The Two Lost Shops on Main Street

There used to be two shops where the bus stop and the gates to Ponteland Park now stand on the Main Street in Ponteland. But then the scene looked very different.

Right up until the 1970’s, the High Streets up and down the country would have single-storey retail premises or workshops which were little more than sheds squeezed into any redundant space which faced a main road. Even scenic Ponteland with its beautiful old buildings was not immune to this phenomenon as the above photograph shows.

There was a row of cottages here before they were demolished to make way for the railway crossing which was built around 1904. This left some open ground next to the road where a couple of shops sprung up. They held a number of businesses in the sixty or so years of their existence.

The first one on the left seems to always to have been a cobblers but had different owners. Cobblers were much more common than they are now. Shoes represented a major financial outgoing in those days and were only replaced when absolutely necessary. Until then they were regularly repaired at the cobblers. The shop window would be filled with shoes waiting to be picked up and the strong smell of fresh leather would drift out to anyone walking by.

The shop next door was George Hall’s building supplies and workshop. He bought the premises from Lance Pickering who used them as a motorcycle and bicycle shop. He had an agency for Raleigh Cycles and was a member of the CTC (Cycling Touring Club).