I have done absolutely no research for this post. Everything here, was in my head before writing. You may feel the need to express sympathy at some point.
The Galleria is a shopping centre. I don’t know how old it is, but I would hazard a guess at about ten years, maybe less. It cannot be older than twenty, because the ground it is built on wasn’t there twenty years ago. Twenty years ago some men with big machines carved a sodding great swathe through a bit of northern hatfield, poured several thousand tons of concrete, and then put a lid on the hole, and called it Hatfield Tunnel. It covers the A1(M). So the Galleria sits on top of a motorway tunnel, and because of this, and because tunnels aren’t great things to build on top of, the Galleria actually exerts very little weight on the tunnel roof itself. The great grey hooping cables and external girders actually transfer most of the load to the ground either side of the tunnel. It’s clever, but it means that the Galleria is a monstrosity.
| There are two parts. One sits above the southern mouth of the tunnel, and is the grey, curved roof bit...behind this a flying walkway lined with cafés and restaurants leads to a less ornate box; a cinema complex which sits on top of a bunch of fast food outlets. This box has wire hoops on for decoration. I don't think it works. |
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The traditional out-of-town shopping centre story is that a town has shops and services of its own, and then along comes this predatory congolomeration of marble and muzak and sucks the soul out of the town, replacing it with shiny corporate gloss and fast food. I would say The Galleria certainly stole a soul, but it hasn’t replaced it with anything - mostly because the shops in The Galleria are bloody awful.
Billed from the off as an 'Outlet Centre', the Galleria is the place to go if you want almost perfect clothing, only just second-class products of all sorts of descriptions, or end-of-line bargains. In a bizarre twist, the corporate gloss and gleam of more traditional shopping centres is invading and ousting the cut-price stores - there's even a Costa Coffee in there now, so you can spend £5 for a coffee to drink while you examine your recent clothing purchases to see where the faults are.
Let me take you inside...
| Here we are. Verdant palms wave in the cooling blast of the distant air conditioning units, cut priced stores peddle their wares, and yes, that is a full sized aircraft suspended from the ceiling in the background. All in all, The Galleria is a curious place to shop. You have a rough knowledge of what sort of shops are there, but the goods they sell can change from week to week, and the prices vary wildly. If you want cheap clothing but you don't know, for example, if you want trousers, underwear, a winter coat or a summer blouse, then The Galleria is for you. Who knows what the stores...um...have in store? |
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People are odd, huh.
Next up on Stuart's Guide to Hatfield: Hatfield House.
It's certainly more than ten years old (though probably not as much as fifteen) - I can remember going to the cinema there occasionally in the years before I left for university. Of course, that's because the old 2-screen cinema in Stevenage had shut and no-one had thought about replacing it. Stupid buggers.
I think I even went along the walkway into the shopping bit, once. That, of course, was enough and I don't ever plan on going in there again...
Iàll have you know that we donàt have coffees that are as much as £5 at Costa Coffee. And the staff there are very nice and lovely and, erm.. yeah, I would say more, but this strange climate has gotten to me. And I canàt find the apostrophe, so youàll have to make do with à, although itàs no more than you deserve. e rude about Costa, chuh. For that, Iàll have a tiramisu ice cream on the side of an inexpensive Costa latte.. if monday morning coffees are still on..
Oh my god. The Galleria! I grew up in Bishop's Stortford and to my tween mind The Galleria, in comparison with Stortford's Jackson Square, was very glamorous. Probably because the only time I went to The Galleria there was some sort of fashion parade where lots of scantily clad women danced to Prince which I thought was SO COOL. I didn't even know it was one of the world's greatest squash venues! Thanks for the chuckle.
Crikey! That's the most full I've ever seen the place. For those who might be interested, and speaking as a (now escaped) Herts child, the Galleria wasn't originally exactly an outlet centre-the idea was to make it quirky, exciting, interesting even, by including none of the big name stores. A bid to escape the homogenisation of other centres, perhaps, but an appalling bad idea, at least for that area. Hatfield town centre was already pretty much dead, so it wasn't as if a branch of Smiths would have been out of place.
Still and all, one failure later and it became the moderate success it is now. Still too much space, though - presumably, hence the great idea of sticking a squash court and room to spectate in the middle. Without an event in that area, even the busy days look quiet and slightly deserted.