Loughborough, Pinfold Gate c.1965

Photo ref: L197104

More about this scene

Cars remained a relative luxury in the 1930s and most people either travelled by public transport or used a bicycle. Cycling became a very popular way for many people to leave the workaday world behind and go out into the countryside. Reid's offered a wide choice at modest and affordable prices. The changes did not, fortunately, lead to a bland uniformity in the way in which the town appeared. Denhams the jewellers has retained its flamboyant, Byzantine-style mosaics. Changing the face of the town was not always done with sensitivity for the surroundings. The High Street building now partly occupied by Argos and Barnado's was designed in the 1960s as a Co-Operative department store. Its stark, rather brutalist concrete shape now proclaims the modern architecture of its time. The shops themselves were changing. Some retained a traditional aspect. 'Johnny' Marrs was a Loughborough institution. The shop, with a wonderful period frontage right to the last, was the pawnbrokers, where local people could 'pop' or pawn anything of value to raise a little hard-needed cash. So far as is known, no one ever tried to 'pop' a weasel but Mr Marr, who was Mayor of Loughborough three times, would no doubt at least have considered its worth. Multiple stores entered the town in the shape of Woolworths. Originally, nothing in Woolworths' stores cost more than 6d (2.5p). It is evidence of the town's growth that a chain store should have come here so early in its own development.