I've recently bought two Lego models. Sadly not from a dedicated model shop as they rarely stock the 'adult' Lego sets.

Concorde was purchased online and the Mercedes G 500 was bought from John Lewis in Bristol.

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No, I really don't want to do that, grahame.  [Image from here is not available to guests]

I have therefore now simplified the topic heading, to cover everything that has been posted here so far - removing reference to any particular location, too, as we have interesting examples of such outlets in Birmingham and Manchester.

As ever, I hope this helps. CfN. [Image from here is not available to guests]

 
As someone guilty for the expansion of the title of this thread can I agree with deleting "past, present and future" and changing "Bristol and elsewhere " to "in our area "?

 
Whitemans bookshop in Bath. MarkA will remember that one. They were very much a specialist bookshop for those who loved transport books and maps…loads of em as well as everyday books.

They used to also sell second hand books and timetables. It was a great place to spend my early wages.

I would occasionally visit Ian Allan bookshops in Birmingham, Manchester and Waterloo. All now closed.

 

If you want to annoy me ... no, I won't give ideas. 

I took a look at this out of interest and if it were life changing I suspect it could be done. The database would support it.  However it would lead some pretty ugly formatting.  It's a limit I have hit too and my solution has been to work around answering keep the text to a short subject and avoid the temptation of it being an essay.

Re: Mapshops, Bookshops, Modelshops and Stationery shops, Bristol and elsewhere: past, present and future
could change to
Re: Specialist shops - Maps, books, models & stationary, Bristol and others

Is "past present and future" needed?

 
I've found a 'workaround' - hopefully without annoying grahame. [Image from here is not available to guests]

 
Actually, Tim, I was initially struggling there, with the forum's current software limiting me in terms of the number of characters I could have in any heading of a topic. Hence my use of '&' rather than 'and', just to consolidate.

However: I am an ADMIN, so I can log in as such and over-ride such apparently petty restrictions (and possibly annoy grahame).

Give me a couple of minutes. [Image from here is not available to guests]

 
...and future?

 

Yes, alright ... I've done it.  [Image from here is not available to guests] [Image from here is not available to guests] [Image from here is not available to guests]

Chris.  [Image from here is not available to guests]

 
I would add my endorsement to the Independent Map Shop at Upton. They were able to supply maps of Germany for me last year that Stanfords did not list, and even contacted me to let me know one I had ordered was about to be revised, so did I want to wait until the revised edition appeared. That's what I call service.

Perhaps CfN may need to change the title of this thread, to "....in Bristol and elsewhere - past and present"!

 

I can remember going there in the 80s or 90s just after the EU had introduced set-aside for agricultural land and finding a queue of Farmers waiting to order 25 inch maps of their land.

Only 6 miles from me in Pershore but Upton is not very well served by public transport these days. Buses from Worcester only and by 2 alternate routes ether east or west of the river Severn.

When I lived in Kempsey just south of Worcester in the 1970s there was an all day and evening bus service from Worcester to Gloucester via Upton and Tewkesbury. Now to get south from upton you need to go to Worcester. Then take a train to Gloucester. The only regular bus service between Worcestershire and Gloucestershire is Evesham to Tewkesbury.

 

Not entirely frustrated. I did eventually, by a circuitous route, become a health/medical cartographer. All sorts of fancy words; spatial epidemiology! It is useful to know where health conditions occur, it is also useful to know where health treatment occurs. The connection between the two is not always optimal.

 

So, not just the comedian's comedian then? [Image from here is not available to guests]

 
It would appear that we have a few frustrated cartographers here. [Image from here is not available to guests]

One of the jobs I wanted to do when I was a kid. Along with the obligatory 'train driver'.

 

The original Stanfords in Covent Garden before it was it modernised/improved had a fascinating and slightly hidden basement. It was run by two extremely knowledgeable gentlemen and stocked Military Survey and other specialist official maps. Too much of my money went there, and the staff added considerably to my mapping knowledge. Bad timing meant that I missed out on the detailed Falkland Island survey material. On the announcement of the task force MoD went and "recovered" the entire stock.

 

My recollection is that it became a rather vague travel/exploration-themed bookshop, not much different to the travel department in a larger Waterstones. There wasn't much of a compelling reason to go there.

Stanfords in Covent Garden, on the other hand, is a proper map and guidebook shop. I could spend days (and most of my savings) there.

The independent Map Shop in Upton-on-Severn is still going, and still wonderful: https://www.themapshop.co.uk/

 

Unlike JayMac's bete noir (aka the second steam engine to reach 100mph) The Modellers Den always had a definite atricle (but no apostrophe!) and used 'TMD' in its advertising.

 
Who else remembers Verrechia's ice cream parlour..that predated Fairfax Street. It was my reward for not making hay with the pic and nix in Woolworths.....

 
Yes, 'Beatties' and 'Modellers' Den' are the shops I now remember from those younger days. CfN. [Image from here is not available to guests]

 

Yes it's a worthy replacement but the shop I was thinking about vanished when the Galleries was built.  Still trying to recall it's name.....Modellers Den rings a bell though.

 

It's entirely possible that we did, especially if it was the early 1970s.  I recall that in addition to the familiar Airfix, Revell and Frog products, there was a certain excitement to seeing kits manufactured by exotic companies with unfamiliar names.

Can't remember what the shop was called though.  There is/was one further along the bit of Fairfax Street that wasn't demolished for the Galleries but that was a more recent establishment.

 

Antics. Still trading.

A fair bit of my pocket money and early wage packets was spent in there too. And in Beatties on Penn St, Broadmead. I used to travel up on the train from Taunton on Saturdays to browse and spend.

 
Blimey, johnneyw. [Image from here is not available to guests]  We must have almost bumped into each other there. [Image from here is not available to guests]

I bought many items from that model shop, too: replica military items, most of their range of tins of colours in Humbrol paint - and a vast quantity of white metal 'Miniature Figurines', or 'minifigs'.

By the way: I still have many of those 'minifigs', from their Napoleonic range, in showroom condition: I am now unable to paint them, in my retirement as I originally intended, due to physical limitations with my fingers. If anyone would like them, please do contact me.

CfN.

 

Ah, that brought back memories of the model shop just a little further along the street where, pre and early teens, I spent most of my pocket money on various plastic model kits, paints, modelling supplies etc.  If I say so myself, I got quite good at it, even to the point of modifying the kits and "scratch" building.

 
With my thanks to grahame for starting this topic - and with my profuse apologies for high-jacking it and amending the heading - it is now here. It all generally relates to Bristol.

I still have several of the items I bought, so many years ago now, from Ross's Legal Stationers in Fairfax Street.

CfN. [Image from here is not available to guests]

 
Thank you to all forum posters here for your prompting my own memories of shopping in central Bristol, many years ago.

I worked in an office at the lower end of Broad Street, so it was very convenient for me to stroll out in my lunch hour to peruse the HMSO in Wine Street, Stanfords in Clare Street - and one we haven't mentioned yet: Ross's legal stationers on Fairfax Street (directly under Union Street, next door to the Prince Rupert ph.)

 
... and that's reminded me of another memory of that area of Bristol. A little off topic...

My Grandma oft told the story of me as a toddler screaming blue murder in the Co-op department store a little further down from Wine St in Fairfax House (demolished and replaced by The Galleries shopping centre).. The reason I was upset? My Grandma and uncle trying to get me into the paternoster lift that was in the store.

The grown up me, with my interest in weird and wonderful engineering, would love to have been able to ride that paternoster lift.

 

Gosh yes, thanks for stirring up that memory. An Aladdin's Cave for us non-neurotypical types who like to keep their collection of Highway Code editions up-to-date, or who just enjoy the smell of newly-printed government literature.

Wine St was once Bristol's premier shopping street. It was badly damaged by wartime bombing and then swept away by a coalition of national chain stores and government policy, which decided that a fairly undamaged area of mediaeval, Georgian and Victorian buildings around Broadmead, Milk St, Rosemary St and Merchant St should be flattened and the shopping centre relocated there. Later, the demolished ancient buildings of Wine St, Castle St and Mary-le-Port St were bulldozed into the basements to create Castle Park.

Andrew Foyle, in his Pevsner Architectural Guide to Bristol, described Wine Street as 'perhaps the saddest post-Blitz transformation'.

Broadmead has been described as having all the charm of an out-of-town shopping centre without the parking. Soon much of it will be flattened, this time for housing. So it goes.

 

I used to love going to the HMSO on High Holborn in London to purchase copies of rail accident reports, of which I have quite a collection. They were a fascinating story and taught me a lot which remains with me to this day.  Fact far more interesting than fiction, and facts and evidence without a marketing gloss or bias.  In the information overload we have today, there is a great deal of other reading material available for analysis but these reports were something of a more educational trigger than trainspotting, though I can still tell you about difference in 4EPB units.

 
Hazy memory...

Was there once an Ordnance Survey shop on Wine St in Bristol?

EDIT: Some online research has informed me that this was a HM Stationery Office bookshop. My hazy memory was of me perusing OS Maps in there back in the early 1990s.

 
I have redacted their surname, out of respect for their privacy: they are a well-known family in Nailsea. [Image from here is not available to guests]

 

They couldn't hold back the tide, presumably?

 
It's rather saddening to hear of the Bristol Stanford's closure.  I bought a map there a little before Christmas and there was no indication of it closing then. 
The news sparked a memory of when, a few years ago,  I was downstairs trying to pay for a map. Map and payment card in hand, I stood in front of the chap behind the till who was on a call casually talking to a friend or colleague.  Five minutes later and with me about to put the map down and leave, he finally finished the call and decided to take payment. 
The subject of the overheard phone call?  A meeting earlier that day to stress the urgency of boosting sales.

I also recall a visit to George's during the first term of my History A Level to order a recommended text book which I was told would be ordered in for me as there were none in stock at the time. I left my name and address to be contacted when it had arrived for me.  Fast forward two years, A level completed, end of year 6th form bun fight done and dusted and in the post comes a letter from George's informing me that my book had arrived.
I still passed my History A Level.

 
Here in Nailsea, we used to have two excellent book and map shops. One was run by Mr C***, selling maps, and the other - literally across the High Street - was run by Mrs C***, selling books.

Over the years, I bought many items from both establishments - Ordnance Survey maps for me, educational books for our child. When Mr and Mrs C*** retired, both premises closed: his became a hair salon, hers became part of a veterinary practice.

These days, I agree that the internet has overtaken such a physical maps or books High Street presence.

 
Unlike clothes, and particularly shoes, where I really do want to try things on for fit and feel, maps are relatively safe to buy online for delivery so I'm not surprised physical shops are struggling.  Having said that, I would still prefer to look at and compare foreign maps where they are an unknown quantity, as opposed to the UK where I'm familiar with what OS maps at every scale and the various town/city street map publishers' products look like.  Not enough of us to keep it economic though!

On a related note, I recently decided to update my 9 sheet A-Z maps of London (better than the classic A-Z book for some purposes) only to discover that they are no longer produced.  How long will the book survive?

 

Yes, I spent many happy hours in George's as well, and perhaps even more in Chapter and Verse, another bookshop which was on the opposite side of Park Street directly opposite George's.

I have also been to Stanford's in Bristol many times, and it was usually quite busy most times I visited, though obviously not everyone will be buying when they visit. The map basement was where I usually headed for. I did go to Stanford's about 10 days ago, to buy a specific map I wanted, only to find that they had just closed the basement as they had boxed up all the maps to be sent to their London store. I can feel a visit to London coming up soon.

 
That sounds very much like what happened to Reading's main independent bookseller, William Smith (no relation!) that used to be in London Street. It suffered a major fire in the early 1970s, after which there was a big sale of fire-damaged stock. I acquired an almost undamaged 7th edition One Inch (1/63,630) unfolded OS sheet 178 (Dorchester) which in due course (about 10 years later) I framed and hung on my office wall. Somewhere in the house there's a slightly smoke-damaged copy of Monkhouse's Principles of Physical Geography I acquired at the same time.

The shop moved to (if I recall correctly) King's Road, and in due course was acquired by, and rebranded as, Blackwells too. It closed in the era when Waterstones effectively took control of the serious book market in the 2000s, but they kept a store at the University.

The old London Street store had a well-regarded second-hand department, but I think almost all its stock perished in the fire. The premises were the site of an early Quaker meeting dating back to the end of the 17th century.

 

When George's closed I discovered that it had been a branch of Blackwell's since 1929 and had not been independent.

I too remember the old shop with its fascinating second hand department.  I still have a number of books I bought there.

 

George's (note the placement of the apostrophe - we'll come back to that) was just one shop - 89 Park St - when I was a boy. Spent many happy hours there, exploring all four floors and multiple levels, and buying many a book. I think they over-expanded when they moved into 87 and 85, and then sadly rebranded as Blackwell's - the Oxford bookseller who had actually owned the business since the 1920's.

Why was the apostrophe where it was? Because it was William George's Sons Ltd. William, incidentally, started selling books in his uncle's bookshop at 26 Clare Street - more or less opposite Stanford's. He moved the business to Park St in either 1851 or 1871 (depending on who you believe). Perhaps he thought Clare St was a silly place for a bookshop?

 
Sad, but not surprised. I don't remember the Bristol store ever being very busy. It was on Clare Street, surrounded by bars and restaurants. There is a branch of Traifinders nearby, which could have sent some people their way, but overall it always looked a bit out of place.

 
In Bristol, we used to have the excellent Georges bookshops, on Park Street - there were three of them, on the left hand side walking up.

One of them was where I met Harold Wilson, who was there to sign copies of his book, 'The Governance of Britain'. I didn't buy one, I just offered him a sheet of paper - which he autographed: I remember saying to him, "Thank you, sir". I was with a group of fellow sixth-formers, who had all sneaked out of school simply to attend that book signing. [Image from here is not available to guests]

 
From https://www.stanfords.co.uk/our-stores - I remember in my youth visiting book shops like Foyles and Stanfords - the latter for maps.  Noting a post that fleetingly passed by told of the closure of Stanford's in Bristol, just a single store remains which is that one near Covent Garden.  I did have a look at their online shop too, which would now seem to be their dominant business.  Memories of other big bookstores too - whatever happened to Borders, or some of those wonderful specialist displays of IT books in places like Waterstones.