The Sleep of Reason: The James Bulger Case by David James Smith

those days, to pedestrianise the neighbouring stretch of Stanley Road and create a major new through route on the other side of the centre, which was Washington Parade. The New Strand’s main entrance, the Hexagon, was therefore built facing Washington Parade. When the grand plans fell through, leaving Stanley Road as the main artery, the Strand was left stranded, somewhat back to front.
    The original design was almost entirely concrete, with canopies extending from the shops, leaving wide areas of walkway exposed to the elements of nature. There were no doors and, especially by night, the New Strand was also exposed to drunks and the more unruly elements of human nature.
    By the time of the big refurbishment in the late Eighties, the psychology of shopping had made great advances. It was one of the duties of the New Strand’s manager, Peter Williams, to take the chore out of shopping, and he oversaw a transformation into something approximating the American mall, which is usually pronounced ‘maul’ by Americans.
    The redevelopment was designed to create an ambience of comfort and security which would enhance the shopping experience. The whole place was enclosed by roofing, with the addition of some glass to retain a degree of natural light, and doors were added. Much of the concrete disappeared behind reflective aluminium planking, which gave a bright, warm impression, not unlike chrome; Italian ceramic tiling replaced most of the old flooring, with granite tiles in Mons Square.
    To correct the Strand’s reversed polarity between Stanley Road and Washington Parade, a series of arches, known as barrell vaults, were created over the Stanley Road entrances.
    There were bench seats, pots of flowers and children’s rides. A public address system was installed, to relay piped music and the occasional message about a missing child. There were sprinklers, smoke detectors, and closed circuit television: 20 cameras, though only 16 actually recorded; each one of the 16 cameras supplying a tape with a single still image every two orthree seconds. The tape could be decoded to display all 16 images at once on a monitor, or one image, or any combination in between. A private security firm, Guardrite, supplied a small team of men in rubber-soled shoes with walkie-talkies for additional protection.
    The New Strand now became the Strand Shopping Centre, and a logo was adopted, an anchor, to emphasise the nautical theme employed in naming the centre’s walkways: Esplanade, Mariners Way and Medway. There were other walkways – Raven Way, Palatine and Hexagon – but these were more obscure nautical references.
    Peter Williams organised a Grand Opening Extravaganza for the relaunch in the autumn of 1989. There were personal appearances by Garfield the Cat and Rupert the Bear, and live entertainment in Mons Square, and this tradition had been continued, with occasional performances by groups of Morris Dancers or the Bootle Village Pipe Band. The Square was also useful for the occasional community service promotion, and this emphasised the centre’s links with the local people. The bulk of the Strand’s customers, after all, came to shop there from within a three-mile radius.
    The Strand had 114 shops, but the big three were Marks & Spencer, TJ Hughes and Woolworths. It was a sign of the times that there were a growing number of discount stores. As Peter Williams said, you traded at a level that suited the area, and the Strand wasn’t Harrods. A few miles up the road in Southport, where the people were posher, you might be able to buy a good quality ladies fashion suit, but in Bootle there wasn’t a lot of call for that.
    Peter Williams was an admirer of the new combined shopping and leisure centres like the Metro in Gateshead, with its cinema and bowling alley, its fountains and ponds. There was real theming in Gateshead – Peter particularly liked the Roman Forum – but the Strand could never accommodate something of that nature.