How Britain fell out of love with the sweet shop: ‘Lollipops have become a health and safety thing’
There once was no shortage of sweet shops in Britain. Pick ‘n’ mix stands would carve out corners of your local supermarket, too, their plastic compartments rendered kaleidoscopic with sweets of every hue. And sweets were basically the sole reason every child wanted to go to Woolworths. But over the past few decades, vast swathes of shops devoted to sweets – as well as sweet real estate in your local Sainsbury’s or Tesco – have been eliminated.
Closures have occurred far and wide, inspiring mourning at both local and national levels. Just last week, reported on the fate of Kev’s Pick ‘n’ Mix, a market stall from which Kevin Hilliard has sold sweets to punters in Saxmundham, Suffolk, for 24 years. To
