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Blackwell Street, KIDDERMINSTER, DY10 2DP

The Swan Centre's car park is the rather unattractive looking ribbed concrete multi-storey structure seen here. The vehicular access to it is on Blackwell Street. Image

Whittle bus no. 158 (reg. YX 56 HVG) is seen on Route 580 to Kinver in Staffordshire. It is just leaving the Swan Centre stop in Kidderminster's town centre on the last journey to Kinver, on the last day of operation of this service by Whittle Bus & Coach Ltd. The route runs twice a day in each direction from Monday to Saturday and will be taken over by another operator on the 5th January 2015. The bus dates from 2006 and is a low floor Dennis Dart Enviro 200 with a 38 seat ADL Enviro 200 (10.7 m) body. There is more information about the history of Whittles here:- Image

The Swan Centre shopping centre is adjacent to several streets in the town centre. In this view, looking from the bottom of Coventry Street, Worcester Street is on the left and Blackwell Street is on the right. Behind is the ribbed concrete multi-storey car park for the centre. Image

In recent years there has been a fashion for "Irish" bars & pubs in the UK, though they sometimes have nothing Irish about them other than the name. Here on the edge of Kidderminster's town centre in Blackwell Street is this Irish bar. It offers live music and Caffrey's Irish ale brewed apparently by Bass. Update March 2019:- This bar closed several years ago and the address is no longer licensed premises.

It claims to be Kidderminster's oldest pub; if so it is highly unlikely that it was originally called "Ye Olde" anything. Be that as it may, the pub is a popular town centre venue, re-opening in the summer of 2007 as a non-food pub. But unusually you may take your own food with you, or the pub will order it from a take-away for you. They even provide the plates etc and wash them for you afterwards. http://www.yeoldesevenstars.co.uk/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1

This popular town centre pub is claimed to be the oldest pub in Kidderminster. It is promoted as a "bring your own grub pub". Unusually that's what you are encouraged to do as the pub doesn't provide meals. It has its own web site http://www.yeoldesevenstars.co.uk/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1

The Big Print Shop, a local printing firm, relocated here from their previous premises in Coventry Street in September 2014. Image Casino Slots at Mercian House, 18 Coventry Street, describes itself as providing "amusement park facilities", i.e. various slot machines, gaming machines etc. Above them is Beryl Guitars, a guitar and music shop, which has an online ordering service and also offers repairs and instruction.

These were no doubt planned well before the current recession, and it must have seemed a very good idea at the time. But now, with so many empty shops in Kidderminster, including the newly vacated Woolworths store, these may remain unoccupied for quite some time. The units were built on the site of J Russell's Audio Visual shop. This had been an independent retailer for decades. In September 2010 the units were still unoccupied but were subsequently let. A view from January 2015:- Image