Last week saw the beginning of another major building project, the replacement of shopfronts on the Church Street side of the Winter Gardens. As you may have guessed, some of these, particularly those around the entrance doors to the complex and the Opera House are original, or at least date back to the 1930 refurbishment of the Winter Gardens by the Tower Company, but the shopfronts under empress buildings (to the east of the main entrance) are mainly replacements dating from the late 1970s into the 1980s and 1990’s.

This part of the project will see all of these shopfronts replaced with stylish hardwood Victorian style shopfronts with stained glass and traditional style awnings (for when the wind isn’t blowing!). The work is being carried out by local contractor’s Bambers with the help of other local specialist contractors like Aaron Whiteside of Whiteside Windows www.whitesidewindows.co.uk who has been commissioned to provide traditinal stained glass for all of these units.  

With work now also begun on the Quilligans unit (the first unit s now in with the rest coming  in the last weeks of February and into March.