Dundee’s Wellgate Market Hall was once a bustling hive of activity that drew happy shoppers looking to bag a real bargain.
In its heyday, the market was full to the brim with stall traders who would compete with each other on price and service before the death knell sounded in April 1999.
Generations of shoppers made their way along thriving aisles selling everything from toys to fruit and veg, meat, clothes, luggage, jewellery, and wallpaper and paint.
Do these awaken any memories for you?
Many of the stalls had been run by the same families and were seen as an essential part of the life of the Wellgate Centre.
InShops opened the market hall in 1979 – the company’s first move into Scotland.
It was designed to give retailers, displaced from the High Street through increased competition, a place to relocate their small shops.
The hall was popular in the late-70s and ’80s and Dundonians of a certain vintage will fondly remember names like Pennywise, Wellgate Carpets and Gemini Jewellers.
Annie Docherty was the manager of Pennywise in 1979 and among the star buys in 1979 was Wilkinson Sword Blades at 29p, Yves Moulin Talc at 36p and Right Guard at 59p.
Really want to impress the opposite sex?
Hai Karate gift sets were on sale for £1.39, which was a huge hit with men.
Gemini Jewellers stocked everything from engagement rings to trinkets and timepieces and promised “the biggest selection, the best of quality, by far the cheapest”.
Wellgate Carpets offered huge stocks, low prices, free estimates, free fitting and free delivery along with a catchphrase borrowed from 1980s TV legend Leslie Crowther.
“Come on down – the price is right!”
They did.
The cave of treasures on the top floor of the Wellgate Centre included almost everything shoppers could ever want and need in the 1980s.
There was the additional attraction on the upper mall of the Wellgate Clock where crowds would stop to watch the clock face open when it chimed on the hour.
By the 1990s it had been proving difficult to maintain occupancy of the shops.
The hall was given a £500,000 facelift in 1994 as part of a £25 million redevelopment of the Wellgate Centre.
Although this gave visitor numbers to the centre as a whole a considerable boost, it did little to stem the haemorrhaging of traders from the market hall.
In 1997 there were still 40 of the 52 units occupied with an advertising feature in the Evening Telegraph describing the comprehensive selection of goods and services.
It read: “InShops within the Wellgate Centre has a selection of goods and services available which is comprehensive and at value-for-money prices.
“InShops offers shopping in a friendly atmosphere.
“With over 40 retailers under one roof, the complex claims it is first for ‘variety, service and price’.
“Outlets include food, clothing, dancewear, aromatherapy, clocks, photo-processing, dry cleaning, alternations, household goods, wool, fishing tackle, gifts, comics, CDs and tapes, pet food, luggage, key-cutting, haberdashery, a hairdresser, barber and 99p store.”
In short, there was something for everyone.
Some of the newest businesses included Knitters Corner and Sew Essentials which offered cosmetic bags, waistcoats, aprons, baseball caps, T-shirts and tartan souvenirs.
Customer levels were dying off
But the sun was setting on Dundee’s Market Hall.
With InShops unable to find retailers willing to move into the empty units, more and more traders were leaving as customer levels died off.
Despite some traders having been in the hall for 20 years since opening in 1979, they had all been operating on 28-day leases which were being automatically renewed.
All was not well.
There had been a major change to supermarket shopping.
Only 20-plus businesses were still operating in the half-empty hall by March 1999 when rumours emerged that it would be taken over by an American-based clothing company.
“It makes the hall less attractive to the public,” said Wellgate manager John Morton.
“However, I’m not aware of any closure or any date having been finalised, although I’m aware there has been some interest in the hall.
“There has been no drop off in the number of visitors to the centre itself, but a lot of the market hall traders have been to see me about getting other premises in the centre.”
Fish merchants, McLeish Brothers, who opened their market hall shop in 1979, said it has been clear for some time that the hall was struggling.
“It’s been a vicious circle with customers disappearing, units closing and then more customers staying away,” said managing director Stewart McLeish.
“We still don’t know what is going to happen but the directors of InShops will be speaking to us on Monday and there has been a rumour circulating since before Christmas that either part or all of the hall will be taken over.
“Some of the traders don’t know what to do and they may only have a month to find somewhere else. We’ve been in limbo for months and I know some of the traders are struggling to make a living.
“We’ve been there since the start and at that time business was great.
“However, the InShops market hall approach is not a modern way to do business now.
“Time moves on.”
Death knell sounded in April 1999
On April 19 1999 came the news many were dreading.
InShops management held a meeting with the remaining traders and confirmed the Wellgate Market Hall would close on May 15 with the loss of 60 jobs.
InShops admitted that the market hall had not been trading as profitably as they would have liked despite the £500,000 facelift as part of the centre’s new look in 1994.
The company’s managing director, John O’Malley, said: “We are of course saddened by the need to close our centre in Dundee.
“But our position has been made unviable through the decline in occupancy levels.
“We have had to consider alternative options for the space, which included the possibility of a large space user.”
Traders were given four weeks’ notice and InShops attempted to offer some of them alternative sites at indoor shopping centres under their control elsewhere.
Goodfellow & Steven, who had been in the hall since 1979, were among those looking elsewhere and managing director Don Henderson was unhappy at the notice period.
“If it had been handled correctly there’s still a place for that type of operation in the Wellgate,” he said.
“We were not even given a full calendar month.
“It would have been an awful lot easier if we had had more notice because this has been going on for a long time and we couldn’t pursue anything ourselves because there has been rumour and counter-rumour.
“We might require to look outside Dundee, which is a shame because we were very happy with our customers and they were very happy with us.”
A new tenant for the Wellgate
The Wellgate Centre took the lease back from InShops and announced the signing of a 15-year deal with TK Maxx, who would take over the market hall in October 1999.
The American clothing store moved in once extensive fitting out was completed and a new escalator was installed between levels two and three in the Wellgate Centre.
TK Maxx offered designer brands which were hugely discounted.
The Wellgate was the main destination for shopping until the reopening of the Overgate in 2000 and declining footfall saw the grey shutters being pulled down on many units.
The Wellgate was bought over by HBG for £55m in 2003 but TK Maxx decided to close and opened a new store at the Gallagher Retail Park in East Dock Street.
So what would happen to the former Wellgate Market Hall?
A million-pound gym opened in 2018 and now there are treadmills, exercise bikes and cross trainers where there once was fresh fruit, quality meat and hand-prepped fish.
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