Shopping Centres? I've Seen A Mall! Quiz

Answer: It is built at the bottom of an old chalk quarry

Its location at the bottom of a quarry means that Bluewater avoids being a blot on the Kent landscape, as well as providing the developers with a readily available 240-acre flat site. At the time of its opening in 1999, its 154,000 square metres of sales floor was the largest in Europe.

Answer: True

England's Church Commissioners financed the construction of the Gateshead MetroCentre in the 1980s as an investment, although they sold 90% of their stake in 1995. The chapel remains, however, and services are held every Sunday afternoon for shoppers weary of worshipping at the altar of Mammon.

Answer: Essex

Lakeside opened in 1990, and is only a few miles as the crow flies from the newer Bluewater Centre in Kent, although the River Thames provides a bit of a barrier between the two. At Lakeside, the main shopping centre area is augmented by two adjacent retail parks, one also named Lakeside and the other named The Junction. Together, the whole area provides enough shopping to satisfy the most materialistic of Essex girls.

For those who do not recognise the term, the term "Home Counties" is traditionally given to those counties which directly border London. By this definition, the true Home Counties are Essex, Kent, Surrey and Middlesex, although the term is sometimes extended to include Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and East and West Sussex.

Answer: Manchester

Sports fans will have recognised the connection between Manchester and Trafford, with both Manchester United Football Club and Lancashire County Cricket Club playing at grounds named "Old Trafford". Architecturally, the Trafford Centre is distinguished by its spectacular mixture of baroque and art-deco details, very different from the usual bland glass and metal of other UK out-of-town shopping centres.

Answer: Olympic and Paralympic Games

Westfield Stratford City was the second Westfield shopping Centre to open in London, after the successful Shepherd's Bush site. It was deliberately intended to serve the crowds of people expected to visit the Olympic Park in 2012, with the majority of visitors who arrived by public transport having to go through the shopping centre to get to the main Olympic Stadium. With the post-2012 plans for the Olympic site already in place, its future also seems assured.

Answer: Selfridges

The ultra-modern design for this portion of the Bullring Centre was by the Future Systems company, and won a number of architectural awards. Contrary to popular belief, the surface is not coated in millions of unsold "Take That" CDs, but is formed from over 15,000 aluminium discs.

Answer: West

This is not in fact a trick question, as Shepherd's Bush is very firmly in west London. The name Westfield has nothing to do with its location, however, but comes from that of its developer, the Australian-based Westfield Group. Three years later, the company opened Westfield Stratford City, around 12 miles away on the east side of the city.

Answer: Nottingham Victoria Railway Station

Nottingham Victoria closed in 1967, and most of the station buildings were demolished, apart from the clock tower. The clock tower is not in fact the Victoria Centre's most notable timekeeping feature. Since 1973, it has been home to the "Aqua Horological Tintinnabulator", a spectacular water-powered clock designed by Roland Emett (1906-1990), who also built Caractacus Pott's inventions for the film "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang".

Answer: Steelworks

Sheffield was famous for its cutlery as long ago as the sixteenth century, and the process for manufacturing stainless steel was invented there in 1912. During the second half of the twentieth century, however, almost all of Sheffield's steelworks closed, leaving the space for new developments such as the Meadowhall Centre, which is situated roughly halfway between Sheffield and Rotherham.

It has a sales floor of around 132,000 square metres, and when it opening in 1990 was the second-largest shopping centre in the UK.

Answer: False

This urban myth still survives in the Bristol area, despite Cribb's Causeway being shown as a road name on a map dating from before Tom Cribb's birth in 1781. The true origin is not known, although the road itself dates back to Roman times. The shopping centre, which is simply named after the road, opened in 1998, adjacent to Junction 17 of the M5 motorway.