Here are the pictures of the Matthew http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptopol311/id6.htmWe went to Sandwich today, so all in all a bit of a medieval day here are the pictures http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptopol311/id5.htm lunch at The Little Cottage Tea Rooms, I had lasagna and a pot of tea my wife a baked potato and hot chocolate total cost £15 good value and good food.
Good to hear that the council have managed to let the Marks and Spencer building in Margate to “Store Twenty One” apart from charity shops, estate agents and food shops, there isn’t much in the way of shops in Sandwich now.
These big town centre shops were worth a lot of money at one time and commanded considerable rents that were related to the profit that could be made by shops trading there. Recently the large shop in Ramsgate opposite my bookshop failed to reach the reserve of £170,000 in a property auction, another of these shop properties was the subject of a post on Margate Architecture Blog, see http://margatearchitecture.blogspot.com/2011/03/for-sale-amazing-corner-freehold.html
It was during medieval times that market towns developed around trade and our society came to revolve around trading in towns, this took over a thousand years, in the last thirty years this has started to collapse, out of town shopping, then the internet being largely responsible and leaving the problem of what happens to the shops and town centres.
Morning Michael,
ReplyDeleteThinking about your light meal for £15 in Sandwich: you should try the restaurant at the QEQM Hospital - Two full meals of meat and 3 veg for £8.10. And you can eat it outside in the garden. Still, Sandwich is an attractive town.
Morning again Michael,
ReplyDeleteSandwich is certainly a photogenic town.
Good to see M & S rented out, lets hope its a good deal for tdc on the back of a £4,000,000 yes four million pound investment. But i suppose seeing Seeda is being wound up the "grant" will not have to be paid back.
ReplyDeleteJohn I have to say the hospital is a place I try to avoid whenever possible, not sure wandering around taking a few pictures for publication on the web would go down there that well either.
ReplyDelete16.14 it does sound rather a lot I know Woolworth’s shop in Ramsgate came onto the market near the top of the property boom at £1m and didn’t think the figure could be much more. As when things were fairly OK in the high streets 10% of the freehold was seen as the rental value, one does wonder what could have happened in Margate High Street that would have commanded a rent of over £1,000 per day.