January is known to be the worst month for almost all retail businesses. I remember when I had my coffee shop in London that it was almost not worth while opening for the first couple of weeks because everyone was busy detoxing after Christmas and denying themselves coffee and chocolate brownies. They always came back in the end! It is not so bad for us here in the Yarn Shop, because it has been cold and people are still knitting or crocheting, although I have been involved in a couple of chats already about how gardening will soon be taking over from knitting which means that it is downhill all the way from here until the tourists start coming back in the Summer.
Along with the chats about gardening there has also been a lot of talk about the High Street in Fakenham, not least because the vegetable shop at the bottom of Norwich Street will be closing its doors on Saturday after 50 years of trading. This is a bit depressing, to be honest, but the owner made the good point that everyone buys their fruit and veg in the supermarkets these days and that it was a hard living. It will leave quite a gap, and I hope the premises will be let quickly. I am involved in the community group Shop Fakenham and we are doing our best to encourage people back into the town centre – our latest efforts being the new Visit Fakenham website and the Fakenham Food Market (funded with help from a government grant) which we are launching on 14 March this year.
I have, therefore, been thinking a lot lately about high streets – where they have been and where they are going, and what is the role of shops like mine. One of the books occupying my bedside table is Annie Gray’s ‘The Bookshop, The Draper, The Candlestick Maker – A History of the High Street‘ and I have recently come to the chapter about the rise of big stores (1870 to 1914) which is relevant to me because this shop was built in 1912 as an ironmongers and must have been magnificent, given that my enormous premises is only one third of the original building. You can see the how lovely it must have been by the grace of the lines of the staircase (leading up to the first floor, now the domain of Fakenham Gallery and Framers), the enormous windows and the very high ceilings. Annie Gray is probably not terribly interested in knitting because she makes no reference to yarn shops, and it made me wonder when people first started opening businesses that only sold yarn as opposed to being haberdasheries selling everything sewing related with some wool in them. I am sure that some of you might be able to help me with this, but I think it was probably from the 1960s onwards.
One of the most frequent comments to me, from out of town visitors, however, is not about the building, but about the fact that I am here at all: ‘you don’t see wool shops very often any more’. I have to say that when I first started knitting, some 20 years ago, this was very much the case. I was living in London at the time and recall that there only three wool shops in the Yellow Pages – all on the other side of London from where I lived. I ended up shopping in John Lewis for Rowan wool for lack of anything else being available. I remember finding Loop shortly after it opened in 2005 and being beside myself with excitement because it was the first time I had seen a yarn shop that catered to my tastes.
As it happens, there are a lot more shops selling yarn out there now than you would think, and, I would venture to say, than there were even four years ago when I opened this one. They vary wildly in appearance and stock. I like to think that the size of mine, and the way I have laid it out, is quite unique. My focus is on natural fibres and beautiful yarns, preferably made here in the UK, but not always as choice is still a bit limited in Britain because the wool industry downturned in the 1980s and is only just beginning to come around. When I opened, just at the end of the Covid pandemic, I did wonder if I was being quite mad, but the fact is that people like to be able to touch the yarn they are buying, to see the colours and often even to smell it, something that is not possible when purchasing online. In addition, yarn shops such as ours also provide a level of customer service not easily accessible online, as we are happy to spend ages helping with patterns, matching wools, choosing colours or calculating the amounts needed for projects.
We also offer a space for people to socialise with other knitters and crocheters and for them to learn new skills, from the basics of crochet to the complexities of knitting lace. We are not the only shops offering this in Fakenham – you can learn to make jewellery, hats and how to do upholstery, all within five minutes of this shop. The new Post Office is also a banking hub and is always busy, from Monday to Saturday. You can get help for minor ailments from Boots so that you do not have to go to the doctor. You can sit and chat with your friends in one of the cafes or pubs around the town centre, or see a film in the gorgeous Art Deco cinema. And I think that is how the high street will adapt. It will not die, as people are saying, it will simply change, as it has done in all the previous centuries that shopping in towns has existed, and provide a different kind of experience – one more related to community and and learning how to make things – which I think people crave in these times when technology makes it all too easy to become isolated from our fellow human beings.
So let us be positive in these difficult times. Let’s go out and shop on our high streets, in particular with our local independent stores, talk to our neighbours, enjoy the communities that the high streets bring and help them with the next phase of their existence. The high street is not dead. It is changing and it is good to be part of that change.