September 2007...The first newsletter.
Posted
We thought that introducing a newsletter to the site would be a means of keeping you up to date with anything new such as new products, significant price changes, particular promotions, or matters of general interest. There will be no set pattern, and we will update you as things arise. Our new web site. The Hamptons website has been revised and came into operation on 4th September 2007. The design and configuration has been engineered by SOZO of Cheltenham with the object of making it more attractive, more user friendly and easier to understand and navigate. You will be pleased to know however that the prices and delivery charges for hampers remain unchanged! If you have any comments about the site (good or not so good) we would very much appreciate having them. We are always trying to improve. [u]Our new on-line shop (opening shortly)[/u] This is another, soon to open, feature of the new site. Stow is a tourist centre, as you know, and so we get visitors in the shop form all over the country (and world for that matter). Visitors often say how they wish they had a quality shop like ours nearby. They probably once had, but as with so many towns, the local and individualistic retailers have been decimated by the large multiples. Geographically, that situation may not have changed, but soon they will be able to shop with us no matter where they are and buy the out of the ordinary fine foods not available in the mass outlets. [u]Nine hundred years trading in Stow[/u] No, not us, but coincidently and perhaps prophetically, our new web site comes live on the nine hundredth anniversary of the granting by Henry II of a charter in 1107, which formally recognised the holding of a weekly market here in Stow. In the Middle Ages, the town was on several cross-country trade routes for foods and raw materials and heavily involved in a hugely expanding woollen industry. That made the weekly market in Stow one of the largest in the country. Subsequently, the centre of the woollen industry migrated north and trading patterns changed. The weekly market became less important and finally closed. However, what we have now is a small, beautiful, medieval town of Cotswold stone thriving on a different mix of commerce and tourism.