Discover St Michael’s

Set within the wider community of Bridport, St Michael’s Trading Estate has long been known as one of the most fascinating cultural trading centres along the South-West coast.

A community in its own right, the estate hosts a fascinating mix of traders that includes artists, designers and makers, as well as offering retail furniture, bath and shower showrooms and a school meals provider. You can also find textiles, upholstery, stonemasonry, carpentry & joinery, tailor-made garden furniture, glass & ceramic tiles and even a waxwork sculptor and a recording studio. Not forgetting the many antiques, collectables, retro and vintage shops that attract thousands of people to the town.

Trade in the area stretches back more than 200 years and it has been a key part of the pioneering West Dorset

net making and rope making industry, providing equipment for Nelson’s fleet as well as familyowned early fishing vessels along the South West coast.

The Hayward family became owners in 1968 and have nurtured and managed the estate through many difficult and traumatic times. It is said that without the Haywards, the estate may not exist, as when they first arrived planning permission already existed to turn St Michael’s into a housing estate.

But its not all about the past, or even the present: the estate is planning an exciting future for St Michael’s, a future that they say will carefully mix trading and work with living and home.

Martin Ridley of Hayward & Co sees St Michael’s Trading Estate as a community within a community—and if there is one thing we have learned in the last five months, it is the value of community.

And that doesn’t just apply to near neighbours—although for many, neighbourliness has been the difference between very bleak times and survival recently. What has become clear is that the wider local community relies on economic interaction, and that plays an important role in both the social and economic wellbeing of an area.

The thousands of visitors from nearby towns and villages that come to enjoy the atmosphere created by the shops, artists and artizans on the St Michael’s Trading Estate, become part of the lifeblood of the town. Both the buyers and sellers need each other for all to prosper, both socially and economically.

There is little doubt that the buzz created by the crowds that visit the vintage markets, the Alleyways and the eclectic mix of vendors on the estate, makes St Michael’s one of the most attractive places to visit. It is a haven for those that like to browse, buy and feel part of something more real than a shopping mall.

In an era when social distance means finding a new way to spend a day out, discovering St Michael’s in Bridport should be high on everyone’s list.