The Irish

T

tudor_fox

Roofer
Closes its Loughborough shop today ending over 115 years of trading in Leicestershire.

The Silver Street shop in Leicester was the clothes shop of choice for most of Leicester's youth in the 1960's, 1970's 1980's.

Crombies. Harrington Jackets, Oxford bags, Skinners, Big collared shirts, Ben Sherman button downs, Tank tops etc.

Another proper family establishment disappearing.
 
Always too expensive for me, but I did go in and have a look (the Leicester branch). It was iconic and well situated.

Globalisation has killed this type of shop, when we have the likes of Amazon and Temu and online companies selling the same or "better" at a much lower price with a much larger choice, the writing is on the wall.

Shops need a unique identity or selling point to remain viable.
 
tudor_fox said:
Closes its Loughborough shop today ending over 115 years of trading in Leicestershire.

The Silver Street shop in Leicester was the clothes shop of choice for most of Leicester's youth in the 1960's, 1970's 1980's.

Crombies. Harrington Jackets, Oxford bags, Skinners, Big collared shirts, Ben Sherman button downs, Tank tops etc.

Another proper family establishment disappearing.
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A very sad day for local retailing tudor me duck. I've bought lots of quality stuff from their Leicester and Looger stores down the years. I happened to be passing the Looger store on its final day of trading today and popped in. Not to get a last minute bargain but to pay a little homage to a former Leicestershire institution. Very sad but a symptom of the modern age (internet buying, crippling business taxes etc) of commerce today alas.
 
Local councils are fuckwits. Why bother going into town if business' are crippled by business rates leading to boarded up shops. And having to pay to park. Plenty of old folk are too intimidated to go into Leicester these days as the crippling of the high street has left a desolate place with too many undesirables.

There is no need for a population of 350,000 to have a shit city centre. Going back to the 90's councils got blinded by the potential for shiny new shopping centres, leaving them no leverage when the internet kicked in and demand dropped. Leicester and plenty other cities and towns didn't need extra shops then, let alone now. They needed proper planning, a re-alignment of the offer and clever thinking.

Why bother when you get no aggro going to Fosse Park where you park for free?

My local council, Cherwell, bought Banbury's shopping centre in the semi good years pre 2022. Thought they were clever with low interest government loads. Debenhams went bust and they have been left with a white elephant with a collapsed footfall so no-one else trades well enough to stick around. And they still charge for fucking parking.
 
And still they make it hard to get in by car, cycling might work if you’re local but if you’re coming from out of town it’s not practical
 
rob said:
The days of browsing in The Irish, listening to singles in Brees (Churchgate), meeting your mates in Bruciannis are long gone. Thank goodness we had such times in town.
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I preferred Revolver records and Swiss cottage (or whatever that place was above the arcade in the next street to Irish).
 
Billsballbag said:
Local councils are fuckwits. Why bother going into town if business' are crippled by business rates leading to boarded up shops. And having to pay to park. Plenty of old folk are too intimidated to go into Leicester these days as the crippling of the high street has left a desolate place with too many undesirables.

There is no need for a population of 350,000 to have a shit city centre. Going back to the 90's councils got blinded by the potential for shiny new shopping centres, leaving them no leverage when the internet kicked in and demand dropped. Leicester and plenty other cities and towns didn't need extra shops then, let alone now. They needed proper planning, a re-alignment of the offer and clever thinking.

Why bother when you get no aggro going to Fosse Park where you park for free?

My local council, Cherwell, bought Banbury's shopping centre in the semi good years pre 2022. Thought they were clever with low interest government loads. Debenhams went bust and they have been left with a white elephant with a collapsed footfall so no-one else trades well enough to stick around. And they still charge for fucking parking.
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Why bother going into town anyway, small shops with high prices (even if the premises were free) as opposed to internet shopping and free delivery?
 
They actually had three!. One upstairs as shown in Collibosher's photo. One downstairs right on the entrance to Silver Arcade that is seen on the pic, and one on the corner straight opposite that entrance.
 
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