The Old Co-operative in Belper, home to our businesses; Cocoon Vehicles Ltd and High Heel Creative Ltd was built in 1927 by the Ripley Co-operative Society, but we don’t know much else about the building.
We’ve heard various stories from Belper residents, where they used to come for their groceries when it was a Co-op store but thats about it.
We do know that Brian and June Nix of Lester & Nix in Belper purchased the building in 1985, where they set up Trade Services repairing household appliances and televisions.
We’d love to find out more, if anyone has any old photographs of the building, externally or internally or even further infomation, we’d love to hear from you.
Click the link to go through to the history page: The Old Co-operative History on CVC
2021 Update
With regards to 2021, we have now moved out of The Old Co-operative in Belper, this is mainly down to the landlord Stephen Nix who just didn’t want to put things right in the property.
The building has very bad damp, this should have been sorted at the point where we moved into the premises but 3.5 years later we were still arguing.
The side door literally fell off the frame due to the damp which had rotten the wood holding the door, this took us a lot of chasing and 4 months to sort out, with excuses about measuring and supply.
Even when the side door was replaced, it was done on the cheap and the door had split.
The damp was never treated and items were not repaired as promised. In the end Mr Nix chose to ignore us several times via email and eventually even in the street.
We always paid the rent and we were actually ahead, we also spent at least £15k on the building and all we’ve done is butter up his pension pot.
Such a shame!