Swindon’s Old Town has a new specialist shop. The Oche Shop opened in Godwin Court on Saturday 7 November, with a ribbon-cutting watched by local players and their families.
The shop is owned by Darren and Angela Jesson and sells boards, flights and the rest of the kit a player needs. What an online order cannot offer is the back room, where several practice lanes have been set up for anyone to use free of charge. ‘For me this is about giving people a safe space, where they can come and grow their skills,’ Darren told the Swindon Advertiser at the opening.
He has worked in retail all his life, and the shop keeps a promise made to a friend and former colleague, Adam Birt. The two had planned to open a shop together before Adam died at the age of 50. His picture now sits behind the counter.
The Swindon store follows recent openings in Exeter and Minehead, all of them grown from what began as an online shop. It is open from 10am to 5.30pm Monday to Saturday and from 10.30am to 4.30pm on Sundays, in a unit that had stood empty since estate agent Atwell Martin moved out earlier this year. The couple’s sons work alongside them, and once the shop has settled in Darren hopes to host office events and parties there too.
A darts shop on a high street would have been a hard sell a few years ago. Swindon’s own league has noticed the change. When the Arkell’s Darts League opened its finals night at The Moonrakers to the public in 2024, it pointed to the growing popularity of the game and to the success of Luke Littler, and brought in Wayne Mardle and Scott Mitchell as guests.
The World Championship is where most of that new interest lands. This year’s tournament, sponsored by the bookmaker Paddy Power, begins at Alexandra Palace on Friday 11 December and ends with the final on Sunday 3 January. Afternoon and evening sessions fill most days in between, the quarter-finals fall on New Year’s Day, and tickets were allocated by ballot for the first time, according to the PDC’s guide to this year’s tournament.
Bookmakers pile into the same three weeks. Lakeside World Darts, which ranks the best darts betting sites for the whole PDC season, tested ten bookmakers with funded accounts during live matches and checked whether each offered set betting, leg handicaps and most-180s markets on an ordinary Players Championship day as well as at Alexandra Palace. Most passed at the World Championship. On Tour events, by its own account, ‘the field thins out considerably’.
Those Tour events, played on weeknights without a stage or a crowd, make up most of a professional’s year. They are the nearest thing the professional game has to a league night at the Tawny Owl or the Old Bear, two of the pubs with players in the league’s 2025 finals. The bookmakers may lose interest once the final is over. A shop with a row of free practice lanes is counting on Swindon not doing the same.
The opening comes while traders across the town centre and Old Town are being asked to vote on a Business Improvement District that could put more than £2.5 million into the area over five years. Ash Jesson, the eldest of the sons, said the family hoped the shop would add to the independents already trading nearby. For anyone who fancies a few throws before the World Championship starts, the lanes are free and the door opens at ten.
