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Morrisons milestone

This Sunday sees the tenth anniversary of the opening of Morrisons supermarket in Newark.

It formed the centrepiece of Newark's new Slaughterhouse Lane development, a mixture of new shops, pedestrianised walkways, houses and flats.

It was the final realisation of a scheme which had first been unveiled six years earlier in October 1982.

At that time the 3.75 acre site, bounded by Kirkgate, Northgate, Queen's Road and King's Road was a sparse mixture of warehouses, outbuildings, garages and open ground.

Many people may recall the former two-storey warehouse of Smith's Sweets on King's Road removed as part of the scheme.

The original planning objectives for the development, as outlined by Newark District Council, called for a mixed development of a new retail superstore, a range of smaller shops, up to 30 houses and flats, carparking for about 350 cars and a health centre.

This last became an early casualty of the scheme when it failed to kindle sufficient support among medical practitioners.

A similar plan to incorporate a replacement for the town's Gilstrap Library was also abandoned when it was found that plans were already afoot to site a new library elsewhere in the town. Initially only two developers expressed an interest in the proposals for Slaughterhouse Lane.

By April 1984 this had increased to four - Orange Developments, Fine Fare, William Morrison Supermarkets and Lincoln Corn Exchange and Markets acting on behalf of the Lincoln Co-operative Society.

Each of the companies submitted detailed plans of how they considered the site could be best developed and in May 1984 scale models of all four proposals were put on public display in the Town Hall.

All four schemes centred around a large supermarket and carpark, and relocation of the Department of Employment's offices, which then stood at the corner of Slaughterhouse Lane and King's Road (pictured).

In the event, the plan proposed by Harrogate-based Orange Developments won the day, although both Fine Fare and Morrisons remained on board as contenders to build and operate the centrepiece foodstore.

Preparatory work on the site - demolishing 19 small outbuildings, walls, garages and warehouses - was set to commence in June 1985 when, at the 11th hour, objections were raised by Newark Town Council.

A number of shops, it said, had recently closed in the town centre and there was great concern that the construction of a new large supermarket would simply hasten the trend.

Only a few years earlier (in 1978) International Stores (later Gateway, now Somerfield) had opened its supermarket in St Mark's Place and many people doubted the need for a second, even larger food store in the town.

Newark and District Chamber of Trade felt that 40-50,000sq ft of added retail floor space was too much to assimilate without drastically affecting existing shopping areas.

Other objections came from 17 nearby residents and shopkeepers who feared loss of business, amenities and carparking. Nevertheless, in May 1985, the district planning committee formally gave planning permission for the Slaughterhouse Lane development to go ahead.

But, once again, just as everything looked all set to proceed, another problem arose when Fine Fare (tipped as front runners in the choice as operator for the new supermarket) pulled out.

The company had recently been taken over by the Dee Corporation who already owned the Gateway supermarket in Newark's St Mark's Place.

They decided to concentrate their energies on that store and withdraw from the Slaughterhouse Lane development. With Fine Fare out of the running, and after consultations with other supermarket chains, it was left to Morrisons to be formally accepted by councillors in March 1987 as operators of the new superstore.

Construction was scheduled to begin early in 1988, but not before archaeologists had had the opportunity to undertake a thorough investigation of the site.

Previous small scale excavations had already identified Slaughterhouse Lane as lying along the route of Newark's old medieval town wall, and with so many buildings being demolished, archaeologists were keen to investigate further.

Extensive remains of the wall and an earlier earth rampart and ditch were found and later formed the subject of a detailed report in the journal of the Thoroton Society of Nottinghamshire (Vol. 97, 1993).

The site of what was to become Morrisons supermarket and its adjacent carpark was laid out in January 1988. By February all 400 of the 10m deep concrete piles had been sunk and the structural steelwork was beginning to go up.

By mid-summer the main contractors, Clugston Construction of Scunthorpe, had the shell of the building in place and the distinctive glazed entrance archway was recognisable in outline.

Recruitment of staff for the new store began in September, 1988, with the Advertiser noting that with Britain facing its highest levels of unemployment for years, more than half the 120 jobs created by Morrisons were going to people who had previously been out of work.

The building was officially handed over to Morrisons on October 25, 1988, - just nine months after building work had begun.

After two weeks of fitting out and stocking the shelves, the 37,646sq ft supermarket finally opened to the public on November 8, 1988 - ten years ago this Sunday.

On that day crowds gathered outside all four entrances even before the opening time of 8am.

Once inside they were assailed with what was, for the time, a new shopping experience. With a restaurant, newsagency, instore bakery, self-service salad counter and fine food shop, the store had cost £7m and was the 43rd in the Morrisons chain.

To many of these first customers, however, perhaps the greatest innovation lay in two novel features incorporated into the design: the Travelators (moving footways, rather like escalators but without steps) and the extensively glazed arboretum comprising trees, plants and a waterfall over a limestone rockery.

Slaughterhouse Lane, Newark, then and now.

Top: the old Department of Employment offices on the corner of Slaughterhouse Lane and King's Road in 1983.
Below: part of the Morrisons supermarket which occupies the site today.

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