Wonder of Woolies

Derek Phillips

Description

Do you remember Melba chocolate, spud guns, Embassy records, pick 'n' mix, broken biscuits, Homemaker china, Californian Poppy perfume, and Ladybird children's clothes? Then you will love the book that brings these, and many other memories, flooding back. The Wonder of Woolies is a celebration of that great British store - Woolworth's - in the words of people who worked and shopped there. In addition to memories from every corner of Britain, the book describes the rise of the '3d and 6d store' king, Frank Winfield Woolworth, and some of the dramatic events that marked Woolworth's history, such as the bombing of the Deptford store in 1944.

Sujets

• Histoire

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 10 août 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781911105084
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 14 Mo

Extrait

THE WONDER OF WOOLIES
Memories from both sides of the counter of Britain’s best-loved sto re
compiled by
Derek Phillips




First published in 2009 by
Footplate Publishing
a forerunner of Chaplin Books
1 Eliza Place
Gosport PO12 4UN
www.chaplinbooks.co.uk
Digital edition converted and distributed in 2016 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
Copyright © 2009, 2016 Derek Phillips
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright holder for which application should be addressed in the first instance to the publishers. No liability shall be attached to the author, the copyright holder or the publishers for loss or damage of any nature suffered as a result of the reliance on the reproduction of any of the contents of this publication or any errors or omissions in the contents.
The views and opinions expressed herein belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Chaplin Books or Andrews UK Limited



Acknowledgements
This book was made possible through the generosity of so many former Woolworth’s staff and shoppers in sharing their stories, memories and photographs. In addition I would like to thank the Imperial War Museum, Scottish Tramway and Transport Society, Wallace and Scott Brooks, Western Daily Press and Western Gazette for their kind permission to reproduce photographs.
Derek Phillips



Foreword
by Paul Atterbury
of The Antiques Roadshow
I grew up in the 1950s in Westerham, a small town in west Kent. It was a pleasant place, typical of its time and enjoyed a certain fame through its associations with General Wolfe and Sir Winston Churchill. Like all such towns, it was self-contained and self-sufficient. The main street was lined with independent shops of every kind, the owners of which were generally well- known and friendly. There was a toyshop, a bookshop and a big shop selling stationery: as a small boy, these spanned the limits of my interest.
We had a couple of national names, Boots and Cullens, but even these shops seemed essentially local. It was a regular treat, therefore, to visit bigger towns nearby, usually by bus, and to come into contact with a wider world. The highlight for me of such visits was the sight of the distinctive red façade of Woolworth’s. This was truly a wonderful place, filled with an unbelievable variety of temptations. It was a shop of astonishing diversity and I could never tire of wandering up and down its colourful aisles. The nearest branch was quite small but outings to grandparents brought me into contact with much larger ones, such as Kingston-on-Thames.
And occasionally, as I grew older, my grandmother took me on day trips to London, trips that usually included visits to a Lyons Corner House and a major branch of Woolworth’s, the size and richness of which simply took my breath away.
My interests then were focussed on sweets, toys and games but as I grew older my horizons opened out, taking in clothes and shoes, fishing equipment, tools and paint, magazines and gramophone records. Like many people of my generation, I simply took Woolworth’s for granted.
It was always there, always somewhere that would have that odd thing I was looking for. The decades rolled by but somehow it survived, always looking much the same. It was just a fixed point in the high street, a comforting certainty in every part of Britain, the chain store where everyone felt at home.
From the 1970s the high street began to change. Local shops vanished, replaced by an ever-increasing variety of national names and big brands, and bit by bit every town in Britain came to look the same. In the midst of all this flashy sameness, Woolworth’s came to represent traditional values and local interests, an irony as it was actually one of the first national, even international, names to enter our streets.
There were changes in style and presentation as Woolworth’s struggled to keep up to date and fight off the competition. There were changes in ownership and each new corporate owner promised to bring this valuable brand into the modern world. They all failed, inevitably, and their frantic efforts merely served to destroy that indefinable individuality that had made Woolworth’s so distinctive, so successful and so loved, and thereby hastened its end. It was a tragedy when the name finally vanished from our streets but no-one was really surprised.
Everyone enjoys the occasional wallow in nostalgia and ever popular are old views of the villages, towns and cities of Britain, especially those that focus on the high street and its flanking shops.
There is an immediate sense of period, whether the view, often a postcard, shows the 1920s, the 1950s or the 1970s, a sense defined by cars and buses, by the clothes and hairstyles and above all by the shops. And in the centre of so many of these views, occupying a prime position in the high streets of Britain, and instantly recognisable, is Woolworth’s, that fixed point in our memories and our experiences that helped to define shopping in the twentieth century.
This book, with its remarkable collection of memories and photographs, celebrates those experiences, and commemorates a name that was at the heart of family life for so many decades.
Paul Atterbury


Paul Atterbury



Introduction
The announcement in 2008 that Woolworth’s, one of the longest-established and most respected retail chains of all time was going into administration - with every shop closing and every member of staff being made redundant - came as a real shock. The British economy was already reeling from the collapse of banks and other financial institutions, the ‘credit crunch’ that followed in its wake, and the loss of tens of thousands of homes and jobs. The sparkle of Woolworth’s had undoubtedly dimmed in recent years, but somehow we thought it would always be there, a ‘marker ’in our high streets that was familiar not just to us, but to our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents too.
The departure of Woolworth’s from our towns and cities featured nightly on television news programmes. Staff were shown close to tears, understandable because of the loss of their jobs with so little warning. What was extraordinary, perhaps, was that customers were close to tears too: there was a real sense that something had changed irrevocably, and not for the better. I am unable to think of any retail name whose demise has produced quite this reaction: it was as if people had received the news of the loss of an old friend with whom they had shared so many experiences. Just the fact that the shop had a nickname - ‘Woolies’ - speaks volumes about the affection in which people held it.
In the final days, the packed shelves emptied out as people fought over the last few items. Suddenly, the stark metal racking was revealed and it was a little like seeing through the trick at a magic show - the illusion that Woolies had sustained for so long had gone. Even the shelving itself was being stripped down and sold on the spot at knockdown prices, like stripping the carcass of a once-mighty animal.
In its later years, Woolworth’s had been a shadow of its former self: still bright and brash but hardly a source of wonder. In its heyday, it was the place you went with your parents to buy buttons, dress material, shoelaces, lampshades, tin tacks, broken biscuits and paper chains. If you were good, you could persuade them over to the counters that sold lead soldiers, comics, peanuts and banana split toffee. Later you went with your friends, to loiter by the record counter and listen to the latest hits. It was always packed with crowds of eager shoppers jostling for the attention of the shop-girls behind the wooden counters, and claiming that they were next to be served.
In modernising, something of this old atmosphere was lost, though Frank Woolworth, the chain’s founder, would have approved of the introduction of self-service, which had always been one of his aims. Personally I still found the stores inviting, and loved to wander around, even if I had no intention of buying anything - there was a bargain to be discovered. On holiday, whatever town we visited, we always seemed to head for Woolies, especially when our children were young, buying pick ’n’ mix - situated temptingly just inside the doorway - or eating a fried breakfast in the upstairs cafeteria. It was something of a holiday tradition: as a boy in the late 1940s with my parents on our once-a-year trip to Weymouth, we bought sticks of peppermint rock. Naturally, Woolworth’s had the cheapest in town.
The sight of empty shuttered Woolworth’s shops in our high streets does little to lift the spirits. But dip into the pages of this book and you will find that Woolies is alive and well in people’s memories. From both sides of the counter - staff and shoppers - and across several generations, the anecdotes abound. There are stories that will make you laugh, such as the one about the stockroom boys cleaning the floor with caustic soda, a solution that not only removed all the dirt, but also removed the stitching from their fashionable Teddy Boy shoes. There are a few stories that might well make you cry, too, such as when a sales girl was reprimanded for talking too long to a sailor while she was supposed to be serving: the sailor was her brother and he was lost at sea with his ship the very next day. Most of all, it is in the accompanying photographs - of proud employees lining up with their manager, or of a treasured ornament bought more than 40 years ago - that the true spi