The Thistles Shopping Centre is located in
Stirling
Stirling (; sco, Stirlin; gd, Sruighlea ) is a city in central Scotland, northeast of Glasgow and north-west of Edinburgh. The market town, surrounded by rich farmland, grew up connecting the royal citadel, the medieval old town with its me ...
,
Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...
. The shopping centre caters for over 500,000 sq ft of retail, providing 87 units in total, since opening in 1977.
Thistles Marches
A new phase, known as Thistle II Ltd, was financed by three joint ventures being Stirling Council (49%), John Laing Property (49%) and DepFa Bank (2%).
[http://minutes.stirling.gov.uk/pdfs/community/minutes/ce19981105.pdf page 2] A new 970 two-storey car park, 14 stance bus station, 40 new units within the new phase and the creation of 400 jobs was the focus of the plans. The Thistle Marches opened to the public in September 1997, retaining Stirling's importance as the major regional centre outwith the main cities.
Standard Life Investments eventually bought the entire shopping centre in 1998 for £37.2 million, at least a year after the Thistles Marches phase was complete. The company paid £8 million back to the finances for their contributions.
As The Thistle Centre stands now, it has well over 500,000 sq ft of retail space; its position in the heart of Stirling allows for a catchment area of over 500,000 people within 20 km of the centre. It is estimated that the centre currently attracts over 12 million visitors per year, with 3.7 million likely to be tourists from other countries.
The Thistles Centre forms part of the Go Forth Stirling Business Improvement District.
Stores
The anchor stores are
Marks & Spencer
Marks and Spencer Group plc (commonly abbreviated to M&S and colloquially known as Marks's or Marks & Sparks) is a major British multinational retailer with headquarters in Paddington, London that specialises in selling clothing, beauty, home ...
and
Primark
Primark Stores Limited (; trading as Penneys in the Republic of Ireland) is an Irish multinational fast fashion retailer with headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. It has stores across Europe and in the United States. The Penneys brand is not u ...
. Other major stores include
Superdry
Superdry plc (stylised as SUPERDRY®︎冒険魂) is a UK branded clothing company, and owner of the Superdry label. Superdry products combine vintage Americana (culture), American styling with Japanese-inspired graphics. It is listed on the ...
,
River Island
River Island is a London-based, multi-channel fashion brand, founded in 1948 by Bernard Lewis. The retailer has a presence in over 125 of worldwide markets, in stores and online.
Best known for its trend focused womenswear offering, River Isla ...
,
CeX,
H. Samuel
H. Samuel is a mass-market jewellery chain, operating in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It is part of the Signet Group of jewellery retailers.
History
In 1862, Harriet Samuel (née Wolf) took over her father-in-law Moses Samuel's clock-making ...
,
Boots
A boot is a type of footwear.
Boot or Boots may also refer to:
Businesses
* Boot Inn, Chester, Cheshire, England
* Boots (company), a high-street pharmacy chain and manufacturer of pharmaceuticals in the United Kingdom
* The Boot, Cromer Stre ...
,
WHSmith
WHSmith (also written WH Smith, and known colloquially as Smith's and formerly as W. H. Smith & Son) is a British retailer, headquartered in Swindon, England, which operates a chain of high street, railway station, airport, port, hospital and m ...
,
Ernest Jones
Alfred Ernest Jones (1 January 1879 – 11 February 1958) was a Welsh neurologist and psychoanalyst. A lifelong friend and colleague of Sigmund Freud from their first meeting in 1908, he became his official biographer. Jones was the first En ...
,
Sainsbury's Local
Sainsbury's Local (a trading name of Sainsbury's Supermarkets Ltd) is a chain of 770 convenience shops operated by the UK's second largest supermarket chain Sainsbury's.
History
In 1998, Sainsbury's piloted its first Local shop in Hammersmith. ...
and
HMV
Sunrise Records and Entertainment, trading as HMV (for His Master's Voice), is a British music and entertainment retailer, currently operating exclusively in the United Kingdom.
The first HMV-branded store was opened by the Gramophone Company ...
.
Several of the centre's stores closed in 2021 as a result of the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
. This included
Zara,
Topshop
TOPSHOP (originally Top Shop) is a British fashion brand for women's clothing, shoes and accessories. It was part of the Arcadia Group, controlled by Sir Philip Green, but went into administration in late 2020 before being purchased by ASOS (r ...
,
H&M, and anchor tenant
Debenhams
Debenhams plc was a British department store chain operating in the United Kingdom, Denmark and the Republic of Ireland. It was founded in 1778 as a single store in London and grew to 178 locations across those countries, also owning the Danish ...
.
Thieves Pot
![Thieves Pot Prisoner](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Thieves_Pot_Prisoner.jpg)
The shopping centre has a 16th-century jail with an extensive history of the Bastion's. The jail is of historical importance in Stirling, being used at one time to guard an angle of Stirling's Town Wall.
The Thieves Pot is accessed within the Thistles Centre itself, located near the Port Street entrance. The Thieves Pot is identified by two 'flaming' torches on the wall because a visitor could mistake this for a themed bar. However this is actually the entrance to the underground jail. Entering through the opening in the wall, the visitor must first travel down a wrought iron spiral staircase. As the visitor descends the feeling of entering a different time sets in, as the surroundings change from the busy shopping centre into a confined jail environment.
Admission to the Thieves Pot is free, and can be visited whenever the shopping centre is open.
Looking around a visitor will see a circular rough stone room, this is the original guardroom which existed in the walls which used to defend Stirling. The guardroom which the visitor enters into contains different artefacts; including Justice Figure and
Stirling Heads
Stirling (; sco, Stirlin; gd, Sruighlea ) is a city in central Scotland, northeast of Glasgow and north-west of Edinburgh. The market town, surrounded by rich farmland, grew up connecting the royal citadel, the medieval old town with its me ...
which are placed as historical presentations, giving information on the room and the history of what happened there. There is also the Thieves Pot below this room, this was the prison where people would be sent as a jail. This is a dark cramped space, also known as an oubliette, which is viewable through a glass floor panel and contains a model representation of a prisoner down in the prison. The entrance to this prison space would originally have been accessed through a trapdoor which would have been present where the glass viewing panel now is in the floor.
Events
*Santa has taken up his spot in the heart of the Thistles Centre again, every year Santa's Grotto gets set up within the centre, Santa and his elves greet and meet little children, giving them the chance to talk with Santa and tell him what they would like for Christmas. Having gone to Santa's Grotto, the children get a memento photograph taken with Santa and also receive a Christmas gift.
*The Thistles was featured on STV's
'The Hour' show in September 2009. Stella Bartram the show's fitness guru, appeared in the centre where the cleaning, janitorial and security staff were in for a shock. The staff were drawn into a fake meeting, where Stella appeared and got to work showing the staff different exercises they could do during their working day. These ranged from lunges, squats and figure of eight mop exercises. The staff initially said they were fit considering that in a day's work they would have walked 11miles, however when they started doing the exercises laid out by Stella, they soon discovered muscles they hadn't been feeling before.
*On 18 January 2010, recycling bins were introduced throughout the centre. They were unveiled by the centre's local mascots: Thistle, Cash For Kids, Keep Scotland Beautiful, Bowling Alley, Blairdrummond Safari Park and macrobert Arts Centre. There are bins for customers to deposit paper, plastic, cans and general waste in to. According to the Marketing Manager at The Thistles, Geraldine El Masrour, the primary goal of the initiative was to reduce the Carbon Footprint and encourage the city of Stirling to follow.
Stirling Council - Press Release
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References
External links
Thistles Centre official site
{{Shopping centres in Scotland
Shopping centres in Scotland
Shopping centres in Stirling (council area)
Shopping malls established in 1977
Tourist attractions in Stirling (council area)
Buildings and structures in Stirling (city)