A new adventure for H is for Home

A new venture/adventure has begun for H is for Home this week. We’ve spent the last couple of days moving into the recently-opened Valley Antiques Centre in Hebden Bridge.

We’ve long-fancied having a retail space in Hebden. It’s a lovely little town full of small independent shops; cafés & coffee shops, pubs & bars and art galleries. It’s a great place to spend the day mooching around. We actually lived here when we first moved to Yorkshire from Brighton back in 2000.

Despite recently moving to Wales, it will be nice to maintain an ongoing relationship with the town, Todmorden and the Calder Valley, in general.

We’ve secured a decent-sized space, big enough for furniture and smaller vintage items such as fabric, lighting, artwork and kitchenalia – and all manner of decorative things for the home.

Valley Antiques Centre has only been open a couple of months, it’s looking great and is packed full of interesting and quirky stuff from a number of dealers. It’s well run, and you’ll receive a warm welcome from Jan, who has launched the centre – or one of the other dealers on hand.

We’ve included these photos to show you how we’re getting on – and to showcase the kind of stock you’ll find on our pitch. In future posts, we’ll highlight other dealers and their wares.

Valley Antiques Centre is situated at the end of Valley Road – just past the Doctors’ Surgery, on the opposite side of the road. It’s open 10am-4pm, Monday to Sunday.

We hope that you can pay us a visit sometime soon!

Our new haberdashery section

We’ve added a haberdashery section to our Todmorden Antiques Centre pitch this week. It’s not quite big enough to call it a haberdashery ‘department’ as yet – like those fabulous places of yesteryear that used to take up the whole floor of a department store… but out of small acorns giant oak trees grow! So you never know where this will lead.

Not that we’ve got any intentions of cornering the world market in sewing accessories. We just wanted a small area where we can display and sell the lovely vintage fabrics that we pick up from time to time. In addition to these fabrics, we’re also going to add other related items such as tools, threads, bobbins, work boxes and so on. Also, mannequins and shop display pieces.

If you’re ever in the area, please pop in. You’ll find our pitch – including the haberdashery section – along with hundreds of other items being sold by various dealers housed in the same building.

Todmorden Antique Centre has opened!

**UPDATE: Todmorden Antique Centre is unfortunately now closed**

Todmorden Antique Centre has just opened – and we’ve moved into our new space on the first floor.

It’s situated at Hollins Mill, Rochdale Road, Walsden, Todmorden (OL14 6SA if you’re Sat-naving).

The fabulous listed building always had great antique centre potential. It boasts large, open spaces that are full of character – with exposed stone walls, fabulous beams and big windows. Lots of time and hard work have gone into making it more habitable.

Along with other dealers, we started moving our stuff in last week. It’s quite a big job transporting all the items, arranging, hanging, pricing up etc.

It’s quite enjoyable, though, so we’ve all been doing it steadily to avoid any unnecessary stress.

We’re upstairs, at the far end of one of the rooms. We have plenty of floor and wall space which is gradually being filled… and there are two big windows that allow plenty of daylight to pour in.

We have our usual mix of mid 20^th century loveliness, along with much older country antiques and vintage industrial style pieces.

The space seems to lend itself well to the various styles.

Online shops have their place, of course – ours is in its 12^th year. However, it’s also great to have a physical space where people can have a mooch round, handling and assessing pieces on offer. (Almost everyone that we’ve seen enter our area has stroked or patted this lovely old baker’s table!).

Things are ever-changing with items coming and going, but here are a few more images that capture the feel of the place as we continue to add more stock.

The centre opens Wednesday to Sunday. They don’t currently have a website.

Our new shop space

In a recent blog post about a Blomus tea set, we mentioned our new shop space.

Well, here it is! It’s an attractive corner plot directly opposite the antiques centre from where we currently sell. This was a good opportunity to spread things out a bit. We’re sharing the shop with a couple of other dealers.

Our space has got a lovely, big display window.

…and a neglected window box which had potential to look very pretty.

So, what to do next! Mmmm… let’s mull this over.

We moved into the space over a couple of days. We wanted to combine our twin loves of mid century modern and rustic country styles.

And here are the results. We hope it looks like the kind of shop in which you’d like to browse. If you ever get the chance to visit, we’re right next to the library in Todmorden – at the junction of Hall Street and Rochdale Road. Picturehouse Antiques, where we also sell from, is directly across the road – and there are loads of good places to get coffee and cake close by!