This Town..

coming like a ghost town

In 2012 Leegate shopping centre was named as the worse shopping centre is the Country.

Over the years there had been well known high street brands there, like Woolworths, Boots, Kwiksave, Abbey National and Iceland along side family businesses like a family butcher, newsagents even restaurants.

I spend a few hours shooting around there in 2018, Woolworths had long gone along with Boots, the Butchersand Kwiksave. A few places were still hanging in there along with the odd short lease pop-up shop and pound and vape shops.

Not a pound shop

Over the years there has been talk of regeneration, like an Asda being built on the site but that fell through because of planning permission.

As the years passed more shops moved out and the shutters came down.

All the shops have been closed down

At one point there was an arson attack on one of the charity shops there and since then it's been bordered up, with a mural to try and brighten up the place.

With so many shops closed there had been the odd bit of excitement when the shops have been open to use as a Television set, I remember passing one night and fake police cars were outside a fake bank, I have no idea what TV programme it was for.

This brings us to today, my Sprocket rocket camera seem to had developed light leaks and after hopefully fixing it, I need somewhere it try it out.

Having heard that all the shops were now gone at Leegate I thought a quick visit would give me a change to test the rocket.

Work was supposed to start in the summer (2024) and be finished 2030/1 to build a new shopping centre along with up to 500 homes but planning permission still seems to be a problem along with the area now being in a LTN and two main routes in/out of London.

Only time with tell when this will be finished but one think I do know is the Sprocket rocket is working fine again.