Jersey's Forgotten Businesses: The Shops, Cafes and Attractions We Still Miss

Every islander has one: the shop, cafe or day out that closed and left a gap. Why do we miss them so much — and what did they teach us?

Which closed Jersey business do you still miss? Ask that in any office and you'll get an instant, emotional answer. For some it's Tamba Park's dinosaurs, for others aMaizin's maze, a town cafe that knew your order, or a video shop that felt like Friday night. Why do these losses sting more here than in a big city?

Because on an island, a business is never just a business. When aMaizin! Adventure Park at La Hougue Farm closed on 31st August 2025 after almost 25 years, it wasn't just 90,000 visitors a year losing a day out. It was birthday parties, school trips, wet-Sunday lifelines and after-school jobs gone in one go. Owners Carlton and Kristina Le Feuvre didn't close because no one came — membership was at an all-time high — they retired after two decades and no one could take it on. That hurts differently from a bankruptcy.

Tamba Park tells a similar story with a longer ache. Closed since 2019 after a promised refurbishment, its dinosaurs never roared again despite talk of a bigger Center Parcs-style vision and planning wrangles. TripAdvisor still shows families turning up to locked gates. The old Playbarn at aMaizin is now earmarked as artists' hub Under One Roof — a nice idea, but not somewhere you can take a wired seven-year-old in October half-term.

Food and retail losses linger too. Who doesn't miss a favourite? The original Jersey Pottery showroom and cafe at Gorey, now evolved into JPRestaurants, was a coach-tour staple. Ormer on Don Street, relaunched as Samphire in 2018, still confuses regulars. Number 10 on Bond Street, now Bond Street Social, hosted a thousand anniversaries. Even small ones — Vienna Bakery's old branches, a beloved Central Market stall, a parish pub kitchen that changed hands — get talked about years later because we all went there together.

Why did they go? The pattern repeats: retirement without succession, rents that no longer work, post-Covid debts, staffing gaps and visitor numbers that never fully recovered. Visits to June 2025 were down 16% year-on-year, with 54,300 fewer sea visitors and 47,700 fewer air visitors. For the year to October 2025 visits were down 18%, leisure down 24%, spend at £262.6m down 10% and £37m below target. La Mare down 20%, Durrell's lowest year since the pandemic in 2024 down 16%. When trusts feel it, family-run mazes and cafes feel it more.

Could we have saved them? Sometimes yes. High streets everywhere need succession planning — helping owners sell as going concerns, not just sites. Planning could treat kids' attractions as infrastructure, with help on rates, staff housing and ferry-inclusive tickets. Locals could use them in winter, not just August. Ministers now admit Jersey is a high-price destination where product doesn't always meet expectation; investing in facilities, as Seymour Hotels' Matt Seymour urged after last summer's perfect storm, matters.

What should we do with the nostalgia? Use it. Visit the survivors — Jersey Zoo since 1963, Jersey War Tunnels, Pallot Steam Museum, Samares Manor, La Corbiere at low tide, Jersey Bowl as TambaBowl, the Maritime Museum. Book the Harbour Gallery, CCA Galleries, the Opera House and Arts Centre. Eat at the Hungry Man at Rozel since 1947, Colleen's at Greve de Lecq, the Old Smugglers at Ouaisne. Every ticket, coffee and cake is a vote for keeping the next favourite open.

I drove past La Hougue Farm weeks after aMaizin shut and the empty car park felt wrong. We can't bring back every dinosaur, but we can learn: support local in February as well as August, celebrate owners before they retire, and tell the next generation why these places mattered. That's how an island remembers — and rebuilds.