The Mall Wood Green is a large

shopping centre A shopping center ( American English) or shopping centre (Commonwealth English), also called a shopping complex, shopping arcade, shopping plaza or galleria, is a group of shops built together, sometimes under one roof. The first known colle ...

and residential complex in

Wood Green Wood Green is a suburban district in the borough of Haringey in London, England. Its postal district is N22, with parts in N8 or N15. The London Plan identifies it as one of the metropolitan centres in Greater London, and today it forms a m ...

, north London. It was originally known as Wood Green Shopping City. The Mall had over 100 retail shops, seven of them

anchor stores In retail, an "anchor tenant", sometimes called an "anchor store", "draw tenant", or "key tenant", is a considerably larger tenant in a shopping mall, often a department store or retail chain. They are typically located at the ends of malls. ...

, 45 market stalls, and an average of 221,000 customers per week. The centre and the adjoining shops on Wood Green High Road constitute the commercial hub of the borough of

Haringey The London Borough of Haringey (pronounced , same as Harringay) is a London borough in North London, classified by some definitions as part of Inner London, and by others as part of Outer London. It was created in 1965 by the amalgamation of ...

and its surrounding areas.

History

The centre was built in the 1970s as "Wood Green Shopping City", on the site of the former

Noel Park and Wood Green railway station Noel Park and Wood Green is a closed railway station on the Palace Gates Line in Wood Green, north London. It was located on the north-east side of The Broadway adjacent to Pelham Road. Its site is now occupied by Wood Green Shopping City. Th ...

. Initially it included a number of unusual features, most notably a giant wooden climbing frame in the shape of a frog. The centre was opened on 13 May 1981 by HM Queen Elizabeth II. Unusually for a shopping centre, the

A105 road The A105 road is an A road in London, England. It runs from Canonbury, in between Highbury and Dalston, to Enfield Town. The road is long. Part of the road forms Green Lanes, one of the longest streets in London, while the A105 also serves ...

runs directly through the complex, allowing many of the stores to have entrances directly onto the street. The two halves of the mall are linked by bridges at first and second floor level. The centre is six storeys high, but only the lower two floors are occupied by shops; the upper floors make up a housing complex known as "Sky City", where in 2006, the badly decomposed body of a woman was found. Her name was

Joyce Vincent Joyce Carol Vincent (19 October 1965 – December 2003) was an English woman whose death went unnoticed for more than two years as her corpse lay undiscovered at her bedsit in north London. Prior to her death, she had cut off nearly all contact ...

and she had died over two years earlier; her body lay undiscovered. Vincent's life is the subject of the film ''

Dreams of a Life ''Dreams of a Life'' is a 2011 drama-documentary film, released by Dogwoof Pictures, directed by Carol Morley and starring Zawe Ashton as Joyce Carol Vincent, a London woman whose remains were discovered in her home in 2006, just over two years a ...

'' (2011). In the

early 1990s recession The early 1990s recession describes the period of economic downturn affecting much of the Western world in the early 1990s. The impacts of the recession contributed in part to the 1992 U.S. presidential election victory of Bill Clinton over incu ...

, many of the centre's established shops closed and were replaced by pound shops and charity shops. The centre was targeted in a bomb attack in 1992 that injured civilians and police officers.

Redevelopment

The centre was bought by current owners

The Mall Company The Mall Fund owns and operates shopping centres in England using the trading name "The Mall Company". The shopping centres are usually branded and marketed as "the mall". The Mall Fund owned up to 10% of the covered retail space in the United Ki ...

in 2002 and renamed "The Mall Wood Green", although the "Shopping City" signage remained as late as 2012. The new owners carried out a £30 million rebuilding programme, altering the layout of the shops and adding a 12-screen cinema. The market hall was expanded, with a number of specialist retailers catering for the unusually diverse ethnic groups in the area. In 2007 the owners applied for consent to expand the centre further with a 3-storey extension on the site of an adjacent petrol station, which when complete will increase the mall size to 617,000 sq ft (57,300m²) and the total number of retail units to 123, overtaking rival Brent Cross's 110 shops for the first time. Approval was given in May 2007, despite concerns raised about the possibility of flooding on the new site from the

River Moselle The Moselle ( , ; german: Mosel ; lb, Musel ) is a river that rises in the Vosges mountains and flows through north-eastern France and Luxembourg to western Germany. It is a left bank tributary of the Rhine, which it joins at Koblenz. ...

; in June 2007 it was announced that the bulk of the extension would be occupied by a new

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 ...

store. The proposal involved demolishing the existing Pearson's department store and extending the mall into space within and beyond this site. However, the Debenhams plan ultimately did not go ahead, and instead the bulk of the development site was taken up by a large

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 us ...

store. The Mall is also the venue for a craft fair, held four times a year. Shopping City from Ally Pally

Crime

Unusually for a shopping centre, The Mall has its own dedicated team of police, part of Haringey BOCU police. The scheme, initially called "Operation Partnership" but later renamed the "Retail Protection Unit", was introduced in 1998. The areas surrounding the Mall have traditionally been affected by high rates of street-drinking and its accompanying alcohol-related problems. In 2005 anti-drinking legislation was introduced, and the police were given powers to confiscate alcoholic drinks and to disperse crowds in the area around the centre. The Mall made headlines in 2006 when a shoplifter attacked and repeatedly stabbed Designer Outlet store supervisor Rudy Takkou. Takkou narrowly survived, losing 4 litres of blood.

Transport

Despite being situated on the site of a disused railway station, The Mall Wood Green is still very well served by

public transport Public transport (also known as public transportation, public transit, mass transit, or simply transit) is a system of transport for passengers by group travel systems available for use by the general public unlike private transport, typi ...

in comparison to London's other shopping centres.

and Turnpike Lane tube stations on the

Piccadilly line The Piccadilly line is a deep-level London Underground line running from the north to the west of London. It has two branches, which split at Acton Town, and serves 53 stations. The line serves Heathrow Airport, and some of its stations are ...

are both near the mall, and due to Wood Green High Road running through the centre of the development, it is possible to catch buses from directly outside the shops. Alexandra Palace railway station is a short distance to the west of the centre.

Gallery

Sky City from Mayes Road.jpg, Sky City Shopping City Market Hall entrance.jpg, Western ("Market Hall") entrance to The Mall Wood Green Shopping City, Wood Green - geograph.org.uk - 6644.jpg, Shopping City in 2005

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mall, Wood Green Shopping centres in the London Borough of Haringey Wood Green