Chilton

Posting this on 31st October 2017

Back in 1989, the Swedish furniture store group IKEA were still pretty much unknown in the UK, the first store being opened in 1989 in Warrington. Much too far away from our West Sussex home for a family Saturday shopping trip.

My diary says we went to Habitat's Oxford store, if my memory serves me well, somewhere on the outskirts on an industrial estate. We were apparently there from 11:00am to 5:00pm. We bought a "Chilton" Desk and a bookcase - presumably they didn't have names for all their furniture and missed out on the very simple idea of "Billy", which IKEA had sold 41 million of from 1978 to 2009 and still going strong.

See that Habitat has gone through troubled times since I left the UK shores in 1990 and is as good as dead. Strangely there seems to be a strong internet shop presence in Germany!

I still have the desk and am using it as I write this entry. I can't blip it as there isn't a single square inch of cleared desk to show the then very "In" pine.

The scanned delivery note shows a strange version of "Chilton". Looks like "Chiloon" or "Chilvon" or even "Chiluon" but my diary shows clearly "Chilton" which makes more sense given that Habitat's Design Centre was in Wallingford, Oxfordshire.