have.”
“Me and Aileen are quite creative,” Gail adds. “There are a lot of stories and themes behind the café that tie into it.”
Each room has its own story. Lucy, the stone dog tethered to the wall at the back of the café, catches any escaped Mandrakes, protecting visitors, while the Flying Mandrake is the only transportation the staff can take into work.
Gail said: “There’s a Sprite called Scat, he’s a nuisance, he steals passengers coats, their umbrellas, their bags and he lives in the station.”
The legends and myths surrounding the shop are permeated by the staff who do magic tricks, speak endlessly about the magic of the Harry Potter world and encourage customers to dress up.
Some just come to visit the shop, which is brimming with Harry Potter scarves, hats, mugs, bags and games, providing another attraction which Gail says brings in people from far and wide. It’s the only place for miles around that can supply official Harry Potter merchandise and it’s getting a full restock before Christmas.
“It does really well,” Gail tells me as we traipse the small space, decorated with an emu’s head (I hope it isn’t genuine) and a small ornate fireplace.
“We do a good turn over here but some people come in here because they think that’s how to beat the line into the café!”
It’s no surprise that the experience has been booming since it opened on August 6.
“We just do a dessert bar on the weekend,” Gail tells me as she gives me the Mandrakes tour.
“We wanted to go full on into food and expand our menu but we don’t have the time! We want everyone to come in experience it.”
The potions room is certainly the best part of the Mandrakes experience, the room is dark and full of that magical feeling, with old books, quills, wands and robes for everyone to try on.
“We encourage people to dress up,” Aileen tells me, pointing to the room where several customers are already channelling their inner Severus Snape with billowing black robes.
This is the same room where Aileen and Gail hold mini banquets for children and mixology classes for adults.
“That’s what Mandrakes is all about, there is no age or background on who comes in here, everyone does,” Aileen tells me.
It seems that magic is really having an effect on the Muggles of the North West!