please empty your brain below
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My last UK local supermarket was the Tesco in Borehamwood which was the built on the site of the old studios.
Darth Vader has walked the bakery isle at some point.
Tetramesh | Homepage | 24.05.20 - 7:26 a.m. | #
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My local Tesco is on the site of the former Marley Tiles headquarters just outside Sevenoaks. No tiles to be bought there now, but it is an excellent store.
Waterhouse | 24.05.20 - 7:31 a.m. | #
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My old regular Tesco, in Amersham, was built on the site of a sausage factory.
My current Waitrose, in Cheltenham, was built on the site of a railway station.
Jeremy | 24.05.20 - 7:36 a.m. | #
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My local Tesco incorporates part of a former mental hospital. It's all fairly standard big box until you wander into the toiletries aisles and you're suddenly in what appears to be a former chapel.
martin | 24.05.20 - 7:47 a.m. | #
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On one of my runs from West Ham station to Bromley by Bow, I remember thinking what an odd name for a road Twelvetrees was. I think there was a big sign for a Twelvetrees works too. And all I could think of was the England rugby player.
Running_Correspondent | 24.05.20 - 7:52 a.m. | #
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The Sainsbury's in North Kingston is on a small part of a huge gasworks site. Two of the five gasholders survived until about 5 years ago.
Sury Basin, the street it is on, was named by pupils from the nearby St Luke's Primary School - they were rightly pleased with managing an anagram of its name.
RosemaryT | 24.05.20 - 8:05 a.m. | #
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Thank you - I particularly enjoyed browsing the Bodleian exhibition to which you provide the link.
Artie Leblanc | 24.05.20 - 8:11 a.m. | #
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Harper Twelvetrees lived on my road. He was active in the anti-slavery movement and the current owners of his house campaigned (unsuccessfully so far) for a commemorative plaque. You can see them - and some other current Evering Road residents - here: www.instagram.com/p/CABBqr4nFTn
Jacqui | 24.05.20 - 8:17 a.m. | #
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Harper Twelvetrees also wrote a book about slavery, THE STORY OF THE LIFE OF JOHN ANDERSON, THE FUGITIVE SLAVE, which you can read here.
diamond geezer | Homepage | 24.05.20 - 8:20 a.m. | #
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Excellent piece of research! Interesting to me as I share a studio space round the corner, off Empson Street. In fact I'm about to set off there in a moment, it's a 45 minute walk from my home in Whitechapel.
Oh and a sincere thank you also for your post on folding leaflets last month. The format inspired me and I ended up making this as a result: http://www.eleventhvolume.com/#komuma.
Colin | Homepage | 24.05.20 - 8:36 a.m. | #
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The best we can manage round here is Sainsbury’s in Chelsham built on the site of Chelsham Bus Garage. The garage itself was opened in the 1920s and, a little unusually for a country bus garage, its main routes were in what was to become Greater London.
I think this trumps the huge Purley Tesco’s built on the site of the local water treatment plant.
Robert Butlin | 24.05.20 - 8:59 a.m. | #
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As ever DG, excellent and informative!
The Sainsbury store in Apsley is built on part of the John Dickinson paper mill where they made Basildon Bond paper and also paper-mache drop tanks for fighters during WW2.
strawbrick | 24.05.20 - 9:09 a.m. | #
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The estate where our Tesco is was built on the land of a former mansion house where General William Gordon once lived (see Wikipedia). Not that anybody nowadays would have a clue who he was. A modern housing estate where the Tesco was built in 1988 and a new railway station built at the same time under a deal with Tesco. Your Tesco has a far more interesting history.
davews | 24.05.20 - 9:13 a.m. | #
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North Londoner now living in Blackpool. Sainsbury’s, Bispham was built on the site of a tram depot and Sainsbury’s opposite the North Station was built on the site of a gay club, Flamingos, and gay pub, The Flying Handbag.
Winsleigh | 24.05.20 - 9:28 a.m. | #
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The Tesco national headquarters at Shire Park WGC is about 10 minutes from me - and was built on the site of a former ICI chemical works and research facility.
Frank F | 24.05.20 - 9:31 a.m. | #
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My local Asda is built on the site of an old cotton mill but as far as I can tell, it wasn't an amazingly exciting cotton mill.
Andrew Bowden | Homepage | 24.05.20 - 9:32 a.m. | #
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My local Morrisons is on the site of the Alvis car factory.
Peter Binnersley | 24.05.20 - 9:39 a.m. | #
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My local Tesco is on the site of the former Bradbury Wilkinson works where they made money .
Cornish Monkey | 24.05.20 - 9:55 a.m. | #
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My local Tesco featured in Sharon Osbourne's Who Do You Think You Are. Her antecedents lived in a house there in the 1920's and made the local news for shoplifting from a couple of department stores in Brixton Road. The site from where that Tesco moved from is more interesting, but less relevant. I think Bromley remains the most interesting.
NickW | 24.05.20 - 10:21 a.m. | #
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My nearest Tesco is built on the car-park of an art-deco cinema (orginally the Savoy, later an ABC) which was demolished to create the car-park for the Tescos. My nearest Sainsburys is on the site of Pickford's former North London depot, which was built as a Carter-Patterson depot on the new arterial road. The nearest Tesco superstore is on the site of E&E Kay's metalworking factory.
Steve | 24.05.20 - 10:35 a.m. | #
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My local Tesco (fully fledged superstore, not Express) occupies the ground floor of Grade II listed Victorian brewery buildings.
Man of Kent | 24.05.20 - 10:53 a.m. | #
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Putney Asda on the A3 is on the site of the KLG factory maker of spark plugs.
Whiting | 24.05.20 - 10:55 a.m. | #
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The Morrisons store where I used to shop in Bradford was built on the site of the International Harvesters tractor factory (where my dad worked in he offices for 20+ years). IH had taken over the former Jowett car plant in 1954 which had been built on the site of a former quarry in 1919. It has a display showing the history near the entrance.
NPIan | 24.05.20 - 10:59 a.m. | #
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In Hackney Wick, Sainsbury's are building a new store on the site of the factory where the first man-made plastics were developed.
diamond geezer | Homepage | 24.05.20 - 11:15 a.m. | #
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My local Tesco was built on the site of a nationally famous cattle and sheep mart; replacing an only ten year old store that had been built *behind* the original store. Which was in an architecturally uninteresting converted 1930s Rover dealership; and was promptly knocked for parking for the then new, now old store.
So far more convoluted than interesting really.
Cian | Homepage | 24.05.20 - 11:21 a.m. | #
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The firm my dad worked for had the contract for Sainsburys stores in the 60s/70s. He would often say as we passed one "That's one of ours!"
Cornish Cockney | 24.05.20 - 11:24 a.m. | #
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Really interesting bit of history, DG! Have shopped at this one a few times, although I used to mostly use the at times hectic Sainsbury's in the Stratford Centre.
Where I love these days up north, our Tesco was, like Cian's comment above, also formerly a cattle market. I don't think the same one - I expect many cattle market sites became supermarkets by the late 1990s, and certainly after the 2001 foot and mouth outbreak.
Steph | 24.05.20 - 11:27 a.m. | #
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Tesco in Faversham is in the malting building of an extinct brewery
Caz | 24.05.20 - 11:35 a.m. | #
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Ah yes, Peter! Although that's not my local supermarket (I use the Sainsbury's in town and the Local in Far Gosford Street) I was there only the other day. or rather next door because I was in search of paint from B&Q.
MarkMyWords | 24.05.20 - 11:48 a.m. | #
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Harper Twelvetrees- that's a name you couldn't make up. But what a caring man, I'd have bought his washing powder, if I could have afforded it.
Dread to think what the state of the Lea was back then. 😏
Jo W | 24.05.20 - 11:48 a.m. | #
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My local Tesco is built on part of the site of the former Dr Barnardo's Girls' Village Home.
Alan S | 24.05.20 - 12:27 p.m. | #
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A couple of sites of disused railway stations turned into supermarkets near me: Sainsburys in Witney and Waitrose in Abingdon. Very little trace of anything railway-related remaining, though.
Dominic H | 24.05.20 - 1:18 p.m. | #
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My local Tesco was built on the site of Beckton Gas Works, where they filmed "Full Metal Jacket" in 1985 before redeveloping it.
scrumpy | 24.05.20 - 1:35 p.m. | #
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The North Cheam tesco was built on a sewage works!
rogmi | 24.05.20 - 2:00 p.m. | #
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The Tesco's in the city where I grew up was apparently built on the burial ground of a 16th century battle and very close to a former lunatic asylum.
Nowadays, my local supermarket opened last year on the site of a bus station which I used to regularly use.
cjw714 | 24.05.20 - 3:02 p.m. | #
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Sainsbury's now occupy part of the Tunbridge Wells West station site, but thanks to the TWERPS you can still arrive by steam train (post virus, of course).
Gerry | 24.05.20 - 3:06 p.m. | #
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This is where my local Tescos is: creatingmycambridge.com/cambridge-gas-works
We live in one of the terraces built to house the employees of the gasworks.
muninnhuginn | 24.05.20 - 4:05 p.m. | #
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Not my local, but there is the Tesco built into the basement of the Hoover building on the A40, with car park and petrol filling station behind. Building remains as offices but I think is currently empty.
Petrol filling station and car park to be redevoloped as flats (after a plannjng appeal and a bit of a redesign).
MilesT | 24.05.20 - 6:12 p.m. | #
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One supermarket nearby is on a site that was (until the late-80s/early-90s) a Marconi factory, and for decades before that a hosiery factory (for some reason, a town in South Africa was named after it when the founders saw one of its adverts).
Also nearby was the first self-service Tesco to open in 1948, which remained a Tesco until it moved to site nearby vacated by Woolworths (where they had been since 1928).
Andrew | 24.05.20 - 6:26 p.m. | #
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My local Tesco was built on the site of the former Leytonstone House mental hospital.
Tim | 24.05.20 - 6:26 p.m. | #
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Let's see... In my town we have two supermarkets on the old railway trackbed, one in half of a refurbished bus depot, one on greenfield land designated for housing that never appeared after the crash of 07/08, and one on the site of stables for two or three coaching inns. Sadly there's no record of which famous horses of famous people might have stayed there (but Horatio Nelson is an almost certain bet, as it's on the stagecoach route from London to Plymouth).
Gregg | 24.05.20 - 6:28 p.m. | #
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I have a reasonable runner up.
Our local Sainsbury's in East Dulwich, next to Dulwich Hamlet Football Club, is on the site of one of the first outdoor studios in Europe where the British branch of Gaumont opened early in the last century. A key figure was Alf Collins, who is often regarded as the inventor of the chase movie, many of which were filmed here and in the surrounding streets. Hollywood copied the format, which brings a direct link between Sainsbury's and the Fast and Furious franchise.
Lux | 24.05.20 - 8:22 p.m. | #
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This could be a series in itself.
Dale | 24.05.20 - 9:33 p.m. | #
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The comments are as interesting as the post itself.
H SE18 | 24.05.20 - 11:14 p.m. | #
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MarkMyWords - The Sainsburys in Coventry City Centre is on the site of Priory Mill. The Sainsburys Local in Far Gosford Street was the Sherboure Dyeworks.
Peter Binnersley | 25.05.20 - 12:12 a.m. | #
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My local Tesco is built on the site of the factory that produced almost all of the world's table tennis balls until the 1970s.
Ewan | 25.05.20 - 8:40 a.m. | #
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The local Sainsburys here is on the site of the Standard Triumph car factory (Canley, Coventry).
JJ | 25.05.20 - 8:45 a.m. | #
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The Streatham Common branch of Sainsbury's occupies the site of a former silk mill.
Jonathan Wadman | 25.05.20 - 10:02 a.m. | #
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Watford's Tesco Extra was built on the site of the Benskins brewery (not the original site which is where the museum is but certainly on the site that was used in the 70s and early 80s as a mega keggery to brew Benskins in cans (ugh!)
Peewit | 25.05.20 - 10:05 a.m. | #
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Following on as part of the destruction of the town centre for a new shopping centre and 'improvements', Gt Yarmouth Sainsburys was built on part of the old Grout's silk mill. I remember the zig-zag shape of the roofs on part of the mill site. Not far away, the big Asda was built on the site of the Yarmouth Vauxhall railway station yard.
rogmi | 25.05.20 - 11:18 a.m. | #
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In my vicinity there is the aforementioned Tesco Hoover but less architecturally interesting (i.e.that is to say not at all) is Osterley Tesco which was built on the site of the Imperial Biscuit Works belonging to Macfarlane Lang. This is just off the Golden Mile of the A4.
Also locally is a Tesco Metro in Greenford that still resembles the Granada cinema it once was.
Hazel Simpson | 25.05.20 - 11:41 a.m. | #
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What was once Charlton Greyhound Stadium now squeezes a Makro, a Sainsburys and a Marks & Spencer into its footprint.
Klepsie | 25.05.20 - 4:55 p.m. | #
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The Sainsburys at Colliers Wood is built on top of what was once Merton Priory, and the (incorrectly named) Merton Abbey station. Ian visited a while back.
gooneruk | 26.05.20 - 3:39 p.m. | #
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Judging by these comments, it seems like every Tesco is built on a site of minor historic interest. I’m another who uses the Borehamwood Tesco, whose previous guises include the swamps of Dagobar, the Ice Moon of Hoth, the Temple of Doom and the Overlook hotel from The Shining. It also appeared (as a Tesco) in Alan Partridge’s Scissored Isle (using actual staff members who still work there).
M@ | 29.05.20 - 6:59 p.m. | #
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