Britain’s saddest shopping centre empty days before Christmas

Google the town of Evesham in Worcestershire and you’ll finds phrases like ‘riverside charm’, ‘vibrant market culture’ and ‘medieval heritage’.

To the unwary it sounds like a good place to embrace the festive spirit – and where better to sort out last minute Christmas gifts than its Riverside Shopping Centre.

However, from the moment you enter its multi-story car park there are warning signs that it is not the charming shopping hub it once was. 

Less than a week before Christmas, and it’s dark and empty with graffiti covering its walls and rubbish scattered everywhere.

The stairwell to the shops is even worse. 

A sign warns that an entry door may be closed due to vandalism, and even worse, it stinks of urine. 

‘They closed the toilets here years ago,’ said Mike Hancox, 85, sipping coffee in Coffee Moments, one of only two outlets that haven’t closed down. 

‘The nearest public toilets are the other side of the river, so I guess people get caught short.

‘In the early 90s, every shop used to be full, it used to be a lovely place.

‘What was once a children’s clothes shop is now called the Evesham Sanctuary and you see a lot of foreign people going in there for help. It has certainly changed a good deal.’

Now, apart from the coffee shop and a single Home Bargains, there’s nothing left, besides buckets to catch the rainwater.

Like everyone else, Charlotte Broderick, 37, a legal secretary and mother-of-three, remembers the good times.

She said: ‘They used to have a grotto above Home Bargains and, until a couple of years ago, there was a mobile reindeer display that the kids loved.

‘Now I try to avoid the place. The owners want to knock it down and build flats so they are driving out the businesses with extortionate rents.

‘The car park is a local joke. The only thing that works are the cameras and you’re very lucky if you don’t get a 60 pound fine through the post because most of the payment machines don’t work.’

This year, the prolonged period of wet weather has taken a particularly hard toll on the Riverside.

Its glass roof leaks so there are buckets and ‘Wet Floor’ warning signs everywhere and the cafe has been forced to close one of its seating areas due to puddles.

But the Christmas music is still piped out of a functioning sound system into its echoing walkways.

How Christmassy does it make you feel.

‘On a scale of one to ten, I’d give it minus one,’ said Jonathan Hall, 66, a retired business owner.

‘It is pitiful. I believe it has been owned by a series of London-based insurance companies who clearly don’t care a jot about us here.

‘They keep putting the rents up which makes the place unviable.’

Most people trace the decline to the closure of Woolworths in 2008; others point to Covid as the coup de grace.

Lisa Mitchelmore, 59, a retail worker elsewhere in Evesham, said: ‘I was here when they opened it in 1987 and it was packed to the rafters.

‘Just before Covid the then owners went bust, now they are just waiting for the last of the leases to come to an end and they want to replace it with flats and coffee shops.

‘The roof leaks, all the cleaning staff have been laid off. It is just a big eye sore.’

At the entrance, just below where the pigeons now nest, is an official looking door with the words, ‘Management Office and Control Room Entrance’.

Visitors are invited to press the intercom for service but, unsurprisingly, no-one is in.

For those who love Evesham, a town of historic significance with one of England’s largest Abbey’s and the River Avon running through its heart, the state of the shopping centre is a source of real hurt.

Retired accounts worker Christine Biggins said: ‘It is really sad. We have festivals around the river in the summer. It’s on the shopping centre’s doorstep so a lot of unsuspecting visitors end up coming up to take a look.

‘It is embarrassing. They go into the car park which is really not safe. There are no lights and it is filthy and disgusting.

‘There was such an uproar recently about the mess in the Centre, dog as well as human, that they got contractors in to give it a once over.’

Her husband, John, 68, a retired engineer, added: ‘Woolworths was the key. Once they went bust it was one shop after another.

‘They had a clock with a swan on it which would go up and down on the hour and the children loved it but that hasn’t worked for years.

‘Now we’ve got a Reform councillor who is quite vociferous about it, but the property owners have the Council over a barrel so it’s just degradation and no change for now.’