Malcolm Barker: Why I can echo the lament for Harrogate’s vanished days of elegance and unhurried calm

JANET Street-Porter, newspaperwoman and broadcaster, only has to open her mouth to demonstrate she is not Yorkshire. However, she has had a home in Upper Nidderdale for 30 years, which perhaps gives her squatter’s rights to comment on the county’s affairs. Her latest sally, in the Yorkshire Post last Saturday, was to declare Harrogate “bland, boring and not worth a visit”.

The peg for this verdict was Harrogate councillors’ go-ahead for a new Tesco on the old gasworks site at the junction of Ripon and Skipton Roads. Objectors foresee a nightmare of congestion.

Harrogate has only a fragment of a bypass; north-south and east-west traffic passes through the town.

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These two streams converge at a roundabout adjacent to the Tesco site flanked by the Little Wonder and the memorial to a murdered postmaster, Mr Donald Skepper.

Already there is a tendency for traffic to seize up, and the prospect of adding a superstore just round the corner with 20,000 customers a week, mostly arriving by car, and articulated lorries making deliveries, beggars the imagination.

There was an idea that the western side of town was somehow bereft because it lacked a supermarket and the argument was that a monster Tesco would make good this deficiency.

But Tesco, seeking to profit from its investment, will not be content to draw customers from the Duchy and Jennyfield. They will want to see people flocking in from Bilton, Oatlands, Pannal, The Saints, everywhere. And these will all come by car.

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Janet Street-Porter says she will not be shedding any tears over Tesco. In this she is right. Already supermarkets are sucking the lifeblood out of smaller shops. On the edge of Harrogate town centre are Waitrose and Asda. Morrisons and Sainsburys are more into suburbia, and there are a couple more big stores down the road at Knaresborough. The big boys are also inserting their smaller “convenience” branches, Tesco bang in the middle in Cambridge Road and, further out, in Knaresborough Road. Sainsburys are already in Kings Road and Cold Bath Road, and are seeking a third outlet in Leeds Road at the Mile Post inn.

Also in Leeds Road, Marks & Spencer are reported to be interested in establishing a food store on the Nidd Vale Motors garage site (previously Appleyards).

The coming of the big Tesco, supposedly by Christmas, 2013, can hardly add much to the pain for small shopkeepers caused by this proliferation.

But Ms Street-Porter’s verdict might strike a chill in Malton where another broadcaster, Selina Scott, is in the vanguard of an attempt to block Ryedale Council’s idea of selling a car park as a site for big shops. Harrogate’s blandness today could be Malton’s tomorrow.

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The old spa town has undergone a catastrophic loss of small independent and idiosyncratic traders giving personal service from old-fashioned shops, many dating from Victorian times.

Most of these businesses, that contributed to the town’s flavour as piquantly as its waters, have gone, swept away by changing fashions, economic pressure, ruthless opposition, crass redevelopment or just old age on the part of the shopkeepers.

My memories of Harrogate go back 50 years. At that time, the main thoroughfare, Parliament Street, had Louis Copé at the bottom end, his window-displays of delicate fabrics shielded from the sun by large blinds.

At the top was the Café Imperial, where Taylors served the finest tea to the music of a string quartet. Opposite, round the corner from George Dawson’s magnificent Cambridge Crescent, was an ironmongery, an amazing repository for the handyman.

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Louis Copé and the ironmonger’s are long gone, and the Imperial has given way to a branch of a chain of bakers, confectioners and cafes, Betty’s.

The market, where Mr Chapman and Mr Quinn sold the best ham in town, disappeared, and in its place there is the Victoria Centre, replete with commonplace multiples. But the most disastrous loss was that of the Lowther Arcade, which ran through from Cambridge to Oxford Street. It was damaged by fire in the late 1980s and eventually demolished to make way for the architecturally awful Marks & Spencer, which landed like a mailed fist in the solar plexus of the town.

In contrast, the old arcade was a joy. Lined throughout by pleasing Victorian shop fronts, it had a mosaic tiled floor and, aloft, an ornamental iron balcony. All manner of goods were on offer, from excellent frozen pasties to antiques eccentrically labelled. There was a toy shop to distract the children, Mr Hobkinson’s clock and watch mender’s, and an old-style draper’s offering flannelette nighties, corsets and directoire knickers. Second-hand clothing could be had too, none of that iffy and sniffy stuff from jumble sales but decent suits and respectable skirts gathered from the wardrobes of the departed, and sold on with discretion in sombre surroundings.

Duttons for Buttons began there. It derived its apt and memorable name from a former occupant of its premises, a Mrs Dutton, and is now in Oxford Street. Upstairs, there was a school of dance and a record shop, “Nice and Sleazy”. The arcade is still mourned. Mr Malcolm Neesam, the town’s historian, has opined that it could and should have been restored, and terms the failure to do so “a monumental scandal”.

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Standing’s, a grocery with a famous restaurant, was at the end of James Street. It disappeared after a brief flirtation with self-service. Marshall and Snellgrove which catered for the carriage trade, went, and so did its successor, Schofield’s. These were businesses of character, where customers were served rather than obliged to push a trolley and queue at checkouts. They made Harrogate what it was, a place of elegance and unhurried calm.

Tesco has put up £1.57m to be spent on the town centre. It is a nice gesture, even if it was made during the planning procedure with a good degree of self-interest. It will not bring back one small retailer, though, or help save those that remain, which include such treasures as Woods, Jespers, Lunns and Ogdens.

Sadly, the off-comed Janet Street-Porter’s lament is likely to remain valid.

Malcolm Barker is a former editor of the Yorkshire Evening Post.