LAST week we featured a picture of Newport Arcade.

The Arcade is in the High Street, Newport.

On the corner was Stewart Kimpton. On the right there was a jewellers called Crouchers – I bought my engagement ring from there.

Stanley Jones was a shop that sold all the music. Woodgates sold prams. I have lived in the area for 80 years.

Mary Collingbourne, Newport

The Now and Then is of the arcade in High Street which once had a big jewellers also a hairdressers.

On the other corner use to be Kimpton men’s shop. In the arcade was a café and a women’s clothes shop.

At the other end of the arcade facing Cambrian Road was a small jewellers. I think it is still there opposite a Wetherspoons.

M Reardon, Newport

This is the Victorian Newport Arcade which runs between High Street and Cambrian Road.

At the High Street end was Kimpton’s tailors and outfitters, and at the two corners of the Cambrian Road end was Stanley Jones, the one shop was a stationers and the other shop was a music and book shop.

Kimptons was there into the 1960s.

One of the longest reigning shops in the arcade was AL Salisbury, leather goods dealers who were there for more than 30 years.

Dave Woolven, Newport

The photographs in last week’s Now and Then section were of the Newport Arcade viewed from Cambrian Road.

The shops on both corners were Stanley Jones bookshops, in the early 1960s I was an apprentice carpenter and joiner for a shopfitting company and helped strip out the shop on the right hand side, it was full of dust as it had never been cleaned with all the books on the shelves and it still had gas lighting, very safe with all the books.

We converted the shop into The Card Gallery, the shop on the left was changed into a jewellers. I still have a ticket I found in the shop for a concert by Maindee Male Voice Choir held at London Street Congregational Church on Thursday 12th November 1903 priced at sixpence.

A few doors up to the left was the New Found Out public house, a well-known place for rough scrumpy.

David Taylor, Newport

I REMEMBER this arcade very well, when I was very young it always seemed posh. On High Street, left side of the arcade was a very up-market jewellers called ‘Crouch and Sons.’

In the early 1970’s I bought four champagne flute glasses. I still have one left. At the time they were £9 each (old money) where I asked if I could put them aside and so I bought one at a time. The blonde chap that worked there was so handsome!

Inside the arcade was a shop full of pretty things. Winifred Bignall was the owner. She was always dressed in velvet, her hat was also velvet - once again very posh. If you went into her shop, her eyes would follow you everywhere. At the High Street entrance a chap used to sell the Argus, he had such a weird way of calling out. I love all your yesterday photo’s keep them coming.

Mrs Mary Stock, Newport