Specialist shops - maps, books, models & stationery - ongoing discussion

[whole diary]

[JayMac]

Hazy memory...

Was there once an Ordnance Survey shop on Wine St in Bristol?

EDIT: Some online research has informed me that this was a HM Stationery Office bookshop. My hazy memory was of me perusing OS^▸ (Ordnance Survey) Maps in there back in the early 1990s.

[grahame]

EDIT: Some online research has informed me that this was a HM Stationery Office bookshop. My hazy memory was of me perusing OS^▸ (Ordnance Survey) Maps in there back in the early 1990s.

I used to love going to the HMSO on High Holborn in London to purchase copies of rail accident reports, of which I have quite a collection. They were a fascinating story and taught me a lot which remains with me to this day.  Fact far more interesting than fiction, and facts and evidence without a marketing gloss or bias.  In the information overload we have today, there is a great deal of other reading material available for analysis but these reports were something of a more educational trigger than trainspotting, though I can still tell you about difference in 4EPB units.

[Red Squirrel]

Hazy memory...

Was there once an Ordnance Survey shop on Wine St in Bristol?

EDIT: Some online research has informed me that this was a HM Stationery Office bookshop. My hazy memory was of me perusing OS^▸ (Ordnance Survey) Maps in there back in the early 1990s.

Gosh yes, thanks for stirring up that memory. An Aladdin's Cave for us non-neurotypical types who like to keep their collection of Highway Code editions up-to-date, or who just enjoy the smell of newly-printed government literature.

Wine St was once Bristol's premier shopping street. It was badly damaged by wartime bombing and then swept away by a coalition of national chain stores and government policy, which decided that a fairly undamaged area of mediaeval, Georgian and Victorian buildings around Broadmead, Milk St, Rosemary St and Merchant St should be flattened and the shopping centre relocated there. Later, the demolished ancient buildings of Wine St, Castle St and Mary-le-Port St were bulldozed into the basements to create Castle Park.

Andrew Foyle, in his Pevsner Architectural Guide to Bristol, described Wine Street as 'perhaps the saddest post-Blitz transformation'.

Broadmead has been described as having all the charm of an out-of-town shopping centre without the parking. Soon much of it will be flattened, this time for housing. So it goes.

[JayMac]

... and that's reminded me of another memory of that area of Bristol. A little off topic...

My Grandma oft told the story of me as a toddler screaming blue murder in the Co-op department store a little further down from Wine St in Fairfax House (demolished and replaced by The Galleries shopping centre).. The reason I was upset? My Grandma and uncle trying to get me into the paternoster lift that was in the store.

The grown up me, with my interest in weird and wonderful engineering, would love to have been able to ride that paternoster lift.

[Chris from Nailsea]

Thank you to all forum posters here for your prompting my own memories of shopping in central Bristol, many years ago.

I worked in an office at the lower end of Broad Street, so it was very convenient for me to stroll out in my lunch hour to peruse the HMSO in Wine Street, Stanfords in Clare Street - and one we haven't mentioned yet: Ross's legal stationers on Fairfax Street (directly under Union Street, next door to the Prince Rupert ph.)

[Chris from Nailsea]

With my thanks to grahame for starting this topic - and with my profuse apologies for high-jacking it and amending the heading - it is now here. It all generally relates to Bristol.

I still have several of the items I bought, so many years ago now, from Ross's Legal Stationers in Fairfax Street.

CfN^▸ (Chris from Nailsea, an administrator on this forum).

[johnneyw]

I still have several of the items I bought, so many years ago now, from Ross's Legal Stationers in Fairfax Street.

Ah, that brought back memories of the model shop just a little further along the street where, pre and early teens, I spent most of my pocket money on various plastic model kits, paints, modelling supplies etc.  If I say so myself, I got quite good at it, even to the point of modifying the kits and "scratch" building.

[Chris from Nailsea]

Blimey, johnneyw.   We must have almost bumped into each other there.

I bought many items from that model shop, too: replica military items, most of their range of tins of colours in Humbrol paint - and a vast quantity of white metal 'Miniature Figurines', or 'minifigs'.

By the way: I still have many of those 'minifigs', from their Napoleonic range, in showroom condition: I am now unable to paint them, in my retirement as I originally intended, due to physical limitations with my fingers. If anyone would like them, please do contact me.

CfN^▸ (Chris from Nailsea, an administrator on this forum).

[JayMac]

Ah, that brought back memories of the model shop just a little further along the street where, pre and early teens, I spent most of my pocket money on various plastic model kits, paints, modelling supplies etc.  If I say so myself, I got quite good at it, even to the point of modifying the kits and "scratch" building.

Antics. Still trading.

A fair bit of my pocket money and early wage packets was spent in there too. And in Beatties on Penn St, Broadmead. I used to travel up on the train from Taunton on Saturdays to browse and spend.

[johnneyw]

Blimey, johnneyw.   We must have almost bumped into each other there.

It's entirely possible that we did, especially if it was the early 1970s.  I recall that in addition to the familiar Airfix, Revell and Frog products, there was a certain excitement to seeing kits manufactured by exotic companies with unfamiliar names.

Can't remember what the shop was called though.  There is/was one further along the bit of Fairfax Street that wasn't demolished for the Galleries but that was a more recent establishment.

[johnneyw]

Antics. Still trading.

Yes it's a worthy replacement but the shop I was thinking about vanished when the Galleries was built.  Still trying to recall it's name.....Modellers Den rings a bell though.

[Chris from Nailsea]

Yes, 'Beatties' and 'Modellers' Den' are the shops I now remember from those younger days. CfN^▸ (Chris from Nailsea, an administrator on this forum).

[chuffed]

Who else remembers Verrechia's ice cream parlour..that predated Fairfax Street. It was my reward for not making hay with the pic and nix in Woolworths.....

[Red Squirrel]

Yes, 'Beatties' and 'Modellers' Den' are the shops I now remember from those younger days. CfN^▸ (Chris from Nailsea, an administrator on this forum).

Unlike JayMac's bete noir (aka the second steam engine to reach 100mph) The Modellers Den always had a definite atricle (but no apostrophe!) and used 'TMD^▸ (Traction Maintenance Depot)' in its advertising.

[Richard Fairhurst]

Sad, but not surprised. I don't remember the Bristol store ever being very busy. It was on Clare Street, surrounded by bars and restaurants. There is a branch of Traifinders nearby, which could have sent some people their way, but overall it always looked a bit out of place.

My recollection is that it became a rather vague travel/exploration-themed bookshop, not much different to the travel department in a larger Waterstones. There wasn't much of a compelling reason to go there.

Stanfords in Covent Garden, on the other hand, is a proper map and guidebook shop. I could spend days (and most of my savings) there.

The independent Map Shop in Upton-on-Severn is still going, and still wonderful: https://www.themapshop.co.uk/