W H Smith, 44 High Street, Weston-Super-Mare
Introduction
The photograph on this page of W H Smith, 44 High Street, Weston-Super-Mare by Jo and Steve Turner as part of the Geograph project.
The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.
There are currently over 7.5m images from over 14,400 individuals and you can help contribute to the project by visiting https://www.geograph.org.uk
W H Smith, 44 High Street, Weston-Super-Mare
Image: © Jo and Steve Turner Taken: 10 Mar 2022
Grade II Listed shop of 19th century origin, re-built in 1926 with a former lending library to the first floor by Frank C Bayliss for WH Smith & Son. In the second half of the 20th century the shop expanded into an adjacent shop and both original shop fronts were replaced and internal partitions removed to create a large, single shop. Smith's closed its libraries in 1961 and the staircase to the shop below was removed. In 2017-19 a substantial refurbishment of the shop and its frontage took place. The three bow windows in the east wall of the former lending library were removed and in 2019 are stored in the adjacent room in 42. The first floor library walls were encased in lead panels with decorative reliefs, one with the inscription 'COME AND TAKE CHOICE OF ALL MY LIBRARY AND SO BEGUILE THY SORROW'. (Quote from Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus).
Images are licensed for reuse under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0
Image Location
Latitude
51.348125
Longitude
-2.978779