Farewell Kennet Centre

I moved to the Newbury area in the early 1990s and worked in the town centre for nearly thirty years. For most of that time, the Kennet Centre wasn’t somewhere I went , it was somewhere I passed through every day. It was stitched into routine life in a way you only really notice when it’s gone.

The Kennet Centre opened in 1977 as part of Newbury’s wider town‑centre redevelopment, intended to modernise shopping provision while keeping retail activity within the traditional high street. It was designed to create a covered pedestrian route linking Northbrook Street with the lower end of town around Bartholomew Street and Bath Road, helping to draw footfall through that area rather than replace existing streets. At the time, developments like this were seen as a way to strengthen town centres by concentrating everyday retail and services in one accessible space.

When I first moved here, the Kennet Centre felt busy and full. Sainsbury’s ran all along the bottom, and in the middle there was a proper café , the sort of place where you’d meet someone for lunch. Off to one side, where Boswells is now, there was a narrow little walkway with tiny shops. One of them was a clothes shop I absolutely loved. I can’t even remember the name, but I remember thinking it had the coolest things and going in far more often than I probably should have.

On the Bartholomew Street exit there was the all‑you‑can‑eat pizza place Deep Pan Pizza. I spent many Saturdays there with a friend, competitively eating pizza until we felt a bit ill and very pleased with ourselves.

As the years went on, the centre changed. The café disappeared, the brown tones were replaced with the white look it has now, and some of my favourite  shops vanished. Boswells arrived, and I ended up going there for lunch quite a lot. Athena came and went. I was in Our Price often. Desperado was my absolute favourite , hands down the best clothes , and for some reason my work pass used to set off their alarms every single time I left, we never worked out why.

The Body Shop was there too, and I used to go in almost daily, lifting the lids to smell things like the mango body scrub before carrying on through the centre. Then there was Martin McColl’s. I used to go in every day, and the same woman worked there for years. Long after it closed, she still recognised me when I saw her in Tesco on Northbrook Street.

When I had kids, Adams became a regular stop. Outside, there was Sunflower , amazing nail varnishes and alternative bits , another shop I loved. Beatties was nearby before the cinema was built. Domino’s was outside as well, making its first appearance in Newbury I believe. Inside, there was once a fruit and veg shop with a salad bar, brilliant at lunchtime. I vaguely remember it moving up to Northbrook Street for a while.

Because I worked so close, I walked through the Kennet Centre constantly. When New Look was on the corner with two entrances, I’d cut through there every day and almost inevitably buy something. A colleague couldn’t get through a lunch break without coming back from TK Maxx with a bag. It wasn’t planned shopping, it was impulse buying, a habit.

For a brief period, the Kennet Centre itself became part of Kennet Radio’s story too. We broadcast live from a unit inside the centre, with radio coming straight from the middle of town, from a place people were already passing through as part of daily life. The centre was a strong supporter of Kennet Radio, with our station played through the speakers, meaning anyone walking through would hear local radio as part of the space.

There were events too, including dinosaurs, a polar bear and even a Doctor Who Day. Alongside those were features that became part of the centre itself: the fish tanks near the exit set inside a picture of a canal boat, and the push-button animated display, which I think was a clown cycling. The sort of thing kids would drag you over to press again and again. And at Christmas, the animated decorations were always a highlight. Even this last December, I went in specifically to film them, just in case they disappeared forever.

There was also Liquid Nightclub, technically part of the Kennet centre even though it was access from outside. It’s heyday probably in the mid 2000s, remembered for foam parties and fancy dress nights, including a memorable eveing where a friend and I went as cavegirls with a dog chew bone tied in our hair. I recall Simon Webbe from Blue making an apearance one time I was there as well.

The beginning of the end arguably came when Debenhams, one of the centre’s largest and most established stores, relocated to Parkway when it opened. That move signalled a wider shift. Gradually, retailers followed either to Parkway or to the retail parks, where larger units, parking and destination shopping became the priority. The Kennet Centre began to lose its role as an anchor‑led shopping space, even as it remained a pedestrian route through the town.

Like many similar centres across the country, the Kennet Centre faced long‑term structural challenges well before the pandemic. Changes in retail economics, the growth of online shopping, and shifts in working patterns reduced footfall in traditional town‑centre malls. Without the daily routines of people passing through , to work, to lunch, to run errands , the model that had sustained it for decades became increasingly difficult to maintain.

For me, the Kennet Centre was never about one single shop. It was about familiarity. About walking through the same space day after day, recognising faces, popping in “just to have a look”, meeting people by accident, and knowing exactly where everything was without thinking about it.

I really hope the Christmas displays survive somewhere in Newbury. I hope some part of what made the Kennet Centre feel warm and human gets carried forward into whatever comes next. Because for a lot of us, it wasn’t just a shopping centre , it was part of how the town worked.

Photos from my personal collection from wandering through the Kennet Centre over the years