Spennymoor Flashback 2010 -1991 County Durham

Including 'flashbacks' to Bella Dents, Gordon Marshall butcher & the Outdoor Market just a small selection from many videos, which I recorded in 1991. The fashions may have changed but one thing that stands out to me is just how busy both the market & shopping precinct were back in 1991. Then the pessimists were already saying, that the market & town centre were finished, can any decline be reversed? The USA leads the way & the UK now follows, in the States Market Street is now empty but shopping malls flourish, let's hope that the same isn't true for the U.K because whatever happens we can't go back. 'The Players Navy Cut' in part of the video was an original advertising poster that had been posted onto the ceiling of Bella Dents in the early 20th Century. The shop was an off license in King Street Spennymoor. The poster was approx. 8ft x 5ft & had a gas light suspended from the ceiling at the centre of it, Bella Dents ceased trading in circa 1994-95. I believe that Bella Dent died in the late 1970's; I can remember her standing outside of the shop or sweeping up but never serving me. She I suppose represented the last the of the Edwardian era in Spennymoor & this also included her dress It was very unusual in the 1970's to witness Bella wearing clothing from a bygone era. I visited the shop many times in my life & eventually purchasing some of the drawers from the shop when it was being converted into the Royal Balti. Legend has it that the original poster is still beneath the suspended ceiling of the Indian restaurant that it later became. There was also 'Mucky Bella', as a child in the early 1970's I would play along the former railway cutting at the rear of Kenmir's factory / Rosa School. The cutting was then being used as the local dump. We had loads of great fun making camps & lighting fires but we always scattered to a safe distance whenever we saw Bella walking along the line towards us, wearing a plastic carrier bag on either foot, poverty was still rife in Spennymoor even in the early 1970's.