Shops we have loved and lost

Some would say it is the smell of knowledge. Science fiction author Ray Bradbury described it as “like nutmeg, or some spice from a foreign land.” In his classic, dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 he wrote: “I loved to smell them when I was a boy. Lord, there were a lot of lovely books once, before we let them go.”

Whatever the precise odour – and it incorporates a range of tangs from dried glue to deteriorating paper… a distinctive blend of compounds released with age – the Victoria Book Shop had it by the dozen.

Entering this fine Old Town establishment the aroma enveloped you with the warmth of a worn-out, favourite armchair; and the further into its labyrinthine recesses you delved, the stronger it became.

Incredibly it is ten years since what I am pretty sure was Swindon’s last independent second-hand bookstore went under – just another favourite shop which has sunk without trace. The closure last month of Swindon’s HMV store reminded me that many retail outlets I have frequented time and again since moving to Swindon in 1976 are now history.

It is worth looking back at some of them, if just for nostalgia’s sake. Despite being an avid vinyl buff – and plenty of record shops have come and gone over the years – nothing quite hurts like the loss of the Victoria Book Shop.

For years the late Ken Austin ran the Tardis-like Wood Street premises – “it’s bigger on the inside” – as an antiques shop with a growing side-line in ageing tomes.

By 1968 it became a fully-fledged bookshop before Ken’s son Steve took over in 1973 and slowly transformed it into a Swindon institution. Its assorted tiny niches and narrow passageways bulged with some 50,000 volumes. No self-respecting bookworm could emerge empty-handed.

Stern, intimidating and learned titles, usually with fading covers and worn spines tended to occupy the upper floor, alongside brand new paperbacks.

National Geographics, as I recall, were heaped on the stairs alongside a plethora of travel guides.

Downstairs had the feel of an ancient cellar that had become a treasure-trove of second-hand trash (the word is used endearingly), from romantic slush to ripping, blood and guts adventure yarns.

Amongst its wooden racks, though, were a host of must read books before you die.

On a final sniff around before the Victoria Book Shop closed in December, 2003, I found well- thumbed but still in reasonably good nick copies of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita (£1.50), Stan Barstow’s A Kind of Loving (£2.50 then, three-and-six when it was new in 1960) and Ray Chandler’s Farewell My Lovely (£1.50).

They rubbed cracked spines with the likes of Pamela’s Passion by Susan Winter and Penny Jordan’s Unspoken Desire (both 75p) – not to mention Adrian Reid’s Confessions of a Hitch-Hiker; “chock full of all the goodies of the Permissive Society” – a bargain at 50p. Steve, 53 at the time, reluctantly closed the shop after seeing profits dive. He couldn’t compete with three-for-the-price-of-two offers at the likes of Waterstone’s and Tesco.

The rise of car boot sales and charity shops, along with the availability of second-hand books on the internet also helped sound the death knell to his and similar emporiums around the country. And that was even before Kindle declared war on the good old fashioned book.

As the axe fell, the late Gwenda Barnes, of the Piper’s Area Residents Association, succinctly summed it up. “A lot of people are going to be very upset – there’s no other shop like it in Swindon.”

I’ve never been much of a DIY enthusiast but always felt as if I was stepping into another world when treading the hardy oak floorboards of Limmex on the corner of High Street and Wood Street.

In August, 1999, around 160 years of Swindon retail history came to an end when the traditionally-styled hardware store closed its doors for the last time.

A certain Samuel J Walters started it all in 1840, converting an old cottage into an iron-mongers’ selling assorted pots, pans, buckets, door-handles, saws and even shotguns and cartridges to people flooding to the new railway town.

Another Samuel J – Samuel J Limmex – bought the premises in 1888 and expanded the store into an adjoining cottage in Wood Street.

His name remained above the front door for well over a century, but sadly the business failed to see in the New Millennium by just a few months.

Limmex had a decidedly pre-war feel. Aged wooden drawers were crammed with an assortment of washers, screws, nails and bolts.

Polite and usually rather elderly gentlemen in neat red overalls fussed over customers’ needs, going to great lengths to locate that elusive nut and bolt which you could purchase for a few pence.

Owner Roy Stevens, then 70, couldn’t find anyone to take over when he decided to retire. Edge-of-town DIY superstores were taking their toll, he said. There was palpable sense of shock bordering on disbelief when Mr Stevens announced the grim news of its closure.

Swindon pensioners remembered going there when they were children. Their parents acquired their household goods at Limmex too, and so did their parents.

“Our customers are our friends – they’re devastated that we’re closing,” said Mr Stevens. As the shutters were about to come down one customer, Old Town resident Margaret Price, who had been using the shop for 20 years told me: “It’s a tragedy. When I heard Limmex was closing I had to hear it twice – I didn’t believe it.”

At least there was a positive postscript. Less than a year after Limmex bit the dust Old Town Hardware opened nearby, employing Limmex “old boys” Les White, 64 and Norman Rogers, 69.

Perhaps only the closure of McIlroys a year earlier matched the shock of the Limmex departure.

The department store is ingrained in Swindon history. As the railway town grew and thrived, so did McIlroys, selling the burgeoning population anything from ball-gowns to ballpoint pens along with “knicker elastic by the yard.”

William McIlroy opened the custom-built landmark store in the heart of the town centre in 1875.

Generations of Swindonians shopped there. Some staff lived in bedsits at the top.

If you needed a bowler hat, McIlroys was the place. A baby’s pram? You’ll get one at McIlroys. An ashtray, an Axminster carpet… just head for that big building in Regent Street with the imposing clock.

The original clock tower where volunteers kept watch for enemy aircraft during World War Two, was demolished during the 60s for safety reasons and replaced with another, not quite as distinctive but still rather impressive.

With its sweeping central staircase, McIlroys out-lasted the railway works, whose success it once mirrored, by well over a decade.

But as the 90s wore on, the writing was on the wall. Debenhams, House Of Fraser and the Designer Outlet Village all slowly chipped away its customer base. McIlroys was just too old fashioned, too Grace Brothers, too blue rinse.

Staff cried on January 13, 1998, the day McIlroys closed after 123 years. Not, perhaps, for the loss of their jobs; more likely a sense that a grand Swindon institution had finally hit the buffers.

l Which of your favourite Swindon shops have vanished from the town’s retail map? Why not let us know by emailing leightonbarry@ymail.com or writing to the Swindon Advertiser, 100 Victoria Road, Swindon, SN1 3BE