Tuesday 22 February 2011

Derby - Westfield



On 9th October 2007, over 3 years of disruptive construction finally came to an end, as Derby's new shopping centre was opened.

The Westfield Centre, named after the Australian company which designed, built and manages it, has more than 190 shops, large and small, and an eating area which consists of outlets cooking food from around the world; everything from Kentucky Fried Chicken to jacket potatoes, to Thai to Chinese, to Indian. The Westfield website describes the centre as follows:

Flooded with natural daylight the malls and public areas of Westfield Derby are the perfect setting for some of the country’s biggest brands, from fashion to lifestyle and leisure.


For goodness sake! It's only a shopping centre! But then again, shopping seems to be the new national pastime and I suppose that a fancy new 'mall' does bring in the out of town money. In its favour, it is clean and bright, warm and dry; even in the middle of a November white-out. On the downside, it is totally lacking in character or quirkiness or history of any kind! You could pick it up and dump it almost anywhere in the Western world and it would sit nicely amongst all of the others like it.

Once, the site on which this shopping centre stands housed a mill; Castlefield Mill, a lace mill built by John Boden in 1821. It was the heart around which the town had grown, but by the 1950s, Derby Corporation were looking to make changes, primary amongst which was the de-industrialisation of the town centre. In March 1961, the announcement was made that the mill had been sold and planning permission granted for a new shopping centre. The first such centre was the Main Centre, a 3.5 acre site consisting of an open pedestrianised core surrounded by shops. This opened on July 4th, 1963.

In 1975, the Main Centre was joined by the 12 acre, £7,000,000 Eagle Centre; Derby's first indoor shopping centre. It included the Eagle Market which was the UK's largest indoor market. The market stalls were arranged in a hexagonal honeycomb pattern and I remember it being a nightmare to navigate. People would spend ages going round and round in circles! (More accurately, I suppose I should say they were going round in hexagons, but that sounds plain daft!)



The Eagle Market still exists (though its layout is now a boring grid pattern) and much of the old Eagle Centre still remains; tagged on to the back of the Westfield and refurbished so as not to look too much the poor neighbour.

In their days, both the Main Centre and the Eagle Centre were considered 'state of the art'. I wonder how long the Westfield will be thought of in that way. Modern developments never seem to have the durability of the historic. They don't grow old very gracefully!


8 comments:

  1. At the risk of offending the Australian Mall developers, I must agree this is not a particularly 'pretty' construction. And, sticking my neck out even further now, I have to admit I was greatly unimpressed with/disappointed by the Brisbane Malls when we visited Australia - after the generally quite attractive and one or two rather impressive Malls we have in Cape Town and its immediate surrounds, I'd expected at least similar, if not better.

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  2. Oh I don't know. Take your first photograph, photoshop it to look old, convert it into sepia, put it in a vintage postcard frame and we will all probably say "wonderful old building, they don't make em like that these days"

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  3. Interesting. Old and New. State of the Art. Some people always like things to be up to date. So they are constantly renovating. I once read of a restaurant that was in a big city and they changed their decor once a month. It is always a question of money. Then there are things that are old that people like, then they become so old they turn sepia, then they come into fashion once again. Things like cobbled streets and thatched roofs. We hope your shopping centre will keep on top of things and keep renovating, and keep up to date! More to the point, keep you happy!

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  4. I detest shopping malls - there are two of them here. I'd much rather shop in town - in and out of the stores. Malls are soulless places.

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  5. I don't know if it was the same company but I think the ones who have NOT built a new mall in Bradford are also Westfield. We just have a big empty hole now!

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  6. Hello, I dropped in from another blog site (Jenny freckles) and found this post which struck me as I agree with most of the comments about malls - don't like them and we are now living in an a town of 500 with not the closest large shopping areas a 90-minute drive. We shop local whenever possible (harder to do in such a small area)and do order online for items like cameras or electronics. It would have been interesting to see what this mall displaced.
    The name Westfield reminded me of the Westfield, NJ (USA) where I attended high school.

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  7. My area of New York City was nice and quiet until a big mega mall was built 30 years ago. It brought much undesirable traffic, noise, pollution and change in population after it was built. I think most malls everywhere do the same.

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  8. We are amazed at all your negatives against malls. We here have both malls and street shopping. Some of the street shops are great, but try and park! Then when you are parked, try opening the car-door. You will get clipped! or soaking wet! or cold! At the mall you also have shopping trolleys or carts. These are a few of the reasons shopping malls are so popular....

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