'Dudley has been turned into a shanty town' - Traders speak out on the impact Merry Hill Shopping Centre has had on the town 40 years on
40 years ago after the Merry Hill centre opened, Mark Andrews looks at the continued legacy it has had on Dudley.
Alison Wade recalls the first time she visited Dudley, as a teenager on work experience in 1984.
"When I first came I thought 'wow, this is lovely', it was all stone, high-street shops, really, really nice.
"Now, it's like a shanty town," says Miss Wade, who has kept the Cards and Gifts 4 You shop in the town for the past 30 years.
Back in 1984 the town had a large Marks & Spencer branch, a similar-sized BHS on the opposite side of the road. A few doors up was Woolworths, and a three-floor Littlewoods, with a popular restaurant, next door to that. Just around the corner was Beatties department store, with the even-more traditional Cook's department store at the top of High Street. Sainsbury's was the main anchor of the Trident Shopping Centre, and the town had three branches of Next.
And then came the Merry Hill centre. It is 40 years since the massive mall opened two miles away as part of the controversial Dudley Enterprise Zone scheme. Lured by the promise of 10 years' free rates, no land taxes and a relaxed planning regime, the big retailers deserted Dudley in their droves. An independent study found that within the five years since Merry Hill opened, the number of visitors to Dudley town centre had fallen by 70 per cent.
"It was tougher than tough," says Alan Caswell, 73, who spent half a century behind the counter of the Arcade Toyshop at the bottom of the Fountain Arcade.
"Within about two years, we had to close one of our shops, and get rid of three of our staff," he recalls. "At that time I had two shops, one on either side of the arcade, and a warehouse, but I had to close that as well too.
"It meant for a time we had to operate from just one unit which was too small really, but I had a mortgage on the house and an overdraft on the shop, so when your back is against the wall, you do what you have to."
Things were even harder for his neighbour Lawrie Fearns, who kept the Castle Sports shop in the arcade. As trade declined, Mr Fearns fell behind with his rates, leading to the humiliation of bailiffs coming to seize his stock. As a parting shot, the distraught shopkeeper painted a message on his windows as he left the property for the last time: "I paid my rates for 30 years, and Dudley Council shut me down. Merry Hill paid no rate for 10 years." Mr Fearns died in tragic circumstances a few years later.
The legacy of that mass exodus continues to linger over Dudley some four decades on, although there is also a mood among many shoppers and shopkeepers that it is time to move on from Merry Hill, and look at what can be done to bring shoppers back.
The damage from Merry Hill had largely been done when Miss Wade opened her first card shop in Dudley in the mid 1990s.
"It was still a thriving town," she says. "There was still a bustling market, Beatties was still here, you had got River Island and New Look, you had still got some high street stores here, but it's changed again since Covid, since Covid there's been a massive decline, the town's just looking scruffy in places.
"It's gone from being a nice town to getting dirtier and dirtier, and that is down to probably the council."
Opposite Miss Wade's shop is Scent from Dudley, run by Paul Heard, 54, and Julie Burford, 62. They moved to Dudley from West Bromwich five years ago, and said it initially seemed to be a good move.
"It was excellent when we first came here, we moved from West Brom, and we thought it was a really good move, it was really busy, there was a lot of shops when we moved here, Bon Marche was still here, New Look was still here, the first year was fantastic, we thought we had cracked it. As soon as the bus station closed, the Metro started, we noted footfall was declining month by month. Our Christmas sales have fallen considerably, and last year was our worst Christmas ever. Yesterday was our worst trading day ever, we took just £60."
