Reminiscing, the good old days and catalogues and tack shops….

Tiddlypom said:
Thanks Paddy, I had been scratching my head to try remember the name of the saddlery shop by the river. Robertsons and the Farmers Friend being a short walk apart - is Farmers Friend still in the same corner premises that its always been?

Leonard Coombes in the old shop in the centre of Newton Abbot, too.
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very sadly that wonderful, smelly and cluttered old Leonard Coombes went long ago when Newton lost most of it's character with it's rubbish upgrading schemes.

I am afraid Newton Abbot and Coombes are both examples of how to take a lovely historic market town and turn it into a "nothing" if fact worse than nothing. so very sad.

For those familiar with it the latest casualty is Redpost near Totnes. Again tiny, cluttered, packed to the ceiling, impossible to get past other customers. Wonderful little saddlery.. Now gone the way of all the rest.
 
paddy555 said:
very sadly that wonderful, smelly and cluttered old Leonard Coombes went long ago when Newton lost most of it's character with it's rubbish upgrading schemes.

I am afraid Newton Abbot and Coombes are both examples of how to take a lovely historic market town and turn it into a "nothing" if fact worse than nothing. so very sad.

For those familiar with it the latest casualty is Redpost near Totnes. Again tiny, cluttered, packed to the ceiling, impossible to get past other customers. Wonderful little saddlery.. Now gone the way of all the rest.
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Wow was the mail order website running from there too until recently?
 
Redpost is not gone..... just reinvented! glitzed to the hilt and way too expensive. You can even re-fuel your electric car in the car park.
 
I remember cycling to the Paddock saddlery in Warrington to spend my Christmas and birthday money on a new riding hat, complete with chin cup. The hat I'd had when we moved down from Scotland apparently didn't mean the safety standards of my new riding school, so I'd saved up for a year to buy myself a new one. I was so pleased when I could finally rock up with my own hat again, rather than having to pick one off the wall!

Paddock saddlery is now a dressmakers.
 
J&S said:
Redpost is not gone..... just reinvented! glitzed to the hilt and way too expensive. You can even re-fuel your electric car in the car park.
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sorry, I meant gone as in "lovely old saddlery gone"

Not so keen on it's reinvention.Perhaps it is only "oldies" like me who mourn the loss of these lovely old saddlery shops, perhaps the young love the glitter. :)
 
I grew up in North London nearest tack shop was in Chingford West Essex Saddlery I loved going in there it smelt so lovely, there was also Batchelors of Epping that had a stuffed Dun horse in the window.
 
In the early 1970's I had to take measurements and diagrams to a tack shop in Malton so that the saddler could make me a market harborough. Not a single person had ever heard of one, let alone seen one in the flesh, and we had tried quite a few places looking for one.
 
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