Business

Diana Grainger is retiring from The Wool Shop at The Triangle, in Tilehurst
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Rising rents cause Tilehurst Wool Shop to close

By Linda Fort
April 05, 2012

A wool shop which has been supplying avid knitters in Tilehurst for more than 70 years is to cast off this week.

The present leaseholder Diana Grainger, 71, has been running the shop for the past nine years but she is closing the door for good today.

And one keen knitter has got together a petition in a bid to prevent the shop being turned into an estate agent.

Mrs Grainger said: “There has been an increase in the rent and that has meant that I can’t continue – that and the fact that I am 71. But as long as my health held out I would have liked to have gone on longer.”

Mrs Grainger has always been a keen knitter herself and makes up new knitting patterns to sell in the shop. When she took over the shop in The Triangle, the knitting hobby was at a low ebb. She said: “Very few people were knitting.”

But since then there has been a major revival among younger knitters and business has been thriving as a result.

She said: “People are knitting again – they are even teaching them knitting in schools again.”

But as busy as she is, Mrs Grainger says the increased rent is “at the heart of the matter”. She said: “I really don’t want to discuss that side of things.”

Customers, she added, were very upset at the news of the closure.

“There have been tears here this morning. The news is getting around and my regular customers are very upset,” she said.

Mrs Grainger will not be putting down her own knitting needles.

Her daughter has a wool shop in Warwickshire and she plans to keep on knitting jumpers and cardigans for her.

She doesn’t like knitting children’s clothes, preferring to knit for adults.

She said: “I am not a little knitter.”

Customer Jane Blake, 57, has been using the shop for 26 years, as long as she had lived in Tilehurst.

Mrs Blake, of Bramble Crescent, said: “We are devastated at losing the shop. People come from miles around to use it.”

She has collected a 257-signature petition and handed it in to Reading Borough Council.

She said: “I don’t know if it will do any good. We want the premises to remain retail. We have heard it is going to be another estate agent – I think that will be the seventh. We don’t want another estate agent or building society.”

Mrs Blake said she had been knitting since her oldest child – now 26 – was born and was now knitting for her grandchildren.

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Most recent user comments 12 of 12

Such a shame that yet another independent shop has to close due to rent increases.

All the very best Diana x

Scribbles, Reading
10/04/2012 at 10:19

Inevitably, only a mateer of time. How many youngsters knit or crotchet ? Most think knitwear comes from Primani's sweatshop suppliers.

I Ron
10/04/2012 at 10:13

Hmm, shame when this sort of things happen. Cant they get creative and open something more interesting than an estate agents in Tilehurst, jeez a dvd/record shop???

Detective John Kimble, Mars
10/04/2012 at 09:22

What a great shame too see yet another wool shop close. Next shop needs too be a shop that the locals will use, and need. Good luck Mrs Grainger and Thank you for all your years of wool shopping at the Triangle, you will be missed by all of your customers.

lovewool, newport
09/04/2012 at 23:32

Why are landlords so detached from reality? Most new leases are showing a downfall in rental values! This will mean another empty shop until the landlords feet touch the ground again.

janus, Tilehurst
06/04/2012 at 17:54

Why on Earth do we need another estate agent? Such a shame this is shutting down, landlords should feel ashamed of themselves. All the best Diana :o)

Tilehurst Local
05/04/2012 at 18:41

Great little shop, shame it's gone.

voiceoftreason?
05/04/2012 at 17:53

...and houses

Crane God
05/04/2012 at 16:48

Perhaps someone can persuade Tesco to start selling knitting patterns and wool.

PoneRana, Wokingham
05/04/2012 at 15:56

All the best for the future, Diana. I have used the Wool Shop since moving to Tilehurst in 1982. I will miss the help and advice you gave me with complicated patterns.