Developer and operator Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield (URW) has been granted planning permission by Croydon Council to revitalise the frontage of Croydon’s historic department store Allders with several new food offers, shops and other services.

So reads the latest press release highlighting yet another initiative involving Croydon and its cityscape that has long been entwined with retail. The full story is told in a newly-released book Croydonopolis by Will Noble (published by Safe Haven Books) that details something of a rollercoaster ride for the town that hasn’t quite managed to attain City status – despite its best efforts.

I can recall Christmas drinks on a couple of occasions in the mid-1990s in the board room of Allders with some of the directors along with my colleagues at the time from Retail Week. Our office was just down the road. We’d be extended an invite that we found hard to turn down. The offer of working in Croydon was something that I could have easily turned down because I was living in North London at the time.

Croydon was also less than a top-draw attraction beyond the appeal of the Dog & Bell and Royal Standard pubs. I was not alone in my thinking. In 1996 – about the time I was there – The Independent called it “the high-rise epicentre of all things suburban, bureaucratic and dull…the spiritual home of malls…of superstores, DIY centres and of polyester-nylon suits”.

Rather harsh. Clearly something went wrong as the town’s name is possibly derived from an earlier moniker of Crogedene that translates into Valley of the crocuses. Highlighting the extremes of the perception of Croydon Noble does a great job of telling the story of its rather rich history and home of great innovations as well as being something of a hot-bed for progressive retail activity.

The most notable of these being the Whitgift Shopping Centre that was named after John Whitgift a major character and benefactor in the town from around 1530. Improved infrastructure in the Victorian period led to Croydon having the reachable objective of becoming Surrey’s answer to Oxford Street no less.

Not too far-fetched when you consider that by the late 19^th Century it had an array of modern shops including Wilson’s Oriental Café, Remsbury’s Department Store, Japanese Art Stores, and Indian Cigar Stores. Drinks merchant Mr D.H.Weston sold lager for “those people with whom English Ales disagree”.

Noble has a breezy style, weaving humour, history and facts in a very readable manner as he tells the stories of some notable Croydon retail history such as attracting the first suburban Sainsbury’s in 1882, Woolworths in 1912 and Kennard’s Department Store in 1853 that competed with Selfridges as it housed the likes of a Tudor Restaurant and Sundae Bar.

There was something of a department store war waging as Kennard’s sought to outdo Allders, which opened in 1862, and Grants that joined the fray in 1894. But the gung-ho days did not last and by the 1990s Croydon was in one of its dips as it suffered from the opening of nearby Lakeside in 1990 and Bluewater in 1999. The Glades shopping centre in Bromley added to the pressure in 1991.

Allders entered administration in 2012 some 12 years or so after I departed and was followed by the closure of Debenhams in 2020 that had bought Kennard’s and renamed it in 1972.

With the URW deal in the offing maybe we will see another period of renaissance and Croydon will achieve its aim of achieving City status. It was turned down in 2000 and 2002 with the latter a result of the ruling body arguing the town had “no particular identity of its own”.

Although I’ve concentrated on its retail history – for obvious reasons on this platform – Noble does a sterling job of also telling the story of its architecture, music (Fairfield Halls and the Greyhound anyone?), art and impressive countryside and gardens that I’d argue suggests the box tickers deciding City status might have been a tad harsh.

Glynn Davis, editor, Retail Insider