Prop your bicycle outside this little shop with its handsome sign and window full of knitting wools, cloth and Fairisle cardigans. Admire those knitting patterns through the orange cellophane and go inside. A bell tinkles to announce your presence.
The interior reveals surprising cavernous depths. Here you can buy any item of haberdashery in any quantity you desire and not a blister pack in sight.
Shame it's all gone. A few shops like this remain to be written about as curios in style magazines. Department stores rarely have haberdashery departments. Today's chic specialist shops tend to be exclusive and expensive. Mercer's ( a most appropriate name for a haberdashery) and their ilk were a joy for everyone and were everywhere.
Now we have online shopping where you can buy anything whenever you want. It is wonderful too but lacks charm. However I am certain that my commercially minded forebears who owned this shop would have been charmed by another idea. While they slept, tucked up in feather beds in small town England, an unknown someone at the other side of the world was spending money in their shop!
Times change.......
See what has happened to Mercer's shop at http://www.etsy.com/shop/thehankyheiress
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