From Ironmongery to Yarn Shop

I was given a rather excellent book last week – The Bookshop, The Draper, The Candlestick Maker – A History of the High Street by Annie Gray. I am only in the 17th Century section at the moment, but I have learned so much about something that we take very much for granted. So far I have discovered that High Streets are so called because they were often literally higher than other streets to allow effluent to flow in lower gutters, that it is only relatively recently that people came into shops to shop, rather than being served at a window, and that the High Street has always, from the medieval period, been something that people have complained about. Too many dodgy shops (retail rather than wholesale was forbidden for a long time), concerns about cheating, and women’s morals (of course). Constant change and fluctuation runs through the book and overall it has made me feel rather cheerful about the current concerns about the High Street as it seems to me very likely that all that will happen is that we will adapt, as we have always done, to the existing circumstances. For example, mail order had a major impact on shops in the late 19th century. The internet and all the anxiety people have about its impact is just a larger continuation of the problem, and yet people still want to visit shops.

So I thought I would have a little bit of an explore into what my lovely premises at 16 Norwich Street were originally and what their place in the High Street was. Firstly, I was once again amazed by how old the market here is – it was granted a Charter in 1250, whereas according to Annie Gray most of the Royal Charters for markets around England were granted towards the end of the 1300s after the Black Death drove what was left of the population into towns. It is extraordinary to think that people have been coming to market here almost every Thursday for over 700 years. Markets, obviously, were the main place to shop for centuries, but it seems that Fakenham was not behind other towns in building up shops around the market, along with inns to cater to the people who would have flocked here during market day. According to the Fakenham Archives, there were several fires which devastated the town in 1660, 1718 and 1738 as well as the more recent Aldiss department store fire in 2014 which is why there are so few buildings in the centre that were built before the 19th Century.

Unfortunately, what little history about Fakenham itself that I have been able to find, relates to the town as a whole and I have already written about that in previous blog. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, no one seems to have recorded the shops that have come and gone, other than in pictures. What I have managed to establish is that the original shop on my premises was an ironmongers, Joseph Baker (any relation to Bakers and Larner of Holt I wonder?). Annie Gray does not seem to have much time for ironmongers – they are hardly mentioned in her book as far as I can see – but Wikipedia informs me that ironmongery originally referred to the manufacture of iron goods such as tools and homewares, and then to the retail of the same. Apparently by Victorian times an ironmongers shop would be a treasure house of appealing metalwork, with elaborate manufacturers’ catalogues offering literally thousands of objects to meet each and every need, almost all of which sought to combine practicality with pleasing design. Like so many other retailers, ironmongers declined in the latter half of the 20th century, replaced by the big DIY stores often located outside of town. Personally I miss them – I used to love wandering around old ironmongers looking for padlocks or chains and being amazed at the variety that they sold.

It seems that the the shop burned down in or around 1908 and was replaced in 1912 by the resplendent premises that you can see in the photo below. I have customers who can recall the shop, particularly reminiscing about the china and glassware that was sold upstairs where Fakenham Gallery & Framers is now situated. As far as I can tell, the yarn shop only occupies a part of the original store which seems to have stretched further down Norwich Street. It appears that the window nearest to Hughes would have been central window with another door next to it, which means that the staircase would have been in the centre of the building like a department store rather than tucked into the corner as it is now. The fact that Hughes is in a more modern building would suggest that there was perhaps another fire, or perhaps someone was just demolition-happy in the 1970s or 80s when people did not have much regard for historic streetscapes. I would love to know what happened. It was certainly still intact in 1971 when the photo below was taken.

In any event, since then the shop has been a mattress shop, a pet shop and a charity shop, before falling empty over Covid. I am very glad that it did so, because, very impractically, I have always dreamed of having a shop in one of these grand Art Nouveau buildings. I love the enormous windows and high ceilings (less so in winter of course when it is cold) – to me they reflect the golden age of shopping as a leisure activity as well as a necessity. After all, my whole business is all about leisure rather than necessity and I want people to feel happy just by being here as well as the joy I hope they get from buying my products. If I had all the money in the world, I would restore the upstairs windows which are currently rather nasty plastic framed ones and tidy up the balustrade, but these are sadly not priorities for me as I only lease the building.

One last thing on the changing High Street. Annie Gray points out that the original premises around markets would have been workshops as well as retailers – people made what they sold, whether it was ironmongery or pies, in the same premises. Looking at Fakenham now, with the Fakenham Framers above my shop, Claire Howard Jewellery and the Upholsters on the Market Place and the Extraordinary Hat Company here in Norwich Street who all have their workshops in their premises, it seems that we may be going back to that time, now with a focus on the skills of individual artisans and the lovely things that they make. Even I am planning to hand dye yarns here and sell them. Perhaps that is the way that High Streets will go, focussing on specialist skills and crafts, leaving the more boring aspects of retail to the out of town stores and the internet.