No.128 High Street

Shop History

Notes

• It's not known what's presently happening with this building; as the only ongoing planning application here is for the vinyl shop-front window signage, showing For Sale / To Let. As can be seen in the photo below though, scaffolding has been erected at the front of the builidng, which looks like it's there to gain access to the first floor windows.
  
  

  No.128 High Street - unoccupied - 2016

• Before Blockbusters were in this building, Boots the Chemist had been here and moved to No.82, High Street in 1978 on the site of what was the Carlton Hotel, in a new building built as an extension of the Rookery Shopping Centre scheme.
  
  
• Boots was the site of the sixth bomb that struck Newmarket on February 18th 1941, demolishing the top half of the building.
  If you compare the 1950s photo with that from 1935 below you'll see that the shop front was rebuilt slightly different - gone are the square fluted columns at the sides of the shop windows to be replaced by finer round marble versions that are matched with rounded sign board detail. And the twin bay windows at the front of the first floor are now plainer flat Georgian sash windows that can still be seen above the Blockbuster Video signboard today.
  For details about this click on the picture underneath
  
  
  
  
  
• Suffolk Record Office, Bury St Edmunds Branch
  Newmarket Urban District Council Records
  Reference EF 506
• Alterations to premises, High St, for Boots Ltd (M.V. Treleavan, c/o Jesse Boot, Station St, Nottingham) EF 506/6/1/11/288 Apr 1906
  
  
• Many thanks to John Smyth for the 1935 photograph of Boots Chemists shown below.
  
  
• Many thanks to 'Old Newmarket' for the photos 'Fire at Boots the Chemist 1950s', 'Boots the Chemist in the High Street 1941',
  'Boots Chemist c. 1910' & 'The High Street with Boots on the left c. 1900'.