New quirky ‘street’ of shops opens with hundreds of unusual finds

A street like no other has opened in Nottingham with weird and wonderful finds galore. Clothing, music and books are some of the more conventional finds. Then there’s Indonesian daggers, a replica of one of the city’s most iconic buildings and a sign that says ‘Freak Show entrance’.

It’s not like anything you’ll find on Friar Lane, Low Row or Clumber Street. But there’s always going to be someone, somewhere, who has been on the hunt for an old-fashioned typewriter, a 1984 edition of the Bimbo annual or a cassette of Rose Royce’s Greatest Hits. They’ll find them at Station Street Walk, created in the basement of Nottingham shop Hopkinson, the vintage and antiques emporium near Nottingham Railway Station.

The basement – once home to the Haunted Museum before its move to Derby Road – has been converted into “a street in the theme of an antique town,” said the man behind it, Ash Hudson. Instead of blood-stained walls and ghoulish paraphernalia, there’s a very different vibe.

Get the latest What’s On news straight to your phone by joining us on WhatsApp

Doors off to the sides take you to themed shops – some with clothes, others with vintage trinkets and knick knacks and a replica dolls house based on the Severn’s Building, which was moved from its original home in Middle Pavement to its current location in Castle Road. It was dismantled, repaired and re-erected with each part individually numbered to make way for the construction of Broadmarsh shopping centre.

One, packed to the rafters with novels and publications, comes with the smell of an old-fashioned book shop. Here you’ll find books such as The Quest for Robin Hood, DH Lawrence’s Twenty One Tales and William Golding’s Rites of Passage as well as annuals from the Get Along Gang, the Wuzzles and Dr Who (before it changed to Doctor Who).

One room, set out with a desk and glass cabinets with clocks, Titanic memorabilia and Victorian cards is a tribute to Henry Hopkinson, who used to run an industrial engineers’ merchants at the property in the 1880s. At the opposite end of the walk the original sign from the Golden Cock pub hangs over the door of a shop set out with vintage clothing.

Walk through the door of the Circus shop to find horror film posters from the nineties and noughties, including Creep and Lake Placid, wooden and glove puppets from Pinocchio to Sooty, and clowns. The Indonesian kris, a dagger which is a weapon and spiritual object, considered to possess magical powers, is quite a contrast to the models of Goose Fair rides.

Music fans will find everything from a jukebox to LPs and twin deck stereos to cassettes. More random objects include one of the original animatronics from the Tales of Robin Hood, a Father Christmas statue, a gravestone and a gingerbread man.

Before the space in Station Street was taken over by the Haunted Museum, it was Wonderland Cafe – a fantasy Alice in Wonderland experience – also run by Ash. His ‘Mad Hatter’ hat hangs in one of the rooms. Completing the street is a glow-in-the-dark Goose Fair mural, with a row of old red velvet cinema seats opposite should you wish to take a pew.

Ash said: “It’s an immersive space. It’s the opposite of what you’d expect on the high street, which is dying. Why not reframe it? We always said upstairs we wanted to break the wheel so you will go to a lot of antique places and it’s just random cabinets everywhere – there’s no soul to it and we wanted to change the way the modern antique centre runs.

“We’ve put old things in here for the people who are collectors and like antiques but put a pop culture space in there for the younger people so we are making sure that every person who walks down Station Street Walk finds something they like.

“It took six weeks to build it, foot to the floor 8am to 8pm, every day. Everyone I told about it thought I was a mad man and didn’t think I could change it.”

Station Street Walk’s entrance is via a flight of yellow steps inside the shop. The plan is to open the entrance around the side once a revamp of the yard is complete. Like Hopkinson, Station Street Walk is open seven days a week.

CONTINUE READING