Kew Shops:Then and Now
Kew Shops:then and now CAROLINE BLOMFIELD In June 2003, after selling our bookshop by Kew Gardens Station, we set up an exhibition celebrating one hundred years of shopping in Kew. The exhibition was held in a historic venue, the old workshops of Station ROYAL Avenue. They had just undergone complete renovation as a stylish studio 'So.,.Afo..,) \<;. complex, and the owners kindly lent us a large ground floor space. The ....ls exhibition was open to the public for just two days, and to our amazement we had almost 300 visitors. In view of this unexpected response, we are publishing our findings, in the hope that others may attempt something similar - and ideally even more wide-ranging - in their own communities. For most of the 20th century there were four main shopping areas in Kew: the original Kew village around the Green and along Mortlake Terrace; the full length of Sandycombe Road; the west side of the station, known today as 'The Village'; the east side of the station at the top of North Road, part of which has now been landscaped and pedestrianised as 'Kew Plaza'. (Until 1920 there was also a further small row of shops along the Lower Richmond Road, between the south ends of North Road and Dancer Road, called North Parade: these were demolished when the A316 was widened around 1930.) We decided to research these four areas and to try to establish how shops and shopping have changed in Kew, and to what extent premises that were retail businesses one hundred years ago were still operating as shops, and to what extent the goods and services demanded, and thus provided, have changed over the years.
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