Unfortunately, Business Rates (the relatively high local taxes that shops have to pay on their premises) combined with competition from the Internet have wiped out a lot of traditional British tool shops!
Forty years ago, every decent sized British town had a tool shop. Seeking it out, in my family at least, was usually the first thing to do on arrival anywhere! These places were usually just tool shops, rather than hardware shops that also sold tools, and most were good, but some were awesome!
Buck and Ryan's had to be seen to be believed! Not a big shop, but absolutely crammed with just about everything! Woodworking tools, metalworking tools, engineers supplies, it was all there, including loads of bits that you just couldn't find elsewhere! Anybody else remember the huge 'exhibition' pocket knife on the right hand side as you went in! it must have had over a 1000 blades! I used to think it was the famous Rogers knife from the Great Exhibition, but I've seen that subsequently and it's totally different!
The trouble was, that these places didn't really make money from Joe Public buying a hand drill, but rather from businesses that that had trade accounts. I can remember seeing walls of racking in the backs of many of these places! stacked out with milling cutters and other such consumables. By the 80's most trade customers were being supplied from corrugated tin warehouses on industrial estates that couldn't even be bothered to deal with non account customers!
Most of the great shops that I remember from my youth have long gone. Elliott's in Brighton, Pines in Chichester, Haywards in Tunbridge Wells, Messengers in Guildford and Crawley Tools, (to quote a few names from the South East) together with just about every similar establishment in every other town have all closed their doors!
I visited Buck and Ryan's in the late 80!s or maybe early 90's, and the place had the smell of death about it! With their trade market disappearing, not to mention many of their traditional British suppliers doing the same, they had tried to re-invent themselves as a sort of tourist attraction selling Swiss Army Knives and Maglites! At the time I could count no less than 6 places selling the same items in my home town alone. I never returned, and don't think any of their other customers did either!
There are still a few traditional places out there (Airds in Brighton springs to mind) and a good few more who specialise in Power tools (Bryants in Horsham for example) but other than that you just have to find a local hardware shop and hope for the best!
Romanys is a bit of 'blast from the past' and I suspect they survive because they are good at what they do, (which is, or at least was, primarily ironmongery) but also because their catchment area is probably huge! Good luck to'em!
, there is a little gem of a hardware / tool shop, called ROMANYS.
