The Corner Shop
As much a meeting place for a good gossip as a place to buy your pint of milk, the English corner shop is a greatly loved institution. Cramming often just one of every conceivable item onto their shelves they are a haven of the bizarre, the essential and the chronically out of date. Open long hours, and 365 days a year, the corner shop is there whenever you need it. But not for much longer! The corner shop has been in decline for decades, ever since the advent of the supermarket, but the high street giants are encroaching not just on their trade but also their location. Now, rather than finding an independent grocery store on every corner, you are just as likely to find a small branch of a large chain. More than 2,000 corner shops have closed in the last year, bringing an end to friendly, family run businesses all over the country. Support your local corner shop now; if you don’t, “Coronation Street” will soon be the only place you’ll see them!
Image: Topfoto.co.uk
NOMINATION 1065 OF 1160
Unique to this Island. Epitomises English social mobility. Yet usually run by people of Indian background.
iannis carras
Was Napolean's 'compliment' that we are a "nation of shop keepers", but our history in the Commonwealth is very much based in the trading voyages of the Tudor age, as well as our capital city being being a port & centre of trade for centuries, now lately international finance. We owe our place on the G8 from trade, and the basis is the shop. A corner shop is the ultimate small business - and everyone depends on them still, if only for the things they forgot to get at the supermarket. Very many of the famous high street names began as small shops, and it has been the entry to Britain for many people coming to live in this great country. Small shops are the past, present, and future, and alongside the pub, Her Majesty, and the flag(s), it is certainly deserving of being in the top ten.
Charlie Robinson
its a great british tradition,shops like these are found nowhere else in the world
angela sweeney
