Industrial and inner city sites

During the 1980s, changes in Britain’s economic infrastructure created a number of redundant industrial sites in city centres.

These sites presented an ideal opportunity for retail development – they were close to enough to the centre of population, but could also accommodate a large modern store with ample parking.

In Bath, Sainsbury’s branch made use of a disused railway station to develop a large supermarket close to an historic city centre.  Sainsbury’s Nine Elms store in London was built on a large area of land by derelict railway sidings, surplus to the requirements of the New Covent Garden Market.

The new store, which opened in February 1982, covered an area of  25,300 sq feet and stocked 7500 new lines - widest range of any Sainsbury’s branch.

More than half of the new stores opened in the 1980s were built on derelict land, whether inner city or edge-of-town.

The store at Blackhall, Edinburgh was built on reclaimed land from the Craigleith Quarry, while Sainsbury’s site at Canley, near Coventry was an old Rover car factory.

Where possible, Sainsbury’s also made use of existing historic buildings on these sites. The Wolverhampton branch which opened in 1988 incorporates a disused Victorian church, which now houses the store’s coffee shop. The store in Streatham, South London is built inside the exterior walls of a renovated listed silk mill and adjacent listed building has been restored and used as a day nursery.

SLOAP – or the Space Left Over After Planning provided another method of finding available land on which to build new Sainsbury's stores. Retail stores were incorporated into the areas between roads and other developments, to make full use of otherwise redundant public spaces. A good example of this type of land use can be seen at the Heyford Hill branch in Oxford, which opened in 1986.

Download a map of the Heyford Hill site from the store devlopment proposal: Heyford Hill development map (PDF 312kb)