Never mind the bollard, it’s Bay Optical! The store owner couldn’t make a go of things in downtown Morecambe, Lancashire, UK but give them credit for adding a dash of vintage respectability with the “Est: 1994” painted on the sign. We need not state the store was, erm, dis-established sometime before Flickr member leon S-D (littleweed1950) captured its facade for posterity sometime before April of 2016.
Vision Quest
All of the closed and abandoned opticians on this page come courtesy of Flickr member leon S-D or in the above case, his subsidiary ID as leon smallwood-daily (uk closed shops). Although classy-looking, The Vision Clinic just couldn’t “see” any way to stay in business in downtown Chester, Cheshire… who’s grinning now?
Golden Anniversary Blues
“What a lovely shop, did you paint it with your own blood?” Do forgive the paraphrased quote from MST3K’s riffing on the 1966 British horror flick The Deadly Bees but we couldn’t resist. What can we tell you about the defunct Darlington Opticians besides its location (as of October 2011) in Weston-Super-Mare, Somerset, UK and the fact it was established in 1967. They were so proud of that fact they had to state it thrice.
End Of The Lines
Still in Darlington (County Durham, UK) we find this very generic abandoned “Opticians” shop with an equally anonymous dumpster parked right outside the front door. The pastel graphic covering one of the windows is mildly interesting, however, as is the faux-Starbucks “Costa Coffee” shop next door.
Careless
Last but not least of Flickr member leon S-D (littleweed1950)’s selection of closed and abandoned UK spectacle shops, Andrew Care Opticians once dispensed optical products from this big-windowed shop in Weymouth, Dorset. The photographer tags many of these shuttered shops with “credit crunch” and “the great recession 2008”, which might explain their exceptional preponderance throughout Great Britain. If this is bad (and it is), we wonder how the urban scene will look after Brexit.
