I went back to Rickmansworth yesterday and remembered several old High Street shops.
Mac Fisheries
I remember Mac Fisheries, it smelt of fish, all these fish laid out on slabs at the front of the store open to the street, a regular high street staple in the 1970s, I imagine jolly fishmongers in blue and white striped aprons doling out bright yellow haddock to housewives wearing hats, my Mum never wore a hat to go shopping, we'd get the bus down from Croxley and it'd drop us off right outside Mac Fisheries, maybe that's why I remember it, the sign for Mac Fisheries was a blue circle divided by a white cross with a fish in every quadrant, it always reminded me of a road sign, obviously you wouldn't have a road sign for fish, we never bought fish after getting off the bus obviously we bought it just before we caught the bus home, we didn't buy it often, my brother wasn't a fan, alas Mac Fisheries went bust in 1979, I'm not sure how long the Rickmansworth branch held out, you just don't get fishmongers in high streets any more, not mainstream like this was, the town has nothing similar now, I tried to work out what's being sold in the same unit today, maybe Boots Opticians, maybe Kawaii Nails, maybe The Meat Like It Used To Be Company, so I checked an old photo in a newspaper nostalgia article and apparently Mac Fisheries was further up the High Street where Prezzo used to be, I guess it must have moved since 1963, it definitely used to be beside the bus stop, there's no bus stop any more, and no fish.
Bejam
Across the street was Bejam, the freezer store, it felt so futuristic in the 1970s, a shop devoted to all things frozen, we didn't have a freezer until 1974, only a tiny box at the top of the fridge, then we moved to a new house so there was room for a freezer at the back of the garage, not a chest freezer because the Renault 5 would have hit that, this had lots of shelves and the shop you'd visit to fill those shelves was Bejam, the so-called freezer centre, I think back then the ice cream excited me most, especially when it was a tub of raspberry ripple, also nothing has ever topped a Bird's Eye Supermousse, then there were frozen pies and fish fingers, a lot of this stuff was made by Findus, we'd go to Bejam and walk up and down the aisles of chest freezers, sometimes daring to lift the lid and look in, they had big cards with prices on to tempt you to open up, inside might be frozen vegetables or an iced-up pile of roasting chickens, and not usually much on the shelves above the freezers because Bejam was seriously spartan by modern standards, and what do you know the store on the corner of Northway is still a freezer store, it's now Iceland, they took over in 1989 and are rather snazzier, they have glass on the front of the cabinets now, but I remember when it was Bejam, for me it always will be.
WH Smith
There's been a WH Smith here for decades, a true High Street staple, somewhere to buy staplers and felt pens and the Watford Observer, you can tell it's been here ages because it still has beautifultiles out front proclaiming they sell Maps & Guides and Childrens Books, I loved coming in here, I'd check the paperbacks and also the stationery, might even have bought my Record Mirror, it wasn't a huge store, not like the Watford branch, but it was a wonderland of small desirables at pocket money prices, also Quink cartridges I might need for school, maybe eye up a new calculator, they rebranded it TG Jones last year, a ridiculous idea, clearly asset-stripping, and hey presto the Rickmansworth branch closes on Saturday, the front is smothered with yellow notices, also as the end draws nigh everything's now 70% off, not that much is left, the back half of the store is nigh empty and the stationery selection up front is pretty sparse too, some highlighter pens, 2026 diary Filofax inserts, mini geometry sets, map pins, Dymo labels, loose pencil sharpeners, chalk, a laminator, shelves of non-bestselling paperbacks, amusingly they still have all this week's TV listings magazines because they expect to sell those but the rest is just the dregs, "everything's out" said the man behind the till, they're running the store into the ground, four more days then the doors shut, I bet they take those lovely tiles down, era closed.
Tames
Every High Street has its independents, some dear old shop run by a local, all the prices stuck on with little paper labels, back in the day those prices all ended with p rather than starting with £, this was Tames, this was Rickmansworth's stationers, it even said The Rickmansworth Stationers on the awning, they sold the more specialist stuff like 24 fibre tips in assorted widths or account books interleaved with carbon paper, also all that ink we somehow got through in those days, they knew which hole punch fitted which ring binder, I'd come in here mainly for a browse but if they had a red Berol pen I was smitten, they also sold office supplies when there were still offices in Rickmansworth, also colour prints before we could do those ourselves before we didn't bother, it says a lot that Ryman never opened a branch in the town, I love how the shop is named after the owners using the full initials, M.F.N. was Michael Frank Norman Tame, he died in 2006 so it's amazing this place lasted as long as it did, the shutters very recently down, the interior dark and frozen awaiting repurchase and rebirth, "Prominently positioned retail premises", "high footfall location", "new lease to be granted for a term to be agreed", I bet it'll be a food outlet or something wellness-related, not a vape shop because there's one of those nextdoor, people don't want stuff any more, thus stationery is stuffed.
Tesco
These days Tesco has a massive supermarket down by the canal where Frogmore Wharf used to be, they moved there in 1992 from the Penn Place precinct, a smaller store with inadequate parking, but until the early 1970s they were here in the High Street near the bottom of Station Road, a smaller store still, but that's the one I remember, a very sharp memory of the first aisle with its high shelves, I was only small, a sparser supermarket than today, for some reason I see washing powder boxes but that's probably not what was here, also cards with prices and slogans hanging from the ceiling, also big baskets rather than trolleys, Tesco totally isn't like this today, they completely reinvented themselves soon after, but because I'm just about old enough I still remember the old ways, the drab units supermarkets used to be, we didn't come here often, we did a lot of food shopping in Budgens down the road, also Sainsbury and Caters in Watford, it was always an event but that's because Mum didn't take me every time, maybe there'd be chocolate mint eclairs to take home, these days the former Tesco store is long demolished, I think it's where the charity shop now is, while anyone wanting spaghetti loops or potato rosti goes to M&S Food a few doors down or Waitrose up by the station because Rickmansworth's been socially climbing since the 70s, but some of us remember how it used to be.
Strawberry Fields
This record shop came to Penn Place in October 1968, Tony Blackburn came to open it and apparently traffic in the town centre seized up, they'd just built a new link road called Northway to bypass the narrow High Street and alongside was Penn Place, this new precinct of lowrise concrete parades, very of itstime, so the ideal place for a hip and cool purveyor of vinyl, I was much too young to be impressed at the time, even later when the Wombles first appealed I probably went to Watford for that, but I remember Strawberry Fields with its funky typeface and two red stripes, a burst of glamour across a grey precinct, far more interesting to a child than the dry cleaners or the Rediffusion showroom, they moved to the High Street eventually, meanwhile Penn Place became superfluous to the town's needs, the last business moved out in 1996 and then they demolished the entire futuristic precinct, it's now flats because obviously it's now flats, then Strawberry Fields closed pre-millennium, just as Mac Fisheries and Bejam and the old Tesco went, just as Woolworths and Tames went more recently, now WH Smiths has four days left before it joins the ranks of shops in Rickmansworth I merely remember, the curse of the older person being to know what everything was before it became what it is now, you can't change the past but you can remember it, best embrace the new retail selection, such as it is, even if you'd prefer Strawberry Fields to a smashed avo on toasted sourdough.
