The windows are papered over at Blake’s Heaven. A Cyberman head stares out from behind the glass. Most of the stock is gone.
The memorabilia and sci-fi store has been a fixture on Lower Richmond Road for just over two years, the kind of shop that makes you slow down and look even if you were never planning to stop. The name is a play on Blake’s Seven, the BBC sci-fi series, and the stock matched the spirit: collectibles, figures, the kind of shop that makes a street worth exploring, the thing only an independent would do.
At one point there was a full-size Dalek outside. It had controls so you could move it. The asking price, it turned out, was not £995 but £9,995. Sci-fi memorabilia does not come cheap.
Now the lease is up, and Blake’s Heaven is leaving.
But it is not disappearing. The owner was philosophical about it. “End of the lease,” he said. “We’re going to find somewhere else in Wandsworth.”
That is the important line. This is a move, not a closure. The search for a new home is already under way, and whoever ends up with Blake’s Heaven on their street should count themselves lucky.
Lower Richmond Road, meanwhile, keeps moving. A few doors along, the pop-up corner at number 48 (which has cycled through a series of short-term tenants, mostly ladies’ clothing) is between occupants again, but not for long. A new pop-up is expected within the next two weeks.
We wrote about LRR earlier this week – the Half Moon being almost ready to reopen (very much looking forward to it), the Persian Grill collapsing into receivership, and Fettle riding off into the sunset. Read that piece here. Blake’s Heaven is one more thread in the same story: a road that turns over, adapts, and keeps going.
The Cyberman, for now, keeps watch.
