Anyone stepping off the train at Putney station this week faces a dispiriting welcome. Directly opposite, a run of empty shopfronts now stretches along the top of the High Street, the latest symptom of Putney’s ongoing retail malaise.
Brinkley’s estate agents has become the most recent departure, relocating to 212 Upper Richmond Road and leaving its prominent High Street premises to let. The move follows the closure of Liliya Art Gallery in the summer after three years of trading. Next door, the former Lost Society bar has stood empty for well over a year, at one point attracting squatters who rotated between vulnerable commercial units on the High Street.
Just a step over Norroy Road, the former Bill’s restaurant site remains vacant since the chain closed in 2023. Together with Viva Men – which soldiers on in between – this cluster of shuttered premises creates a grim first impression for anyone arriving in Putney.
At the southern end of the High Street, the picture is similarly bleak. The Candy Bar Store, which combined a pet shop and grooming service with a confectionery counter under ambitious plans to become “The Putney Hub” with mobile repairs, a barbershop and wellness clinic, has permanently closed its doors. The owner is understood to be spending some time in a high-security wellness retreat, making any revival of those ambitious plans unlikely.
Meanwhile, the parade of shops beside Marks & Spencer continues its familiar pattern of turnover. Discount retailers and temporary occupants come and go on what appear to be short leases, creating a budget feel that does little for Putney’s image. It’s a dead zone for footfall, and the constant churn suggests landlords are struggling to find sustainable tenants.
The silver lining – and there is one – sits at the heart of this stretch. The restored M&S building, its Art Deco facade now gleaming after months of scaffolding, is due to open around Easter. At the corner of Putney Bridge Road, demolition work has begun on the long-derelict hotel site, with a new building expected within two years.
Whether these anchor developments can reverse the tide of closures remains to be seen. For now, anyone walking from the station to the bridge passes more boarded-up windows than any thriving High Street should have to explain.
