Thursday, June 11, 2020

TAKING STOCK: BRIGG BEFORE TESCO


Few Brigg people knew much about Tesco more than 50 years ago when this bird's eye picture was taken.
Believed to date from the late 1960s, it shows the stockmarket - built a few years earlier.
The stockmarket occupied the site where Tesco's store, car park and petrol station stand today.
The stockmarket was developed by Brigg Urban District Council, with livestock being brought in from a very wide area to be auctioned.
After the stockmarket closed, part of the site was used for a time by Stennett's Thursday poultry and produce auctions.
Retail giant Tesco then came to town and months were spent in clearance work to create the company's impressive store which opened on January 18, 1999.
It was not Brigg's first sizeable supermarket, however. That honour went to Jackson Grandways in the early 1980s with the popular riverside store - today occupied by B&M.
Kwik Save had also set up shop in Brigg before Tesco came - with Cary Lane premises, now occupied by Wilko.
At the top of the picture is part of Barnard Avenue in its original form - a minor road. It was transformed into the A18 inner by-pass during the early 1990s, paving the way for our pedestrianised town centre.