Why do village shops close

With village post offices closing at the rate of a year, the neighbouring shops have been plunged into crisis. A closure takes away an estimated 15 per cent of their business. The agency believes it is now extremely difficult for more than one specialist shop, such as a butcher or baker, to survive in the same rural area, and warns that shops must sell a wide range of goods if they are to compete with supermarkets and larger chains of stores in neighbouring towns.

Some shops have managed to keep open thanks to grants from both the Countryside Agency and regional development agencies to refurbish their properties and expand their stock. They are also getting free advice from retail consultants on how to improve the promotion of their wares. We have been encouraging shopkeepers in rural areas to reinvent themselves as multi-stop shops. In the Suffolk village of Blythburgh, there are signs of a fightback. The village store closed last November, forcing residents to drive to Southwold, five miles away, for their food.

I live next to Portobello Road market and to my astonishment the street stallholders but not the shops still pack up and go home on Thursday afternoon. I thought it must be the last remnant of early closing day in London. Do any other street markets in London do it?

The absence of stalls on Thursday afternoons also baffles all the tourists though various souvenir tat merchants are taking over what useful local shops were left between the new coffee shops and posh shoe shops ; all they they are left with to do is pester the locals e.

Brixton Market, such as it is, still closes on Wednesday afternoons. I live in Ilkeston and even now nearly half of the shops in the town centre still close on Wednesday afternoon, so the practice is still going strong. In my rural home town in Scotland they still do close half-day Wednesday. Also Wednesday is the open-air market day. There was never any restrictions to Sunday trading in Scotland.

Modern Wednesday afternoon closings originated with ww2. Everyone in our towns were encouraged to close at p. I am presently 87 years of age. Thanks for sharing this! I love hearing these little details about life not-too-long-ago that often go unrecorded.

As a child living in Doncaster most of my early years up to the age of 13 on one of the Saturdays in December, we walked to the station to catch the early, 3 a.

After breakfast Lyons Corner House, we made our way to the West End in pursuit of a new winter coat and other clothes for Christmas and the coming year! As the shops closed in those days at 1 p. Happy memories! But they also have unusual hours on Saturday, open from 9am-1pm, closed in the afternoon, but then open again from 6.

Then closed all day Sunday. My parents were both shop owners on the Caledonian Road in London. In they got married on half day closing day — worked in the morning, married in the afternoon.

What is tradition..??? In the s our city had Thursday as half-day closing. I remember that because one Thursday I had a fall coming home from school at lunch time.

My mother took me to the nearby ambulance station for the bloody wound to be dressed — and I went to the doctor the next day. I still have the scar to remind me. In the southern England town in which I now live — various family owned shops close for a full day as well as Sunday. Usually it is a business that is not essential to daily life eg photo shop; PC shop.

So, what exactly are community shops and why are they such a vital component of successful and vibrant rural communities? Richard Moules who helped launch a community shop in the tiny village of Humshaugh in Northumbria agrees. If we hadn't taken over the shop which was due to close, it would have made life very difficult especially for the elderly and young families. But how can community-owned shops succeed when regular village shops are going to the wall? And what about prices at these shops?

How can these retail minnows hope to compete with the likes of Aldi and Tesco? Like many community shops, ours is pitched as providing a top-up service rather than being somewhere to do the weekly big shop. Many community-owned shops are now adding other services to supplement their core retail offering.

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