Riverside Art

Just West of Bill’s over the bridge this complex houses some serious competition. There are several businesses in here. Good food and coffee PLUS a sweetie shop. The chocolates will tempt you! If they don’t.the sausages will!

Staying on a seaside tip, Riverside Art is a cute stall that specialises in framed prints and photos of the sea and the south coast. If the shop was in an arch or beach hut on Brighton sea-​front I imagine it would be a big hit with tourists. Unfortunately, it’s in the Riverside Shopping Centre in Lewes and was dead the day I wandered round.
I quite liked Gil Copeland’s photos and Liz Jameson’s cloud and sea oil paintings but the rest of the work was a little too picture-​postcard to hold my attention. Likewise, the seaside paraphenalia dotted round — from wooden fish and seagulls to seahorse mobiles — seemed a bit cliched and old fashioned compared to a lot of contemporary home décor.

Riverside Art is one of the stalls in the Riverside Centre. It sells what I would call toilet art — I don’t mean that quite as derogatorily as it sounds — I just mean that it’s all pictures of the sea/​boats/​coastline etc. The sort of pictures people put in toilets and bathrooms. They sell some canvas prints, about 1m squared, down to little postcard sized paintings, and a few greetings cards. Nothing is hugely expensive, the large prints are about £120 or so, but it’s not a very inspiring selection. I’m not an art connoisseur or anything, but I can’t really see why anyone would fork out over £100 for an bland, middle-​of-​the-​road seascape when you could probably get something similar at Ikea for about £30.

The river side is a great litte place to stop for lunch and do a little shopping. There a couple of places serving food and a good butchers (haggis)and a fishmonger selling locally caught fish. A very good sweet/​chocolate shop and florist, and my favorite, a cheese shop selling a great selection of local cheeses and information on all the products. I have had pictures framed upstairs at the gallery, where they are very helpful and not too expensive either!

This shopping & eating experience is on a small scale but big on local produce. Its a venue that suits all tastes. Here can be found 2x licensed restaurants, fish monger, cheese shop, florist, butcher, sweet shop, gallery and craft shop. What more can a shopper need?
The stall holders are happy to talk about their products. They seem to be really into their stock.

This is a small shopping development specialising in food and arts and crafts. It is located in an attractive Victorian building, which in its 140-​year life has been a shoe factory, engineering works and a garage and car-​repair works. As the name suggests, it is next to the bridge over the River Ouse.
It has now been fully renovated into a small but bright
shopping facility, with two cafes, a florist, butcher, fishmonger, cheese shop, chocolatier, a small commercial art gallery and a craft shop.
It’s a little cramped inside, but the stalls are lovely to wander around, and it adds a little character to Cliffe High Street.