Some more wanderings around the antique stores and emporiums

My last blog post was written after a visit to a couple of antique emporiums. These were at Blakemere Village and Holden Wood Antiques.

Last week we took the opportunity to visit a couple more antique type stores. One of them The Vintage Emporium at Pear Mill in Stockport is quite local and familiar to us.

The other was a place called Gillys Antiques and an antique dealers we hadn’t been to previously. Gillys Antiques is located in Bolton a 25 mile or so drive from our home.

Gillys Antiques

This antique dealer is based in a unit on a small industrial estate just a couple of miles from the town centre It was easy enough to find and has convenient parking directly outside.

I gather Gillys has been around for over 40 years and is run as a family enterprise. There was certainly plenty of stock to look at and browse.

Stock is spread over two floors, and I am told, totals more than 25,000 items ! Of course there are the run of the mill things you might reasonably expect to find in an antique emporium. This includes glassware, china, jewellery, books, brass, copper, silver and silver plate and so on.

As with most places like this, there are also plenty of unusual items to catch your eye and ponder over as well. You can check out pictures from our visit to Gillys at Picture set one.

… we checked out a few bikes as well

We made the most of our time on that side of Greater Manchester by making visits to a couple of motorcycle dealers – something I always enjoy.

The delaers we called to were Bolton Motorcycles and Robinsons Rochdale. Both are dealers where I have bought motorbikes in the past.

You can read about our visit to the bike dealers over on the motorbike.blog by clicking this link.

The Vintage Emporium

The Vintage Emporium at Pear Mill always seems to me to be on another level to other antique places I have visited.

It really is huge and comprises over 60 traders in the old Edwardian cotton spinning mill.

The mill itself ceased production back in 1978. In addition to the Vintage Emporium Pear Mill is home to quite a variety of business’s. The impressive building is just a mile or two from Stockport town centre and is easy enough to find with it’s distinctive and gigantic pear visible for some distance.

If you do visit, you can find the Pear design on the corner turrets and other locations, although none as big as that adorning the main tower.

The Pear Mill name comes from a farm which occupied part of the site.

It’s easy to spend time here, there really is so much to see. Some of it is odd, some of it bizarre and much of it genuinely fascinating. I don’t think we have ever called there and not enjoyed our visit. There is plenty of information about the mill and the emporium online, so there’s little value in me repeating it here.

A good place to start reading about the mill is by heading over to the emporium using this link.

You can find pictures from our visit by scrolling down to Picture set two.