London Place 18: Brent Cross

Jewel of the northwest, they call it. 

I was taken to Brent Cross a fair bit when I was little. It was one of the regular expeditions a single mother of four children in west London in the 1980s made. For a long time I didn't really know if it was far away or not - the distance seemed to vary considerably. That's the North Circular for you. 

It elicited a strangely nuanced range of emotions - it was exciting to go there, it was a mesmerizing place, but I knew I'd also be mainly bored to my eyeballs.

Brent Cross was a big fucking deal back then, let's not forget. The first of its kind, an out-of-town, specialized, American-style shopping mall. It was a beast among pygmies, rearing up out of the asphalt pasta.

I need to say, hard as it may be to believe, I was a little nightmare to take anywhere, and needed to be kept on a tight leash. My recollection is of patiently waiting while my mother made her way meticulously through that gargantuan John Lewis. I suspect there was more rolling around on the floor amidst the textile aisles than I'd care to recall.

I remember it was hard to deal with all the beautiful televisions and items of sports equipment I wasn't allowed to touch, not to mention toys.

But still, if I made it through John Lewis, Brent Cross had its rewards. Kind of. There was the fountain, the eery lighting in the main walkway which made you feel like you were in a dystopian science fiction film. Fenwicks had a bit which seemed a bit like an aeroplane or a ferry. And I think my genuine reward would be a chicken drumstick and carton of orange juice from Marks and Spencer. Such glamorous days.

To be honest, I don't remember much else. The vibe, the lighting, that's about it, There were lots of other shops, but I don't really remember what they were. There were other people, but I couldn't say what the demographics were.

I was taken there on my birthday once, which strikes me as funny. Then again, I was taken to the newly-opened IKEA nearby (another biiiig deal) the next year. I feel like by that point I was the only one of us four that was, by necessity, dragged along.

My trips to Brent Cross by and large ended in about 1988. I guess I would not be compelled after that, and was usually busy on a Saturday. 

I did go again. I remember buying a stereo there in the 1990s and thinking that not much had changed. I also played in a summer football league across the big road in 2002. It defintely took longer to get there than it should have done, by car, bus or train.

It did not seem such a colossus by then. There were more big shops around. Nevertheless, it is, apparently, still one of the UK's biggest shopping centres and a a pioneer in something lots of people pretend to find repellent but secretly love.

It's all tied up in how much of my childhood is attached to the big west London roads. Brent Cross as the gateway to London, the start of the M1, the consumer dream.