Mysterious, peculiar, odd, strange, quirky shops and businesses.

[TheTecknician]

Do you know of any place or company like this? I can think of a couple:

• A company close to my old home with a front and office door on the main road. It claimed to be a seller/stockist of sewing machine spare parts. Very niche but not completely out of the ordinary. The oddity was that in over twenty years I never once saw anybody going in or coming out of the premises. The only sign of occupation was a new telephone on a desk every now and then and perhaps some mail on the doormat. Otherwise there was no change. The same frosted glass and hard wood door and window frames which were likely already decades old. I won't reveal the name of the company as I think they're still in business, albeit elsewhere now. I suspect it was all a front for MI5.

• Another which is definitely consigned to history was in Richmond, North Yorkshire. A large, double-fronted store simply called 'Mr Coles and Mr Morris' which has now been gone for at least a decade, probably much longer. I never set foot in the place as I really had no need. It looked very out of place in the market square with no obvious purpose or retail type. Perhaps I was missing something. All quite bizarre.

Yes, there's a wool shop in my town that has been here for decades, and I can't recall ever seeing anyone but the owner go in there. I assume he owns the busienss outright and can afford to run it as a hobby, but who knows?

Oh I wonder if it's the same wool shop I walked past when I was staying in a town I'd never been to before, it was at night so closed anyway but also the window display looked so old and out of date - does your town begin with W?

Yes, it does! Was it up North?

There was one when I was young. It had been closed down for many, many years, then a rumour went round the village that it was reopening. The chap who owned it was some sort of recluse and it was quite exciting knowing we were finally going to see him. His shop was a general store.

Well, finally it did open, but we didn't dare go inside, so just relied on reports from other people. The owner was old, quite dishevelled and wore cardigans. He had a beard. Other than that he was quite ordinary. The shop wasn't open long and then closed down. Apparently, according to those in the know, the owner had lots of really old tinned food left over from rationing and he'd been trying to sell them. It was quite sad really. And that was the end of that.

There is one near where I used to live - it looks like it's from the 1940s or something, old fashioned Brooke Bond Tea and Cadburys Chocolate signs, a vintage looking baby's pram and other bric a brac in the window. Very dusty and full of junk - when we moved there I assumed it was some kind of failed 'vintage' shop. BUT - intrigued, I looked it up on google maps, and in 2008-2012 the windows are covered with metal screens, it looks totally abandoned. You cannot see whether the windows / contents of the shop are the same as they are now behind the screens or not. Next pic is 2015 - metal screens are off, shop looks exactly as it does now. Between 2015 and now - no change. I really want to know if it has actually been like that for 70-80 years, or if someone opened a junk shop sometime between 2012 and 2015 that failed and was just abandoned!

We were on the IOW last summer and came across this one.

It seems so niche, yet has been there for some years it seems!

https://christmasimaginarium.com/?srsltid=AfmBOorYK2WuT7dhHwf04i4yV-cFum8rQR1HLMIQ8cY4HS9JN_dPoddL

There is a Warhammer shop near me, Ive never seen anybody inside in the daytime but they seem to run evening workshops though.
Also my town (mainly vapes, pawnbrokers and poundshops) has 3 posh cake shops....who is buying them?

Money laundering. We have the same, I swear some of the caked are plastic as they never change.

Our village small animal vets' practice has two doors. An entrance to the waiting room and the exit on the other side of the examination/torture chamber.

This means that you never see anybody come out alive!

Or so all our pets must think.

And there's a takeaway restaurant next door!

"I'm not saying anything, Fluffy...but..."
"I know, Mr Tibbles, I know. Poor Lizzy the Labrador. Never seen again!"
"God bless her!"

And:

"I wouldn't touch their leftover lasagne for a million euros!"
"Nothing would surprise me. Not these days."

Three spring to mind for me:

1. Specialist rain coat shop - The display window changed from time to time but I never saw any signs of life there. It eventually became another business - so niche though in the first instance ;
2. Butcher - There is a handwritten notice in the shop door updating on a relative's health - it makes me really sad that there are real people dealing with a challenging situation whilst they have to put their income on hold;
3. Trade showroom - I have no idea what purpose it serves since it has never been open as far as I can see. Seems a shame when a business that genuinely serves the local community could occupy it...

There’s a cobblers and key cutters near us where there is just a narrow walkway between the door and the counter. The rest of the front part of the shop is piled to almost head height with “stuff”. It’s chaos to me! One day there was a big box of fruit balanced on top of it all because someone had paid the owner in fruit. He is the nicest guy you could ever wish to meet, goodness knows how he makes any money. He’s great at mending shoes though.

I don’t know if it’s still there, but an old fashioned cobbler’s shop near East Dulwich station. It looks like it’s stuck in 1950, still trading when I lived in the area, but never saw a soul enter or exit, ever….

About 25 years ago I stumbled across a run-down and rather creepy shop in the back streets of Blackpool's South Shore that was called something like Shaw's Surgical Supplies. It had support stockings and trusses displayed in the window, but also handwritten cards advertising enema syringes and (rather quaintly) "marital aids"!

we have one in our town that's been there YEARS and sells old telephones and radios etc. I've never been in and don't know anyone else who has either!

The book shop on Great Ayton near Suggitt’s (very North Yorkshire specific!).
We go for sweet and ice creams quite often but I never see anybody enter the book shop, it always looks abandoned and out of date, never any signs of life.
It has just occurred to me that I have never tried the door, even though I love books and so do my sons. Next time I am in Great Ayton, I will try the door!

My bus to work passes an old fashioned dress shop. The window is still full of dressed manikins but the shop looks abandoned and is never open. Filthy windows and awnings. I often wonder why it's just been left like that for years.

There is ladies clothes shop in my home town.. been there years. Never seen anyone going in or coming out…

Not far from Sweeney Todd the vet/takeaway combo, a woman advertises herself as some sort of hypnotherapist. At a rather vulnerable or rather gullible time in my life I booked an appointment with her.

Well. Her consulting room was some kind of dust covered, mouldy coffee cup strewn, curtains drawn den.

Despite being white upper class Parisian, she'd taken an artefact from every obscure religion, faith or culture from Native American to Aborigine plus everything in between and put it in there.

It had a funny smell like incense and stale fairy cakes. Needless to say, for somebody so spiritual and disdainful of Western capitalism, she charged ridiculously high prices.

I couldn't see a polite way to leave, so I found myself underneath an old army blanket on one of those really flimsy fold up massage beds that are like a wallpaper pasting table and she started to go into a trance to try to put me under.

I started giggling. I couldn't help myself. What with all the chanting and the musak and the dark and the dream catchers and the wall hangings and trying not to fall off the pasting table that was about a foot shorter than me and barely two foot wide.

Then I couldn't stop. She was really angry and threw me out.

This place! Closed down now but was like a time slip when I'd walk past. Fun fact; they filmed an episode of Spaced on that street... www.peterberthoud.co.uk/post/the-most-interesting-underpants-in-london

Years ago when my late DM was still alive,I used to get the bus to her house. On the bus route,there was a Star Wars shop on a small parade of shops, right next to a huge roundabout. It was called Jedi Robe. I always used to wonder if they got many customers as it was situated in a bit of an odd place. I'm sure it must have been run as a hobby. According to Google,it's still there.

There's an accordion cum bingo supplies shop in Camborne. Something for everyone I suppose.

There's quite a few of these weird mash up shops near me. The wholesale butchers cum baby supplies shop springs to mind.

The explanation for that one is that Dad was a butcher then had a child who wasn't so much into the meat trade so he sectioned off a part of the unit for their cots and prams.

Likewise the tobacconist with a fancy cigar humidifier shop being half the size it used to be and selling high end beachwear in part of it. The daughter just didn't have the passion for nicotine the parents had.

You would think that it would be a good way to ruin both businesses but with a bit of imagination you can also see how the products compliment each other.

Shopping for cots and prams whilst pregnant can be tiring and stressful. Why not pick up half a cow and a load of chops and sausages at the same time, then when the baby arrives, you've got the freezer well stocked at a discount price.

Are you a wealthy gentleman with a taste for cigars? Surely you know somebody who would like a designer bikini too! Cigars'N'Sunbathers.

What a great thread! I've wondered this as it's odd. If somebody isn't running the business, why don't they close or sell it?

There's an office attached to a car lot in a nearby village just saying Bespoke. I asked somebody who said they sell men's clothes, yet there's no stock in there. Just a lady with a desk. Never anybody in there.

There's a print shop on the outskirts of the nearest town, yet it's just full of empty boxes. Never opens. It's a popular place to buy a house so you'd think they'd sell it and somebody would turn it into a house, or maybe a takeaway as it's a few doors from a popular pub.

Also a Turkish cake shop. Nobody goes in.

Yup. There’s a shop that sells lamps near me. Never known anyone buy anything. Been there donkeys’ years.

A garden centre near me which was very successful for years. I visited it for the first time in about a decade and the owner had clearly got too old to run it. He had only one kind of plant for sale, a little daisy thing he had propagated, trays and trays of them and nothing else. It was really sad. I did buy some from him