Twenty first century businesses
By the end of the twentieth century the village boasted three antique shops – Hopwells in the High Street, Barber’s further down the road at what was once Matilda’s dress shop and before that the Co-op, and one in West End. Of these only Hopwell’s remains. Barbers now deal exclusively over the internet, even before broad band came to the village, and the West End shop, once Clarke’s dairy, in now Country Flowers.
British Telecom were not at first interested in extending their faster broad band service to rural areas. It was not thought to be economic. So a group of business men in West Haddon and Winwick got together and created a village service. Shortly after, BT decided to expand their service to the whole county and took over the West Haddon subscribers.??
The general grocery shop goes from strength to strength in West End. It has an instore bakery and was one of the first outlets for the National Lottery. It has been expanded several times to accommodate the very wide range of goods on offer.
The Post Office, with a more limited range of goods, stands at the corner of High Street and Northampton Road. Nearby is the hairderesser’s. Further up Northampton Road is the Plantsman garden nursery, catering for an increased interest in gardening, and the Mower shop.
However much of the in village economic activity is either carried on over the internet, or comes from individuals running their own small businesses – all types of building work, garden design, security alarms, a beauty salon, a nail technician, until lately, a podiatrist. Organic meat is supplied by several farmers.
West Haddon is a commuter village. Travel to Northampton, Rugby and Daventry is the norm. With the arrival of the A14 link to Felixstowe, married to the M1 and M6 networks it is possible to be based in West Haddon but work much further afield – London and Birmingham for example but also all over the country. There is still a small station at Long Buckby, with trains to London and Birmingham once an hour, but Rugby and Northampton stations are also near by.
The bypass is being built as this goes to press (Aug 2005) and is due to open in December. It remains to be seen what effect this will have on economic life in the village.