I had some business in Warrington at the end of last week - first time in the town centre for a year or so. Apart from the pubs, nothing was quite where I remembered it and some of the bigger shops in Bridge St, once the main thoroughfare but now pedestrianised, were closed - Boots for example. This is all rather sad. In the the case of Boots it is because it has moved to the greatly expanded shopping centre, which now covers quite an acreage in the centre, necessitating the blocking up of roads and so forth. So big has this mall become that I feared for a while, ie until walking there to investigate, that it had engulfed the Victorian swimming pools, the Ebenezer Particular Baptist Chapel and the adjoining Ebenezer Place - all hallmarks of a once grand and vibrant northern town driven by manufacturing and where civic pride and paternalism were to the fore. The baths are boarded up but the chapel is still there, though it is now a pre-school nursery and, being in the vicinity of such, I deemed it unwise to click with my little phone cam. Nearby is Cairo St, a modest little road running off the pedestrianised Sankey St and thus a dead end. In more ways than one. Today's photo, which, sadly, I cannot persuade to sit up straight, is of a late Victorian school next to the quite splendid Unitarian Chapel. I can't say when the school closed but the building was used during the 30 or so years I've known Warrington a model makers' studio for the new town development corporation. As such it was bustling with lights burning and work going on. Quite a nice little building being put to good use - but just look at it, with slates off the roof, the windows and doors boarded over and the ornamental stonework in a right state. Very disappointing. It would have made a perfectly good town centre residence or office but is probably too far gone now with damp and rotted roof timbers. Just across Cairo St was an independent bookshop, Books Bradshaw, where just about anything in print could be obtained. The bookshop moved out of town, to smaller premises in more prosperous Stockton Heath, some time ago and the shell has been done out as a cafe car, bolstering the image of Warrington's main streets as booze canyons. But back to the big shopping centre, which I don't doubt was filled when it opened a couple of years ago with free-spending families and credit card-bingers. Some of the stores, chains, not department stores, are so big that they have escalators to take customers to the next level. On Friday last, there were plenty of people looking, but not many buying - and this is the story of a town where prosperity turned out to be a myth and where idle men amble about and others, in drink, sleep on benches without apparent shame and without attracting the notice of passers by. They are simply invisible.
Twenty years ago, just after I'd bought a house there, I really thought Warrington was a cracking place to live, and there is still plenty to commend it. But remodelling the centre and letting the old stuff crumble can't really be the way forward. The new shops look good for a while but there is only so much latte and leather three piece suites that you can sell in a downturn and the places will be boarded up and the cycle of decay will hasten. It seems to have lost all its pizazz. Very glum about it.
