At the end of last year I had the pleasure of opening the New Gloucester Antiques Centre at 26 Westgate Street. The Antiques Centre moved into Westgate Street from Gloucester Quays, where its former premises are being redeveloped as offices. “Team Gloucester” – made up of the building’s owner Chance Malone, Marketing Gloucester, the traders and the City Council – worked hard to make it happen, turning it around in a matter of weeks.

Having such an attraction in Westgate Street is good news for the street and the city centre. It brings back into use one of Gloucester’s finest heritage buildings, the 15th century Old Judge’s House – more recently Winfield’s Seed Merchants and Bookends bookshop. If you haven’t seen the half-timbered side of the building along the Maverdine Passage, it’s well worth a look.

A growing appetite for older, quirky items
The New Antiques Centre adds to the collection of similar stores selling antiques and collectables in the city – such as ‘Fab & Faded’ in Longsmith Street, their sister outlet ‘Fad & Fated’ which recently opened in Worcester Street and ‘Upstairs Downstairs’ in Severn Road, just opposite Lock Warehouse, the original site of the Gloucester Antiques Centre.

There seems to be a growing appetite for older, slightly quirky items and in these environmentally-conscious days we’d rather re-use things than throw them away. Perhaps it also explains the success of last August’s “Gloucester Goes Retro” event, which saw the city centre filled with vintage cars and each gate street adopt a different decade as a theme. It also included a vintage market in Kings Square, of the type that regularly take place at Blackfriars Priory these days.

It also gives me some comfort that, having appeared in the newspaper’s “Bygone” pages recently with a story from 20 years ago, just because you’ve been around a long time doesn’t mean you’re not valued anymore!

Many of these items may only be decades – rather than centuries – old but they are another example of how Gloucester’s past is helping to shape its future.