Then and now – changing Dundee: The Wellgate

It’s 45 years since the Wellgate shopping centre opened. Explore the history of the area and building with the Archives. The Wellgate, which once connected the Murraygate with the Hilltown and formed part of a major route to the north was historically one of Dundee’s main thoroughfares.  Yet while its name lives on, no trace of the actual street survives today.

As can be seen on Crawford’s 1776 map of Dundee, by the late 18^th century the street was already crowded with buildings. It can also be seen at this time it was the home of some industry with a few thread works located in the area. The construction of Victoria Road, replacing the narrow Bucklemaker Wynd as part of the improvements to Dundee in the 1870s, posed a problem for the Wellgate as the new street was significantly wider than its predecessor making a sharper gradient for the street to join it. As a result, the Wellgate became curved at the top so as to join it, with the original line of the road being replaced by the Wellgate steps which became a famous Dundee landmark.

The Wellgate itself became home to many popular shops. In the 1960s these included Wm Hunter the drapers, Johnston’s Stores, Grafton’s Sportswear and Henderson & Co.

However, by then parts of the Wellgate and the surrounding area were seen as past their best and old-fashioned. Thus, repeating what had happened with the Overgate a decade or so earlier, the Wellgate and the streets around it were demolished in the 1970s to make way for a shopping centre.

The new Wellgate Centre, with shops over three levels, opened in 1978.  Its main entrance was on the bottom floor where the old street had joined the Murraygate, with a second entrance on the top floor reached from the new Wellgate Steps down from Victoria Road. The complex also included a new home for Dundee’s Central Library attached to it and a multi-storey carpark.

In the early days the Wellgate’s main stores were a large branch of British Home Stores, which occupied nearly all of the ground floor and which had a large restaurant on the floor above, and Tesco which occupied a large chunk of the middle floor. The top floor featured the beloved Wellgate Clock. Offering superb nursery-rhyme based chimes with accompanying performances by automata, the clock quickly became popular with Dundee’s children and a city icon. Unlike much of the early Wellgate Centre, it has survived to this day. although the Patio Cafe beneath it has long gone.

The top floor also contained the Market Hall (later In Shops) which contained several small retailers including green grocers, a pet shop and sweetshops. It eventually closed in the late 1990s.

The 1990s saw major changes for the Wellgate Centre. At the start of the decade Tesco moved out following the opening of its new store in Riverside. Shortly afterwards a major redevelopment saw the interior of the Centre radically altered and more shops being added, notable a Virgin Megastore and a large branch of Woolworths.

While the 1980s and 1990s had seen the Wellgate thrive as Dundee’s main shopping centre, the rebuilding of the Overgate Centre meant that as the twenty first century started its status was under serious challenge and in the years that followed some shops departed from it.

The Wellgate, like the nearby Murraygate with which it has traditionally shared shoppers, has also suffered from the failure of many well-known high street stores which were based there including  British Home Stores, Woolworths and T J Hughes.  Several ideas for further redevelopment and repurposing of the Wellgate Centre have been mooted, even including its demolition and restoring the old street, but so far none have come to fruition.