The Darwin Shopping Centre is the main shopping centre in

Shrewsbury Shrewsbury ( , also ) is a market town, civil parish, and the county town of Shropshire, England, on the River Severn, north-west of London; at the 2021 census, it had a population of 76,782. The town's name can be pronounced as either 'Shr ...

Shropshire Shropshire (; alternatively Salop; abbreviated in print only as Shrops; demonym Salopian ) is a landlocked historic county in the West Midlands region of England. It is bordered by Wales to the west and the English counties of Cheshire to ...

, England, comprising approximately 17 per cent of the town centre's retail offer by leasable area. It was built by John Laing Developments in 1989 and refurbished in 2002. It is due to undergo further refurbishment in a plan being devised by Chapman Taylor ArchitectsShearer shapes Shrewsbury , News - print
Property Week (29 October 2010). as part of the New Riverside redevelopment.

Ownership

The mall has shared a turbulent recent history with the former Pride Hill and Riverside centres which came under common ownership in 2003 under Dunedin Property. Protego's UK Actively Managed Shopping Centre Fund acquired the centres in 2006, serviced by a loan provided by Lehman Brothers. Defaulting on £82m of that loan, the centres entered receivership with the collapse of Lehman. UK Commercial Property Trust (managed by Ignis Asset Management and abbreviated UKCPT) took control of the three centres in March 2010 and was under management by Ignis and Shearer Property Group. The Darwin centre was attributed a nominal value of £38.6m as part of the £63.6m purchase. UKCPT, following failure of their proposed development to link the Darwin and Pride Hill shopping centres with Riverside, sold the three centres to Shropshire Council who agreed to purchase them for £51M in 2018.Analysis article by Nick Humphreys.

Retailers

Marks & Spencer Marks and Spencer Group plc (commonly abbreviated to M&S and colloquially known as Marks's or Marks & Sparks) is a major British multinational retailer with headquarters in Paddington, London that specialises in selling clothing, beauty, home ...

anchors the centre and is the largest unit by some way, featuring two retail floors and a mezzanine level. The former Woolworths was reconfigured into H&M and

Home Bargains Home Bargains is a British variety store chain founded in 1976 by Tom Morris in Liverpool, England, as Home and Bargain. It is the trading name of TJ Morris Ltd. History The retailer was founded by owner Tom Morris in 1976 as a single store ...

stores, with the H&M's lower and upper levels occupying the former Woolworths upper and staff-only levels respectively, and the Home Bargains occupying the former Woolworths lower level. Principal tenants also include

JD Sports JD Sports Fashion plc, more commonly known as JD Sports or JD, is a British sports-fashion retail company based in Bury, Greater Manchester, England. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. Pentland ...

Primark Primark Stores Limited (; trading as Penneys in the Republic of Ireland) is an Irish multinational fast fashion retailer with headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. It has stores across Europe and in the United States. The Penneys brand is not us ...

, Wilko and

W H Smith WHSmith (also written WH Smith, and known colloquially as Smith's and formerly as W. H. Smith & Son) is a British retailer, headquartered in Swindon, England, which operates a chain of high street, railway station, airport, port, hospital and m ...

River Island River Island is a London-based, multi-channel fashion brand, founded in 1948 by Bernard Lewis. The retailer has a presence in over 125 of worldwide markets, in stores and online. Best known for its trend focused womenswear offering, River Isla ...

and

Topshop TOPSHOP (originally Top Shop) is a British fashion brand for women's clothing, shoes and accessories. It was part of the Arcadia Group, controlled by Sir Philip Green, but went into administration in late 2020 before being purchased by ASOS o ...

were notable for their branches being in the same units they had occupied since the early 1990s when the centre was very new, albeit both having each had a full refit in the mid-2000s and a further partial refit in the 2010s to keep them up to date but they have since closed with River Island being replaced with HMV in 2022. Primark occupies a 30,300 sq ft unit created by amalgamating nine units on the upper and middle levels of the centre, including the former

JJB Sports JJB Sports plc was a British sports retailer. On 24 September 2012, shares in JJB Sports were suspended, and the firm called in administrators. On 1 October 2012, it was announced that Sports Direct had purchased part of the business, incl ...

, Currys.digital (pre-

Currys PC World Currys (branded as Currys PC World between 2010 and 2021) is an electrical retailer and aftercare service provider operating in the United Kingdom and Ireland, specialising in white goods, consumer electronics, computers and mobile phones. E ...

rebrand of Dixons) and

Dorothy Perkins Dorothy Perkins is an online British women's fashion brand based in the United Kingdom. Formerly a store chain, it sold both its own range of clothes and branded fashion goods until February 2021, when it became part of Boohoo.com, having bee ...

stores "upstairs", and the former Poundland unit, food/drink kiosk and the upper level of the former T.K. Maxx store "downstairs", T.K. Maxx having moved to

Meole Brace Meole Brace, sometimes known locally as simply Meole (pronounced like ''meal''), is a south-western suburb of Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England. The Rea Brook, a tributary of the River Severn, flows through the area. The brook was in the past k ...

retail park.

Location

The centre is accessed directly from the pedestrianised shopping area in Shrewsbury town centre on Pride Hill. Further access can be gained via the dual frontages into the centre offered by W H Smith, Marks & Spencer and H&M. It is joined to the Riverside Mall via a pedestrian walkway and Raven Meadows. The centre is connected by a pedestrian link directly to council-owned multi-storey parking at 'Raven Meadows' and to the town bus station, which is in turn a short walk to

Shrewsbury railway station Shrewsbury railway station is in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England. Built in 1848, it was designated a grade II listed building in 1969. The station is north west of Birmingham New Street. Many services starting at or passing through the sta ...

. The centre is an unusual example of a vertical mall. Similar to the former Pride Hill Shopping Centre, it is built on the side of a steep hill and around the former outer walls of the nearby

medieval castle A castle is a type of fortified structure built during the Middle Ages predominantly by the nobility or royalty and by military orders. Scholars debate the scope of the word ''castle'', but usually consider it to be the private fortified r ...

. This geography and

archaeology Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscape ...

prevented the centres from being built as one contiguous arcade. Consequently, these centres together occupied seven floors split over two horizontal locations, connected with escalators, lifts and walkway bridges.

Future

There has long been an ambition to physically link the Darwin and Pride Hill shopping centres through the development of vacant land between the sites. Referred to as the 'Gap site', a retail and leisure link development proposed by Morris Property, owners of the land, was granted full planning permission in 2006 prior to being sold to new owners. The onset of economic crisis ensured the scheme was put on hold. Dunedin, promoters of the scheme in 2005, put four branding proposals to the public vote in a high-profile marketing push for the renaming of the present centres following the new development's completion. The reconfigured centre would have been branded 'Castle Gate'. Chapman Taylor Architects were hired by Shearer Property in October 2010 to devise plans for refurbishment as part of a wider renewal and redevelopment of the estate. UKCPT produced plans to redevelop a 'new riverside scheme' linking the Riverside with the two shopping centres which were costed at £150M and were approved by Shropshire Council in 2012. However, for commercial reasons the scheme stalled with no work started and Shropshire Council intervened to negotiate and agreed to purchase the centres in 2018 in order to be able to control future planning development of the area in concert with a Big Town Plan partnership in which the council is represented. Their aim was to demolish the existing Riverside Centre and redevelop that site. The Darwin Centre was to become the main shopping site with shops moved from the Pride Hill Centre to create room for a new council headquarters offices within the town centre and the upper level of the latter centre to be redeveloped for leisure purposes including possibly a cinema. By August 2021 the last tenant traders at the Pride Hill Centre had moved out.Report by Charlotte Bentley on Pride Hill Centre.

References

External links