Former Woolworths, Princes Street, Edinburgh (29 Jan 2012)

Earlier on I wrote about Edinburgh’s first Woolworths – in Leith – which opened in January 1925, but it was over a year later before Edinburgh city centre gained its own flagship store (#213) at 10-14 Princes Street.

As immortalised in the c1930s postcard below, the store occupied a prime spot on the corner of Princes Street and Waterloo Place, directly opposite the notoriously bracing Waverley Steps. It seems fitting that I should visit Edinburgh the day before the revamped Waverley Steps opened to the public: a project that should make the ‘getting the wind up’ postcard scene a thing of the past.

'Getting the wind up Waverley Steps' postcard, c1930s

The Woolies history site at 100thbirthday.co.uk portrays the Princes Street Woolworths as not just a flagship for Edinburgh but for the whole of Scotland. Happily, the store’s prominent location and status means that it shows up in plenty of old photographs, such as the examples below (click to enlarge).

Undated (early 1900s) postcard view of Woolworths, Princes Street, Edinburgh

1930s postcard view of Woolworths, Princes Street, Edinburgh

In typical Woolies fashion, the store enjoyed a succession of extensions and modernisations over the years, including taking over the site of the Palace Cinema, further along Princes Street (and pictured here), in 1956. The cinema was demolished and a four-bay extension built in identical style to the existing nine-bay Woolworths frontage to Princes Street. You can see the difference very clearly by comparing this shot, on the ScotlandsPlaces website (styled with no apostrophe – sorry!), with my present-day shot from the identical spot.

Former Woolworths, Princes Street, Edinburgh (29 Jan 2012)

As was the typical fate of Woolworths’ biggest shops, however, the Princes Street store was promptly disposed of following Kingfisher’s 1982 takeover of F W Woolworth’s UK operations, closing its doors on 24 March 1984.

Unusually, though, the store’s closure left Edinburgh without a centrally located Woolworths store at all, unlike other large cities in the 1980s – such as Leeds, Sheffield and Newcastle – where a smaller store remained open even after the flagship Woolies’ disposal. Until the chain’s eventual collapse in 2008, shoppers in Edinburgh city centre had to make do with the Woolworths stores in either Lothian Road or Raeburn Place – both a good ten-minute walk from Princes Street, and the focus of my upcoming third and final post on Edinburgh’s Woolworths.

The Princes Street property, meanwhile, was divided up into a series of smaller shop units, which, until recently, housed retailers such as Waterstones (no apostrophe there now either), Evans, Boots and Burger King.

The nearby St James Shopping Centre, Edinburgh (29 Jan 2012)

Now, however, the block is once again subject to refurbishment, involving a £12m mixed hotel, leisure and retail scheme that will complement the planned (and much-needed) redevelopment of the nearby St James Shopping centre – as the new St James Quarter – as well as the arrival of the tram. Princes Street’s former Woolworths, unlike the Leith store that I wrote about previously, is at least on the part of the route that is still going to be built.

In the meantime, it’s quite nice how the departure of the previous retail tenants and the removal of their visual clutter briefly allows the building at 10-14 Princes Street to be appreciated as originally intended – as a single entity once more, and a reminder of when it played host to Scotland’s mnost prestigious Woolies.

Lamppost banner showing Leith's Woolworths and tram line - both now defunct (29 Jan 2012)

Last week I blogged about the former Woolworths sites in Hawick and Galashiels, making reference to the relative dearth of Woolies stores in the Scottish Borders.

Head up the road to Edinburgh, however – as I did last weekend – and there’s no such issue. By my reckoning, the city has played host to eight Woolworths stores over the years, and I managed to sneak six of those into my itinerary – the first of which we’ll talk about in a moment.

The remaining two – a traditional Woolworths store at Corstorphine (store #1100, now Benson for Beds), and the former Big W at Milton Link (#1208, and still empty as far as I know) – at least give me an excuse to revisit the beautiful and vibrant Scottish capital before too long.

Former Woolworths (now British Heart Foundation), Leith (29 Jan 2012)

From Woolworths opening its first British shop on 5 November 1909, Edinburgh had to wait a surprisingly long time – until 31 January 1925 – before gaining a Woolies store (#180) of its own. Even then, the shop was at 170-174 Constitution Street in the port of Leith, at the Foot Of The Walk, rather than in Edinburgh proper.

The building, however, clearly predates Woolworths’ arrival (as shown in the early 1900s postcard below), the opening coming a few years before the chain began investing in purpose-built stores in significant numbers.

Early 1900s postcard of the Foot of the Walk, pre-Woolworths

The Leith store lasted until Woolworths’ collapse – closing its doors on 27 December 2008 – and is now, like quite a few other ex-Woolies elsewhere, partially occupied by one of the British Heart Foundation’s furniture and electrical shops. However, my other half’s beady eyes spotted a nearby lamppost banner, promoting Edinburgh’s much-talked-about tram system, on which Leith’s Woolworths still lives on.

Lamppost banner showing former Woolworths, Leith (29 Jan 2012)

Whoever’s behind the poster might well ‘Love Leith’, but showcasing a defunct shop and a tram line that’s no longer going as far as Leith seems a slightly unfortunate way of declaring it!

Former Woolworths (now Farmfoods), Hawick (29 May 2011)

With a visit to Edinburgh imminent – which will no doubt involve at least one or two Woolies-spotting detours – I figured it was time to do something with some previous Scottish photographs that I’ve had lurking in my archive.

The focus, then, of this post is the Scottish Borders – an area more than twice the size of County Durham, but one that offers fairly slim pickings as far as former Woolworths sites are concerned.

As far as I’m aware, only the county’s two largest towns ever had a Woolies store. Hawick (store #413), opened at 46 High Street in about 1930, followed by Galashiels (store #486) on 22 October 1932; both lasted until the chain’s eventual collapse in 2008. In contrast, settlements such as Selkirk, Kelso and Peebles seem to have missed out, even though Woolworths did, at various times, have stores in similar-sized small towns elsewhere (such as Launceston and Barnard Castle).

As you might expect, given its age, the Hawick store’s appearance is typical of the purpose-built 1930s small-town Woolworths, with all the usual features – symmetrical frontage, five bays, central pediment – present and correct. Indeed, as you can see from comparing the two shots below, the frontage is almost identical in scale and style to that of the contemporaneous Penrith store (#416).

Former Woolworths (now Farmfoods), Hawick (29 May 2011)

Former Woolworths (now B&M Bargains), Penrith (19 Jun 2010)

As is normally the case, however, the Hawick store’s elegant original shopfront – shown in the 1931 photograph, below – was replaced with the latterday Woolies one in the 1960s, recognisable across the country by its black granite stall riser and metal-framed doors and glazing. At some point, the original brick and stonework was also covered with a not especially appealing coat of cream-coloured paint.

Woolworths, Hawick, in 1931. Photograph courtesy of Ettrick Graphics

Like many of the value retailers that have taken over former Woolworths locations, the new occupant, Farmfoods, has chosen to keep the existing shopfront as it is, ensuring that it will still look like an old Woolies for some time to come!

Former Woolworths (now Farmfoods), Hawick (29 May 2011)

Galashiels’ store at 25 Channel Street, from a couple of years later, is similarly typical of the ‘stretched’ frontage that was used for larger stores in the 1930s.

Former Woolworths (now Home Bargains), Galashiels (27 Dec 2011)

Here, however, the incoming tenant – value retailer Home Bargains – has adopted its usual approach of installing a brand-new dark-grey shopfront, echoing the investment that it’s made in other former Woolies sites such as Tamworth, Berwick-upon-Tweed (below) and Prestatyn.

Former Woolworths (now Home Bargains), Berwick-upon-Tweed (24 Aug 2010)

However, whereas those stores all feature Home Bargains’ toned-down ‘heritage’ signage in burgundy and grey, Galashiels gets the standard red and pale blue version – and the fascia lights up, too. A contact at Home Bargains once told me that the more discreet signage is used when local planners are unhappy with the more garish alternative; one can only imagine that the planners in Galashiels didn’t make as much fuss as the others, as Channel Street certainly has as much historic character – and probably more – than Tamworth’s George Street.

Channel Street, Galashiels (27 Dec 2011)

The fading light when I visited last month meant that I only spent a short time in Galashiels, but my impression of Channel Street was of quite a handsome thoroughfare. It was only let down, I felt, by the steady stream of buses (a slightly curious experience, given that the road surface was more akin to that of a pedestrianised street), and by the proliferation of rather second-rate retail names.

Galashiels does have some big-name stores – among them Next, M&S Simply Food, Boots and New Look – but these are located slightly away from the centre at the fairly new Gala Water Retail Park. There’s also a large Asda behind the retail park, opened at the same time, and a longer-established Tesco that includes a pedestrian link between the new developments and the original town centre.

Taken together, there’s no doubt that Galashiels has a reasonably strong retail offer for a town of its size, but I couldn’t help thinking that Channel Street felt like a hotchpotch of shops that were left over – a high street without an anchor, and that no longer felt like an obvious destination.

When even Boots has left Channel Street to move over to the retail park, there’s clearly a job to do in reassessing and reinventing what Galashiels’ traditional town centre is for. Perhaps the reopening of the Waverley Line as the new Borders Railway – scheduled for December 2014 – will, as Transport Scotland hopes, “inject a new lease of life into an area that has not been served by a mainline railway for over 40 years”.

High Street and Town Hall, Hawick (29 May 2011)

Hawick, in contrast, will only get its train service back if the reopened Borders Railway is ever extended beyond the present intended terminus at Tweedbank. Compared to Galashiels, however, it has less of an issue with out-of-town retail, and a high street that is packed with character and lovely buildings – most notably the fabulous Town Hall in the Scots baronial style.

Former Almstrongs department store, Hawick (29 May 2011)

Visiting last May, however, I was struck by the number of empty shops – including Almstrongs, a closed-down independent department store – and by the high street’s overall quietness on a Bank Holiday Sunday. Even finding a place to eat was quite a challenge, with the local cafés (not open on Sunday) losing out on our cash to the ubiquitous Wetherspoon’s.

High Street, Hawick (29 May 2011)

Yet, of all the country’s high streets, Hawick is fortunate in having a fantastic sense of place, with fine buildings, a rich history, and a great heritage (continuing today) as a centre for knitwear production. Overall, it felt like a town that could be doing a lot more, Hexham-or Barnard-Castle-style, to capitalise on its assets: promoting independent retailers, and developing and marketing itself to both locals and potential tourists as an attractive destination to shop, eat and linger.

On my retail-related travels over the last three years, I’ve visited more than 150 town centres across the country – and some of those start from a position of having few historic assets, or are saddled with a dreary and soulless 1960s shopping precinct that only demolition will remedy.

It’s time that the powers-that-be in our more characterful centres – like Galashiels and Hawick – realised what fantastic potential those places have, and showed creativity, innovation and foresight in creating a modern and distinctive high street that can still thrive in an age of online and Internet retailing.

Many thanks to Ettrick Graphics for giving me permission to reproduce the 1931 photograph of Hawick Woolworths.

91-93 Linthorpe Road, Middlesbrough (4 May 2011)

After making my first visit to Middlesbrough’s most recent former Woolworths – the site of today’s Discount UK – back in September 2009, Soult’s Retail View readers Ali Brown and Gareth Hill helped to reveal that the town had, in fact, hosted four previous Woolies stores at different times.

Having managed to locate and photograph the last of those just last week, now seems like an opportune time to piece all the fragments together, and to finally tell the story of Middlesbrough’s Woolworths – starting more than a century ago – in chronological order.

1) Store #8 – 91-93 Linthorpe Road

91-93 Linthorpe Road, Middlesbrough (4 May 2011)

If they were asked to name the location of the first ever Woolworths in the North East, many people would assume that it was in Newcastle.

In fact, Newcastle had to wait until 1913 to gain its first Woolworths (store #27, on the site of today’s Peacocks in Northumberland Street) – two years after the region’s first Woolies (store #8) had already set up shop at 91-93 Linthorpe Road in Middlesbrough, on 10 June 1911.

Back then, it must have been quite some accolade for Middlesbrough to secure only the eighth Woolworths store in the country, following on from those that had already opened in Liverpool (two stores), Preston, Manchester, Leeds, Hull and Brixton.

Interestingly, the fact that Woolworths ever had a store at nos. 91-93 is in danger of being forgotten, with more than one source wrongly stating that the store was always along the street at nos. 51-67: the site of Middlesbrough’s largest and most-remembered Woolworths store, but not the original location. 100thBirthday.co.uk makes that mistake, while even Woolies’ own staff magazine, The New Bond, erroneously refers in its December 1958 edition to the site of the “original store” being “rebuilt and enlarged”.

1913 postcard showing Middlesbrough's Woolworths at 91-93 Linthorpe Road on the left. Image courtesy of Ali Brown

A similar view of Linthorpe Road today (5 Jan 2012)

Happily, evidence for the original location exists in both photographic and written form. Ali Brown alerted me to a 1913 postcard that she’d acquired (above), in which the Woolworths fascia is clearly visible on the far left, within the handsome property that is still today nos. 91-93. The comparable present-day shot shows just how much of the surrounding streetscape has changed.

Referring to the store as a “fancy bazaar”, the 1913 Kelly’s Directory of North and East Ridings of Yorkshire (below) also confirms Woolworths’ address as 91-93 Linthorpe Road, and correctly places it – together with the landmark (but now-demolished) Wright’s Tower House – between the still-extant Davison Street and Grange Road West.

Extract from 1913 Kelly's Directory for the North Riding (p.216)

One thing I haven’t quite pinned down yet is when exactly Woolworths vacated nos. 91-93 in order to move into the bigger premises at 51-67.

The 1913 Kelly’s Directory lists the Central Buildings block between Newport Crescent and Gilkes Street – what would later become the new Woolworths – as still housing the Middlesbrough Co-operative Society Limited, Huggins Bros’ warehouse, Francis Wilson (bootmaker) and Miss Annie Holt (milliner). However, 100thBirthday.co.uk shows what it claims is a 1920s view of Woolworths already moved into this new location, while the image on the Valentine’s postcard below – in which Woolworths is clearly visible in its new premises on the left - must date, according to the publisher’s own numbering system, from the 1940s.

1940s Valentine postcard of Woolworths at 51-67 Linthorpe Road, Middlesbrough

Whenever exactly Woolworths left, 91-93 Linthorpe Road is most well known these days as the former home of BBC Radio Teesside – renamed BBC Radio Cleveland in 1974, and known today as BBC Tees – between 1970 and 1984. Today, however, both the ground and upper floors remain empty as a succession of temporary occupants have been and gone, most recently the outlet clothing store Alias.

Hopefully, before long, a new and permanent occupant will be found that befits this striking and historically interesting building.

Coming in part 2: Store #8 – 51-67 Linthorpe Road

Notice by travelator, former Big W, Loughborough (15 Dec 2011). Photograph by Steve Hack

Loughborough’s former Big W at The Rushes Shopping Centre may have reopened as a Tesco in February last year, but Soult’s Retail View reader Steve Hack recently spotted a fragment of the building’s Woolies past that lives on.

In the car park, a notice by the travelator still informs shoppers that payment can be made at the Pay Station located on the “Upper Level in front of Big W”. The sign conjures up a vaguely amusing image of customers wandering around in vain looking for the aforementioned Big W – after all, even before Woolies went bust in 2008, the Loughborough store (#1254), just like Stockton and others, had long since been rebranded as a plain ‘Woolworths’.

As in other locations, such as Newark, the opening of Loughborough’s edge-of-town Big W in 2002 prompted the closure of the town’s established Woolworths store (#226) at 39-40 Market Place, in premises now occupied by Primark.

While a dwindling number of stores left vacant by the chain’s collapse retain their Woolworths signage, it’s surprising quite how many other – and less obvious - Woolies clues survive, even when the stores have been taken over by other retailers. Needless to say, if you spot any similarly interesting bits of Woolworths history feel free to post a comment below, drop me an email, or send me a tweet!

Closing-down poster at Newgate Street Co-op, Newcastle (2 Dec 2011)

Newcastle city centre’s Co-op supermarket is to close down this month, bringing to an end nearly a century-and-a-half of Co-operative presence in Newgate Street. Posters in the windows and instore – which I spotted while passing by yesterday – reveal that the store will ‘cease trading as a Co-operative’ at 6pm on New Year’s Eve (31 December).

Former Co-op department store, Newgate Street (16 Feb 2010)

The food hall is the last remaining part of the former Co-op department store, which closed in 2007, and there has been speculation about its long-term future ever since – both in terms of its competitive position and the expected redevelopment of the building in which it sits.

For many years, the Co-op was one of a handful of supermarkets in Newcastle city centre – alongside Marks & Spencer’s food hall and the now-demolished Safeway (previously Presto) in Clayton Street – and had the advantage of the biggest range and longest opening hours of the lot.

Sainsbury's Local, Gallowgate, Newcastle (10 May 2011)

More recently, however, competition has intensified, with Waitrose opening in nearby Eldon Square and Tesco Metro taking a unit roughly where Safeway used to be in the redeveloped Eldon Square South. Reflecting the national trend of big grocers moving into convenience, the city has also seen a proliferation of smaller supermarkets, including two Sainsbury’s Locals (in nearby Gallowgate and at Central Station) and a Tesco Express (Eldon Garden), as well as a recently opened Londis Metro in Grainger Street.

While the environment around it has shifted, the Newgate Street Co-op has failed to keep up. Even two years ago, I described the rump supermarket as feeling “unloved and behind the times”, noting the “bored-looking staff, long queues (as usual), and numerous broken light fittings that create an overall feeling of gloom.”

Old 'Food Hall' signage, Co-op, Newgate St, Newcastle (9 Nov 2009)

Despite the apparent lack of investment or attention to detail inside the store, last year’s replacement of the old ‘Food Hall’ signs with ones bearing the new ‘Co-operative Food’ identity suggested that the Co-op might, in fact, be planning on staying around for a while. Indeed, even when long-awaited plans for the building’s re-use for retail, hotel and leisure were approved earlier this month, it was stated that the Co-op’s food store would be retained as part of the scheme, despite plans for a new (but much smaller) Co-operative Food store, in the old Envy unit in Market Street, having come to light a week earlier.

New Co-operative Food signage (20 May 2010)

Nevertheless, the Co-op food hall’s surprise closure in Newgate Street is likely to facilitate the Redbox-designed plans to revamp the iconic building that it occupies. The shop’s strange position within the property – largely the result of having to screen it off from the abandoned department store and stair towers – would always have necessitated some reconfiguration and resulting disruption to business.

So, what of the redevelopment itself? First of all, it’s important to appreciate the extent and interest of the existing property. While the Grade II-Listed Art Deco section facing Newgate Street – built from 1931-32 to replace the original 1870s premises, and extended by three bays in 1959 – is the most familiar part of the old Co-op department store, there are also some noteworthy Grade II-Listed buildings around the corner in St Andrew’s Street.

St Andrew's Street buildings, former Co-op, Newcastle (9 Nov 2009)

As David Lovie notes in his useful (but now quite old) ‘The Buildings of Grainger Town’ book, these were built in 1902 as an extension to the original 1870s Co-op store, so are the oldest surviving part of the property. Happily, these will be given a new purpose as the entrance to the 231-bedroom Travelodge that is set to occupy the upper-floor space within the 150,000 sq ft scheme.

St Andrew's Street buildings, former Co-op, Newcastle (9 Nov 2009)

According to the useful project update on the architects’ website, a gym is expected to occupy the basement, while the ground floor will house six retail or restaurant units. Interestingly, the piece – which also assumed, at the time, that the Co-op supermarket would remain in place – states that “all tenants but one have already committed to the scheme”, which will no doubt prompt all sorts of speculation about who might occupy the space.

The property’s location next to The Gate leisure complex means that restaurants or bars are an obvious choice, but its position in relation to recently opened big-name stores - opposite Debenhams and New Look, and close to Next – makes fashion retail a possibility.

All in all, then, it’s difficult not to be positive about the plans for the property. A historic building is going to be brought back into use after five years of near-vacancy, while the promised ground-floor uses should help generate street-level activity and footfall in Newgate Street. Meanwhile, any loyal Co-op shoppers look set to be catered for by a small store elsewhere in the city centre.

For all that the present Co-op supermarket is unlikely to be widely missed, I hope that the rather clinical head-office posters announcing the store’s closure will be replaced in due course by something more bespoke. After all, when a business has traded from the same site since the 1870s – supported by generations of Newcastle families – shoppers surely deserve a warmer expression of gratitude than a passing ’Thank you for your custom’.

c1920s postcard of unidentified Woolworths

[We have an answer already! See below]

Old postcards can be a great source of Woolworths images, and I’ve regularly used them to illustrate my Woolies-related blogs – such as my post last month about the former Ledbury store. More often than not, the subject of the postcard is clearly stated on either the picture or the reverse side, avoiding the need to work out where on earth the image is of.

I was therefore curious to spot the above postcard on eBay. The unposted card features a fine photograph of an original Woolworths frontage, but has nothing to identify either the store’s location or the date of the photograph.

Looking at the building and the feel of the photograph, my suspicion is that the image dates from the 1910s or 20s. The property is clearly not a purpose-built Woolworths – unlike many of the stores from the late 1920s onwards – and the fascia features the ‘Nothing over 6d’ message, which was a familiar sight on the chain’s earliest stores. However, the building isn’t one that I recognise from any of the Woolies photographs that I’ve previously seen on postcards, online, or in books.

So, can any readers out there help to identify the location of this shop? Those curved windows on the first floor are pretty distinctive, but there’s a strong chance that Woolworths would have redeveloped the property at a later date, meaning that it won’t exist today.

Whether you have a definite answer or just a hunch, do feel free to post a comment below!

Update

Well, that didn’t take long! In the space of less than two hours, S W Shopfittings (@SWSF1) on Twitter was able to identify the mysterious Woolworths as the Aberdeen store (#228), as proven by this 1970s shot at 100thBirthday.co.uk.

The store opened in July 1926 – so towards the end of the period that I suggested – and occupied its site at 111-119 Union Street until its closure on 1 June 1990. Remarkably, the building HAS survived to this day, and – if Google Streetview is to be believed – currently houses a branch of McDonalds.

Interestingly, the store wasn’t Aberdeen’s original Woolworths – that was store #79, at 48-52 St Nicholas Street, which appears to have opened on 18 October 1919 and closed sometime before the early 1980s. That address seems not to exist today, though the current Gap store in St Nicholas Street bears a remarkable resemblance (perhaps coincidentally) to the flagship Woolworths in London’s Oxford Street (#161).

Aberdeen city centre’s final Woolworths – #1159 – apparently opened on 9 June 1990, replacing the just-closed Union Street shop with a smaller store in the then-new Bon Accord shopping centre. That store lasted until Woolworths’ demise in 2008-09, and is now, I understand, occupied by Top Shop.

Sainsbury's Local (formerly Woolworths), Hessle Road, Hull (11 Oct 2011)

While tearing around Barnsley and Hull visiting UGO supermarkets last month, I was pleased to be able to work in an unexpected ex-Woolworths. Not knowing Hull very well at all beforehand, I hadn’t realised that the UGO supermarket in Hull’s Eton Street was close to Hessle Road, where numbers 306-310 – today’s Sainsbury’s Local – once housed a Woolies store. The property’s blank upper-floor windows and ground-floor vinyls do present a rather disappointing face to the street, but the Sainsbury’s store itself seems popular enough.

I believe Hull had as many as five Woolworths stores in the past, but only one of these survived until the retailer’s demise in 2008-09. The large city centre Woolies at 4-5 Whitefriargate was one of the first in the country (store #6), opened in 1911 but closed down on 7 April 1984. Today, the building houses the fashion retailer Peacocks.

Sainsbury's Local (formerly Woolworths), Hessle Road, Hull (11 Oct 2011)

Hessle Road (#169), above, opened next, in about 1924, followed by Holderness Road (#710) around 1938, and another city centre store, at 59 King Edward Street (#919), in 1956. Hull’s final Woolworths, in Anlaby Road (#957), opened in 1957.

However, while the King Edward Street shop survived until the end, the three other stores all seem to have closed by the late 1980s. The store at 455-457 Anlaby Road is also now a Sainsbury’s Local, while the landmark premises at 272-284 Holderness Road are divided between Heron Foods and a branch of Lloyds TSB.

Staff of Hessle Road Woolworths in 'The New Bond', October 1937

As elsewhere, the relatively early closure of the Hessle Road Woolworths seems to reflect the street’s changing status as a shopping destination. Rather like Byker’s Shields Road, which also lost its Woolies in the 1980s, my understanding is that Hessle Road was once one of Hull’s prime out-of-town retail thoroughfares. Today, like Shields Road, it’s no longer the major draw that it was, but it continues to play an important role in meeting the retail needs of its local community. Most notably, the northern variety store institution Boyes continues to trade from the site at 226-234 Hessle Road where it first opened a drapery shop in 1920.

Sometime after Woolworths closed, 306-310 Hessle Road hosted a branch of the Hull-based convenience chain Jacksons Stores, part of the same long-established company that had boasted at least six grocery or bakery shops in Hessle Road by 1936. Following the sale of the business to Sainsbury’s in 2004, Jacksons’ 114 stores, including Hessle Road, initially became Sainsbury’s at Jacksons, before later being rebranded to Sainsbury’s Local.

Woolies at 306-310 Hessle Road may be long gone, but today’s occupant is, in its own way, just as much a part of the area’s long retail history.

Wellworth It! in Ledbury (8 Oct 2011)

Dorchester’s famous Wellworths may have had to change its name to Wellchester at Shop Direct’s behest, but a store in the Herefordshire town of Ledbury is still evoking the memory of Woolworths in both name and visual identity.

Ledbury’s Woolworths (store #696) opened at 6-8 The Homend on 9 July 1937, and went on to serve the historic market town – famous for its timber-framed buildings – for more than 70 years until the chain’s 2008 collapse. Its replacement, Wellworth It!, opened in March last year, and – like any good ‘son of Woolies’ store – stocks a familiar and well-priced mix of homewares, garden tools, cleaning products, stationery, greetings cards, toys and the like.

Wellworth It! in Ledbury (8 Oct 2011)

What’s most interesting about the store, however, is its branding. Where previous attempts to reinvent the Woolies formula have played on the name but not the imagery – be it the blue and orange of Claire Robertson’s Wellworths, the purple of the now-defunct Alworths chain, or the black and yellow of the short-lived Well Worth It (no relation) in Wallsend – Wellworth It!’s red frontage is unashamedly ‘inspired’ by that of Woolworths. Indeed, the fascia even uses the old Woolies font (below).

Pre-collapse Woolworths logo (top) and Shop Direct's version since 2009 (bottom)

Fortunately, Shop Direct has adopted a slightly different logo (above) since reinventing Woolworths online, as Woolworths.co.uk, in 2009; otherwise, you suspect that the home shopping giant would have had something to say about happenings in Ledbury.

With the Woolworths connection so apparent in the store’s current frontage, it’s fitting that the building itself is hard to mistake for anything else. Though the property features the five-bayed symmetrical frontage that typifies Woolworths’ stores of the period, the architectural detail – including the addition of quoins (decorative cornerstones) and window pediments – is a little more ornate than usual. Indeed, the design is almost identical to that of Sidmouth, below (#729): opened about a year after Ledbury, and a store that I visited last month but have yet to blog about.

Former Woolworths (now M&Co), Sidmouth (7 Sep 2011)

At Sidmouth, the pediment of the central window extends above the parapet, giving the frontage a sense of being properly finished off. A similar feature is visible at Ledbury, too, in the c1970s postcards below, but must at some point subsequently have been levelled off when the parapet was replaced. A minor niggle, perhaps, but something that studying architecture at university for six years makes hard not to notice!

Postcard of Ledbury Woolworths in the 1970s (?)

Postcard of Ledbury Woolworths, sent in 1975

Once inside Wellworth It!, however, the store feels surprisingly unlike a former Woolworths, and has much more of the character of an independent hardware store, rather like Proper Job on Clevedon’s old Woolies site (#992). The carpet throughout gives a different feel to the traditional Woolworths wooden floor – which is still in place at Wellchester and many of the other taken-over stores – while the storeroom and warehouse at the rear of the shop has been transformed into additional selling space. When I visited, garden furniture seemed to be giving way to Christmas ranges.

On the downside, I’d like Wellworth It! to do something about the ‘unwelcoming signs’ that are, as I noted last year, so rightly frowned upon by The Retail Doctor, Bob Phibbs.

Everywhere I went in the store, I felt like I was being told off – ‘do not open the packaging’, ‘all breakages must be paid for’, or occasionally both messages at the same time. Perhaps most bizarrely, the ramp leading down to the former stockroom area had a large notice along the lines of ‘this ramp is strictly for use by wheelchairs only’; woe betide any mother with a pushchair that tried to use it instead.

In a small town like Ledbury, there’s no doubt that Wellworth It! performs a valuable role in selling a bit of everything, and ensuring that the local community doesn’t have to travel out of town for everyday items. However, if Wellworth It! is to evoke the warmth and personality of the old Woolies brand – and not just the visual imagery – then it could do worse than toning down the negative messaging.

Former Woolworths (now Store Twenty One), South Shields (22 Sep 2011)

Store Twenty One has opened its doors in South Shields today, meaning that the whole of the former Woolworths unit at 100-108 King Street (store number #104) is now back in retail use. While Poundland has occupied its part of the building since 2009, Store Twenty One’s portion had previously remained empty since Woolworths’ 2008 collapse.

I happened to be passing by yesterday, when the finishing touches were being applied to the store’s interior. As with the North East’s other ex-Woolies Store Twenty One shops – in Stanley, Houghton-le-Spring, Jarrow and the original (pre-1955) Woolworths site in Redcar – the store’s shopfront and fitout, inside and out, is of a very high quality. All it needs now, as I’ve observed before, is for the business to start making a profit.

Former Woolworths (now Store Twenty One and Poundland), South Shields (22 Sep 2011)

Elsewhere on Tyneside yesterday, I spotted positive developments at two other local ex-Woolworths sites. Regular readers will recall that the former Woolworths at 63 Shields Road in Byker (#276) closed on 1 June 1985, and then housed painting and decorating retailer Decorflair until the start of this year.

Former Woolworths (now YMCA), Byker (22 Sep 2011)

Until yesterday I’d never seen the building without its shutters down, so I was pleased to see it now open again and housing a YMCA charity shop. As always, the black granite stall riser of the typical 1960s Woolworths shopfront is present and correct, despite the property not having housed a Woolies branch for over a quarter of a century.

Former Woolworths (now YMCA), Byker (22 Sep 2011)

Inside, the shopfloor features some surprisingly ornate wrought iron columns, which suggests that the property is older than its rather featureless exterior would imply.

The store is also very spacious, and it’s easy to see how it would have made an impressive Woolworths when it moved there, from its old premises at nos. 47-49, sometime around 1960 – a time when Shields Road was still one of the city’s prime retail destinations. Today, a combination of independents and multiples (such as Morrisons, Wilkinson, Ethel Austin, Boots and Iceland) ensure that Shields Road still performs an important function locally, but the days of it attracting shoppers from across the city are surely gone.

Against this backdrop of the street’s illustrious past, the arrival of yet another charity shop is perhaps nothing to get too excited about, but at least it brings the building back into use while the lease continues to be marketed.

Former Woolworths and Well Worth It, Wallsend (22 Sep 2011)

Meanwhile, down the road in Wallsend, the former Woolworths (#351) and shortlived Well Worth It store at 2-4 High Street East has gained a ‘let agreed’ sign since I last passed by six weeks ago, suggesting that a new occupant is imminent.

I can’t find any reference to who might be taking the site over, and there’s no planning application as yet – always a good source of early information, given the need for retailers to obtain advertisement consent whenever they wish to erect new signage.

I note, however, that an advertisement has gone live this evening for a Store Manager for an unspecified ”Tyne & Wear” branch of Store Twenty One. Could the expanding fashion retailer be about to take over yet another North East ex-Woolies site, as I mooted last month? If it is, you heard it here first…

Former Woolworths (now Poundland), Truro (21 Feb 2011)

Having visited and photographed nearly 150 ex-Woolworths sites in the last three years (including 17 in the last week alone) – 50 of which are yet to feature in the blog – it’s about time I did some catching up.

Earlier in the year I wrote about two of the Woolworths stores in Cornwall that had disappeared long before the retailer’s 2008 collapse: Redruth (store #813), which seemingly closed in the 1980s and is now Superdrug; and Launceston (#812), which became one of the chain’s earliest closures when it shut its doors on 9 June 1973, and has had at least three occupants since. I also mentioned the ex-Big W, just outside Redruth, which lasted only from 2000 to 2005 and was subsequently taken over by Tesco.

Former Woolworths, Launceston (21 Feb 2011)

What has become, however, of the ten Cornish stores that were still trading at the end – six of which I managed to visit back in February?

From the launch of the inaugural UK Woolworths shop on 5 November 1909, Cornwall had to wait more than eighteen years for its first Woolies to arrive: the store in St Austell (#291), which opened its doors in November 1927 and is now Poundland. However, more followed quickly after that, with both Camborne (#304; 24-26 Trelowarren St) and Falmouth (#306; 19-20 Market Street) opening the following year.

Former Woolworths (now Poundstretcher), Camborne (20 Feb 2011)

Regular readers will recognise the distinctive architectural style of the Camborne shop immediately, as it features all the hallmarks of the Woolies 1920s house style that I’ve highlighted many times before. However, rather like the Woolworths store in Llandudno (#269) or the original Redcar Woolies (#275), Camborne’s gained a side extension at some point in time – adding useful space, clearly, but detracting from the frontage’s appealing symmetry.

Less than a year after Woolworths’ collapse, the site was taken over by Poundstretcher. However, like in North Berwick (#804), the retention of the distinctive shopfront and black granite stall riser ensures that a bit of Woolies heritage lives on.

Former Woolworths, Falmouth (19 Feb 2011)

In Falmouth, meanwhile, more of Woolies lives on than the local council and shoppers might have wished: the property is yet to find a new occupant, and its Woolworths signage remains in place.

My friend Stu Wrigley sent me an updated shot from earlier this month (below), but apart from the addition of some hanging baskets little seems to have changed since February. Window displays installed by the town’s Business Improvement District (BID) team last year ensure that the building’s negative visual impact is reduced, but the obvious presence of a prominent, still-empty Woolies – now one of a dwindling number, three years on – is not really a first impression any town would wish to make.

Former Woolworths, Falmouth (3 Sep 2011). Photograph by Stu Wrigley

It’s surprising too, as the property is in a good location, and both Falmouth and the ex-Woolies building have significant charm. Since the 1950s view below, the insertion of a later shopfront and clumsily proportioned fascia have done the Falmouth store few architectural favours, but it remains at its heart a handsome and imposing property, not too dissimilar to the slightly earlier store in Chester-le-Street (#267) that now houses B&M Bargains.

1950s postcard of Falmouth Woolworths

Perhaps Falmouth’s ex-Woolies will have to wait until B&M makes its way to Cornwall – probably some way off given that the retailer has not yet expanded into the West Country.

Former Woolworths (now Poundland), Penzance (20 Feb 2011)

During the 1930s, Cornwall gained another trio of Woolworths stores: in Bodmin (#569; now Iceland), Liskeard (#623; now Superdrug) and Penzance (#651), the last of which I was able to visit. The store, at 106-108 Market Jew Street, is a curious pedimented twist on the usual Woolies look, though its transformation into Poundland – one of the most prolific occupants of ex-Woolworths premises – is less of a surprise. One half of a fourth Cornish Woolies from the late 1930s – in Newquay (#730) – also now hosts a Poundland store, with the remaining portion occupied by the fashion retailer Peacocks.

Former Woolworths (now Poundland), Truro (21 Feb 2011)

The onset of the Second World War – and the resulting ten-year hiatus in Woolworths store openings – meant that no more Cornish stores opened until the 1950s, with the aforementioned Launceston and Redruth quickly followed by Truro (#836).

Here, again, Poundland has taken advantage of the opportunity presented by Woolworths’ demise. It initially took over the whole of the large ex-Woolworths site on a short-term lease, with the intention of taking a smaller unit on a more permanent basis once the property was divided up. Its store now occupies the building’s prime frontage at 13-15 Princes Street (which clearly predates Woolworths’ arrival), while the Lemon Quay side has been taken over by Cotswold Outdoor.

Former Woolworths (now Cotswold Outdoor), Truro (21 Feb 2011)

In St Ives (#863), another expanding outdoor retailer – Mountain Warehouse – has taken over part of the space vacated by Woolworths at 35-37 Fore Street.

Former Woolworths (now Mountain Warehouse), St Ives (20 Feb 2011)

The five-storey property is quite unusual for an ex-Woolworths in that it’s built into a steep hillside with access on two sides; this has allowed it to be divided in half horizontally following Woolies’ closure, but with both the upper and lower units retaining street-level access. While Mountain Warehouse on the second and third floors fronts the busy shopping thoroughfare of Fore Street, the two-storey harbourside unit below houses Pizza Express (still under construction when I visited, but now completed).

Former Woolworths (now Pizza Express), St Ives (20 Feb 2011)

Reduth’s Big W aside, the final Woolworths to open in Cornwall was the store in the attractive town of Helston (#920), in 1956. Located at 31-33 Coinagehall Street, the property was only empty for a few months before being taken over by The Original Factory Shop in July 2009.

Former Woolworths (now The Original Factory Shop), Helston (20 Feb 2011)

So, of the ten Cornish Woolworths stores that closed following Woolworths’ collapse, only the one in Falmouth remains vacant – but with a ground-floor sales area of 6,864 sq ft, the store isn’t so huge that it should be putting off potential occupants.

With many of the takers of Woolies stores elsewhere in the county not yet represented in Falmouth, local traders and shoppers will surely be hoping that Poundland, Poundstretcher or The Original Factory Shop steps in to the breach before long.

Former Woolworths (now temporary BHS), Swindon (11 Sep 2011)

If you saw my earlier post about the shiny new BHS in Swindon, you might be wondering what happened to the retailer during the 18-month period that its old store was being redeveloped. Well, rather conveniently, there was an empty unit in nearby Regent Street where it was able to open a temporary store: the site of Swindon’s former Woolworths.

At the time of Woolies’ collapse in 2008, the Swindon store (store #38) was one of the longest established in the country. It opened at 23-25 Regent Street on 12 September 1914 – almost 97 years to the day before my visit – and underwent a series of extensions and redevelopments in 1936, 1973, 1980 and 1995.

Old postcard of Woolworths in Swindon, c.1960

Sadly, the rather functional present-day frontage bears no resemblance to the more elegant, cinema-style façade that existed previously – similar to the one still found at Chester-le-Street. However, the attractive turreted Next building (in the middle of both shots, above and below) ensures that there is at least some visual link between the 1960s and present-day views along the street.

A similar view along Regent Street today (11 Sep 2011)

Now that BHS’s new store is open, I’d rather expected to find the former Woolworths store vacated again. However, BHS looks to be hanging on to the space for the moment, badging it as a BHS Furniture Clearance Outlet.

When you visit Swindon, that word – outlet – seems to assail you at every turn, with both positive and negative consequences for the town. In the Swindon Designer Outlet, owned by McArthur Glen, the town has one of the busiest and best outlet shopping centres in the country, housing 120 stores in the Grade II-listed Great Western Railway Works – a truly fantastic series of spaces.

Swindon Designer Outlet (11 Sep 2011)

With outlet stores from big names such as John Lewis, Next and M&S, as well as designer brands like Aquascutum, Hugo Boss and Tommy Hilfiger, there’s little wonder that the centre was packed with shoppers when I visited. Indeed, according to CACI Retail Footprint data, the outlet centre alone generates £160m of annual expenditure – equivalent to Tamworth’s vast Ventura Retail Park.

Swindon Designer Outlet (11 Sep 2011)

However, while bringing shoppers and their spend into Swindon, the Designer Outlet is perhaps just a little too far away from the town centre – a good 10 minutes’ walk – to have much of a positive knock-on effect. On the contrary, there are bound to be some names whose presence at the Designer Outlet rules them out of taking space in the town centre proper.

House of Fraser Outlet, Swindon (11 Sep 2011)

Once in the town centre, the outlet theme continues, somewhat controversially. In 2008, Swindon’s established House of Fraser store was rebadged as a House of Fraser Outlet, featuring end-of-the-line branded stock from other stores in the chain. While better than losing House of Fraser completely, it’s hard to see this as anything other than a retrograde step.

Looking around the store on Sunday, it felt rather like a more upmarket TJ Hughes, with a slight ‘jumble sale’ feel and the sense that it’s no longer really a proper department store. For that, shoppers must go along the street to Debenhams, which itself makes a fairly unglamorous impression from the outside.

Debenhams, Swindon (11 Sep 2011)

Swindon might have a shiny John Lewis at Home on its outskirts, and the country’s most modern BHS in its centre, but I have to confess to being slightly underwhelmed by the town centre – both in terms of its retail offer and the overall quality of the public realm.

Perhaps my expectations were too high? After all, with annual retail expenditure (according to CACI) of £350m, Swindon town centre is barely a third of the size of nearby Bristol or Reading (each £1.2bn), and ranks below both Darlington (£360m) and Middlesbrough (£430m) in the North East. In my previous post, I cited John Ryan’s assertion that the new BHS was “without doubt the best shop in Swindon”, and it’s hard to really argue with that claim.

So, against this mixed backdrop, what might the future hold for Swindon’s former Woolworths site once BHS finally moves on? Usefully, the town’s growth and regeneration company, Forward Swindon, commissioned a ‘Town Centre Healthcheck’ from GVA Grimley in May last year, which reported in November.

Drawing from the FOCUS real estate database, this report found that a relatively small number of retailers (30) had a requirement for space in Swindon, particularly in comparison to other large centres in the south, such as Oxford, Reading and Bristol. Of these, just two – Asda Living and the now-much-reduced TJ Hughes – had a requirement for more than 15,000 sq ft of retail space.

Of course, Swindon’s recent BHS development – and similar retail schemes elsewhere – remind us that if developers build the right quality of space in the right locations, retailers will often find a requirement. As Swindon looks forward, I can’t help thinking that the Woolworths site might need another redevelopment of its own if it’s to have a sustainable and long-term future as prime retail space.

Former Woolworths, Victoria Street, Derby (23 Dec 2010)

Back in January I blogged about Burton upon Trent’s original Woolworths store, and promised to turn my attention in a future post to the nearby city of Derby.

Just as in Burton, another old photograph – this time from a 1938 postcard – is to thank for me finding the location of the city’s original Woolworths store at 28-33 Victoria Street (store #29). From the store number, Woolies must have opened on this site in about 1914.

1938 photograph of Victoria Street, Derby, with Woolworths on the right

The same view today (23 Dec 2010)

To avoid having to stand in the middle of the road, I hope you’ll forgive my modern equivalent shot not being from quite from the right angle. However, just as there is plenty of continuity between the two Burton photos, it’s remarkable quite how similar today’s view of Victoria Street is to the one from seventy years ago, with all the principal buildings from the old shot – including the former Woolies on the right, the Royal Buildings on the left, and the imposing HSBC at the end of the street – still in place.

Postcard of Victoria Street, c.1908

The earliest Woolworths stores tended not to occupy purpose-built premises, though many of those shops – such as Leeds (#5, opened 1911) or Leicester (#49, opened 1915) – were subsequently rebuilt in a distinctive Woolies style.

I’m not clear whether the same was true of Derby; photographs that I’ve seen from the first years of the twentieth century (such as the c.1908 image above) appear to show the site occupied by earlier buildings at that time, but the shot below – thought to date from before 1918 – has today’s familiar property in place. Unfortunately, the detail is a little too fuzzy to be certain whether the card shows Woolworths occupying those premises.

Early (pre-1918?) view of Victoria Street, Derby

...and a similar view today (23 Dec 2010)

Today, parts of it are occupied by the health and beauty chain Savers and a branch of the thriving H&T Pawnbrokers chain, while another chunk is a former Evans store. In the extensive city centre reshuffle that followed the 2007 opening of Westfield Derby, Evans moved to the previous Topshop site; meanwhile, Victoria Street is left with a distinctly downmarket offer and quite a few voids, including an 80,000 sq ft empty Debenhams following the department store’s own relocation to Westfield.

Former Debenhams, Derby (23 Dec 2010)

Of course, retailers moving from one part of Derby city centre to another is nothing new – after all, it’s what Woolies did in 1975, when it left Victoria Street and moved to the newly-built Eagle Centre. More of that in a subsequent post.

However, Debenhams moving to a bigger store in the Westfield centre has left an especially big hole, and it has to be hoped that a permanent solution for the lovely Modernist building – originally designed for Ranby’s department store in the early 1960s by Evans, Cartwright and Woollatt, but now owned by Westfield and occupied by a short-term tenant when I visited – is found soon.

Former Woolworths (now Poundland), Weston-super-Mare (21 Aug 2011)

In recent weeks, new developments in Newcastle, the collapse of TJ Hughes and the ongoing conversion of ex-Netto stores have given me plenty of topics to write about – somewhat at the expense of talking about new uses for former Woolworths.

Given the backlog of ex-Woolies pics that I’m building up, now is probably a good time to showcase a few of the stores that I’ve spotted on my recent travels, kicking off with three interesting and very different sites in North Somerset.

At the time of Woolworths’ collapse in 2008, the store at 64 High Street in Weston-super-Mare (store #81) was among the chain’s thirty longest-surviving shops, having opened its doors in about 1919.

In November 2009, the site was taken over by a combined Ethel Austin and Au Naturale store, but that closed down in March this year, having initially survived the cull that followed the retailer’s own collapse into administration in early 2010.

Former Woolworths (now Poundland), Weston-super-Mare (21 Aug 2011)

In May this year, however, the site was snapped up by Poundland – adding to its ever-growing collection of ex-Woolies locations – though the move does mean that Poundland’s former (but much smaller) site, further along the street, is now itself vacant. For what it’s worth, the new Poundland remains instantly recognisable as a former Woolworths, given that neither of the subsequent occupants have felt the need to replace the distinctive Woolies shopfront.

Former Woolworths (now The Original Factory Shop), Nailsea (21 Aug 2011)

Down the road in Nailsea, in contrast, the former Woolworths at 61-63 High Street (#1269) has neither a long history nor any architectural features that mark it out as an ex-Woolies.

Previously a Kwik Save, Nailsea’s 8,100 sq ft Woolworths only opened in October 2007; when it closed, on 6 January 2009, it was therefore among the shortest lived of all the chain’s stores. However, The Original Factory Shop took over the site in May 2009, adding to its own growing portfolio of ex-Woolies acquisitions across the country. Unfortunately I was passing through Nailsea early on a Sunday morning, meaning that I wasn’t able to get a shot while the store was open.

Former Woolworths (now Proper Job), Clevedon (21 Feb 2011)

While Poundland and The Original Factory Shop are among the most prolific occupants of former Woolies sites around the UK, it’s good to also see some independent retailers taking the opportunity to grow their businesses off the back of Woolworths’ demise.

One such location, which I visited earlier in the year, is the old Woolworths store in Clevedon (#992) at 5-7 Old Street. Opened as a Woolworths in about 1957, the building has the same typical Woolies shopfront as the store in Weston-super-Mare, and was taken over by Proper Job – a locally-based tools and DIY chain – in July 2009. Looking around the store, it certainly seemed like an Aladdin’s cave of home, garden, hardware and decorating products – a little like an indie hybrid of Wilkinson and Clas Ohlson – and is exactly the kind of useful shop that can really drive footfall and make a positive difference to a small town’s high street.

The apparent absence of a Proper Job website makes it a little hard to find out more about the business, but I understand that there are four established stores in the Somerset area – in Weston-super-Mare, Worle, Brislington and Glastonbury – as well as a newer one, in the former Woolworths in Bridgwater, which opened in June last year.

That store, no doubt, will crop up on the itinerary of one of my future visits to the South West…

Newcastle's TJ Hughes (8 Aug 2011)

There was good news for Newcastle city centre earlier this week, with the announcement that the TJ Hughes store in Grainger Street had been sold, preventing the loss of 76 jobs. However, the collapsed department store chain’s Middlesbrough branch is one of eight that will close down for good by Thursday next week (18 August), leaving a large hole in the town’s Captain Cook Square shopping centre.

The Newcastle store and another in Widnes have been bought by Lewis’s Home Retail, a company owned by The Benross Group – a home and garden wholesaler that is already one of TJ Hughes’ major suppliers. The deal brings the total number of TJ’s sites acquired by Lewis’s to six, following the purchase of stores in Liverpool, Glasgow, Eastbourne and Sheffield – as well as the TJ Hughes brand – at the start of August.

Lewis’s Home Retail acquired the rights to the iconic Lewis’s brand only last month, following the sale of assets owned by the collapsed Vergo Retail chain. However, Benross’ MD Anil Juneja has confirmed that the acquired stores will retain their existing TJ Hughes fascias with a view to building the chain back up again over time.

Lewis’s, meanwhile, is set to be revived separately, starting with a retail park store in Bury. The submitted plans for the ‘Lewis’s Home’ store suggest that while the relaunched chain will focus on homewares rather than a full department store offer, the familiar blue and white Lewis’s logo (below) is poised to make a comeback.

Revived Lewis's Home logo

The sale of the Newcastle TJ Hughes store avoids the headache of a large empty unit in a slightly off-centre pitch within Newcastle city centre. Covering three floors and with a gross area of 91,000 sq ft (8,500 sqm), the unit is one of the city’s largest outside of Eldon Square and Northumberland Street, and its vacancy would most likely have seen the space being divided up.

TJ Hughes has traded from the purpose-built unit since 2002, but the location is associated with two of Newcastle’s most well-loved department store names: Bainbridge (now John Lewis), which expanded across the site from 1838 to 1976 before relocating to Eldon Square; and Binns (House of Fraser), which occupied the site between 1977 and 1995. Most of the site was demolished and redeveloped following Binns’ departure, but apart from not having a frontage to Market Street, today’s TJ Hughes has a broadly similar footprint to its predecessor.

TJ Hughes, Newcastle (13 Aug 2011)

Interestingly, of the six TJ Hughes sites acquired by Lewis’s, three have a House of Fraser connection. As well as Newcastle, the stores in Sheffield and Eastbourne are both ex-House of Fraser sites that TJ Hughes acquired in 1997. The Liverpool site is the original TJ Hughes flagship in London Road; Glasgow’s Trongate store is a former C&A; and the Widnes shop occupies a unit in the modern Green Oaks Shopping Centre.

Former Woolworths (now TJ Hughes), Westfield Derby (23 Dec 2010)

Indeed, over the years TJ Hughes has played an important role in mopping up large-format space that other retailers have left behind. Most recently, it has acquired a number of high-profile former Woolworths sites, including in Belfast, Derby, Hanley, Southend, Walsall and Nuneaton.

Former Woolworths (now TJ Hughes), Nuneaton (24 Aug 2010)

When I visited Nuneaton in August last year, work was underway to transform the town’s former Woolworths into a TJ Hughes; now, after less than ten months of trading, it will be closing this coming Sunday (14 August). In towns like Nuneaton – which already lost its Marks & Spencer store earlier this year – filling the former Woolworths site a second time may not be an easy task.

TJ Hughes, Sunderland (7 Sep 2009)

With six TJ Hughes stores saved, and 30 set to close over the next week, the future of the remaining 21 stores in the estate – including the Sunderland branch – is still in doubt. There’s a possibility that Benross may snap up one or two more, but its purchase of the TJ Hughes brand – ruling out any other retailers trading TJ’s stores under the existing fascia – suggests that there is little chance of more stores being acquired as going concerns.

A more likely scenario is that retailers such as BHS, H&M, Wilkinson, Marks & Spencer, Primark and Debenhams will snap up the best sites once they become vacant. The site in upmarket Lichfield, for example, may appeal to the rapidly expanding Beales or to M&S, which already has a successful Simply Food store in the city.

TJ Hughes, Lichfield (19 Mar 2010)

For both Middlesbrough and Sunderland, however, the challenge will be to find large retailers that aren’t already represented in those locations. Of the two, Middlesbrough is arguably the better unit, anchoring the modern Captain Cook Square shopping centre close to the prime Linthorpe Road thoroughfare; Sunderland’s, in High Street West, is in a fairly central location close to The Bridges shopping centre, but suffers from being an older, less attractive property that hasn’t been much improved since it housed a branch of Littlewoods.

With both Middlesbrough and Sunderland already home to almost all the likely candidates – including BHS, H&M, Debenhams, M&S, TK Maxx, Primark, Wilkinson and Next – it will be interesting to see who else, if anyone, steps up to fill the gaps.

How the new BHS will look. Image by Dalziel & Pow

Plans for Northumberland Street’s new BHS store have been submitted to Newcastle City Council, and propose a more radical than expected transformation of the former Next building.

Back in March, a notice posted at the old, closed-down BHS stated that the relocated store would be opening “in the autumn”, giving a fairly short 5-6 month window for the Next site to be redeveloped, once vacated in May. On this basis, I’d assumed that BHS would focus its attention on stripping out and rebuilding the store interior, and that the building’s frontage would see little change beyond a new shopfront and signage.

Next, Northumberland Street, Newcastle (now closed) (14 Mar 2011)

In fact, BHS’s plans envisage an entirely new front elevation, replacing the existing dressed stone façade (above) with one comprising full-height glazing and powder-coated aluminium cladding. I’m told by Arcadia Group, however, that the store is still set to open in the “latter part of this year.”

The drawings also reveal that the BHS shopfloor will span four levels – one more than Next occupied – including menswear in the basement, womenswear on the ground floor, lingerie on the first floor, and the BHS Café on the second floor, while the third floor will be used for storage. Homeware and childrenswear are also expected to feature, though their locations within the store are not clear.

Just like the first new-generation BHS store that was unveiled in Uxbridge a year ago, the Newcastle shop is the work of top London-based design consultancy Dalziel & Pow. Last year, Retail Week described Dalziel & Pow as “the low-profile leader of the UK retail design industry”, responsible for “new formats that set the pace on the high street in the UK.” Coincidentally, the company was also behind the design of Next’s new store in Eldon Square.

The boldness of the proposed design will surely divide opinion, and even I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, it will be a shame to lose the existing frontage, given that it’s really quite handsome, and – as I noted last year – is the last remnant of the building that used to occupy the full extent of the site currently occupied by the ex-BHS, ex-Next and Primark (below).

Old postcard of ex-BHS prior to rebuilding, Northumberland Street, Newcastle

On the other hand, Northumberland Street’s lack of a coherent architectural style makes it the only location in Newcastle city centre where ‘glass box’ shops really work. Indeed, there is a long history of older properties in the street being given shiny new frontages, such as the present HMV store (a new skin on the old Callers building), and, only last year, the transformation of the Currys/PC World and Cotswold Outdoor property.

Cotswold, Northumberland Street, Newcastle (14 Mar 2011)

Like those redevelopments before it, BHS’s investment will be a powerful – and very visible – indicator of confidence in the future of Newcastle’s premier shopping street.

Former Next, Northumberland Street (6 Jun 2011)

Whichever argument eventually wins me over, the building certainly loses some of its visual appeal now that the shop windows are empty and the Next signage removed (above).

As I’ve remarked several times before, shopfronts and fascias can hide a multitude of sins beneath, and the removal of Next’s signs has revealed the remains of what appears to be two separate fascias. A photograph on the Newcastle Libraries Flickr stream shows the property in 1975 – some years before Next’s arrival – housing a store called Penberthys, but it’s entirely possible that the space accommodated two separate shops at some point in the past.

Former BHS, Newcastle (6 Jun 2011)

Meanwhile, work seems to be progressing at the ex-BHS site a couple of doors away (above), which is set to be occupied by an extended Primark store. No planning application has been submitted yet, however, so I assume that current works are focusing on stripping out the old BHS interior.

Former BHS, Northumberland Street, Newcastle (14 Mar 2011)

In due course, it will be fascinating to see what Primark proposes for the site, given that the frontages of the ex-BHS and current Primark stores (above) will need, somehow, to be unified.

One thing’s for sure – as one of Northumberland Street’s ugliest buildings, there probably isn’t a property in the street that’s more in need of a refronting. Here’s hoping that Dalziel & Pow – or someone else – will be drafted in to work some magic with glass and aluminium.

Former Woolworths (now Superdrug), Redruth (19 Feb 2011)

In my last post I mentioned my February visit to Cornwall, writing about one of the county’s former Woolworths – in Launceston (store #812) – that had closed down many years prior to the chain’s collapse.

When Woolies folded in 2008, Cornwall still had ten trading stores. Most of these – in St Austell (#291), Camborne (#304), Falmouth (#306), Bodmin (#569), Liskeard (#623), Penzance (#651) and Newquay (#730) – had opened during Woolworths’ golden age of the 1920s and 30s, with a further trio – Truro (#836), St Ives (#863) and Helston (#920) – added in the mid-1950s. I visited and photographed several of these stores, which I will feature in future posts.

Besides Launceston, I’m only aware of two other long-closed Cornish Woolworths stores. Intriguingly, both belonged to the historic former copper mining town of Redruth – though I didn’t actually know this until after I’d already paid my flying visit.

Fore Street, Redruth (19 Feb 2011)

Though I had no evidence at the time, I rather assumed that a town the size of Redruth (12,000 people) would have had a Woolworths at some point, so my task while visiting was to identify its likely location. Happily, one of my guesses – and photographs – was the right one.

Redruth’s original Woolworths was located at 72 Fore Street, in rather handsome premises occupied today by Superdrug. I don’t yet have a Woolies store number, but the fact that the 1870s former Trounson’s building predates Woolworths’ occupation suggests a 1950s opening. As I’ve noted before, Woolworths’ prewar town centre stores tended to be housed in purpose-built premises, and those afterwards in existing properties. [UPDATE, 12 September 2011: The 'New Bond' from December 1960 mentions the Redruth store number as 813, which would give an opening date of 1953 - making it contemporary with store #812 in Launceston.]

By way of proof, the ‘F W Woolworth & Co Ltd’ fascia can be made out in a c.1955 shot on the Francis Frith website, while the postcards below show the same building and street, pre-Woolies, during the first half of the 20th century.

Old postcard showing 72 Fore Street, c.1907

Postcard of Fore Street, Redruth, c.1915

Postcard of Fore Street, Redruth, c.1931

As far as a closure date is concerned, one source cites the 1980s. This makes sense, as the latter years of the decade were a time when Kingfisher, who by then owned both Woolworths and (since 1987) Superdrug, switched a significant number of smaller Woolies stores over to its recently acquired health and beauty fascia – hence my speculative photo of what I hoped was the former Woolworths location. The property’s record at the Cornwall Council planning website lists several applications for new signage in 1987 and 1988 (but gives no further details), which would fit with that scenario.

Fore Street, Redruth (19 Feb 2011)

Little more than a decade later, in November 2000, Redruth was – as I only realised after my visit – one of the first places in the country to gain a branch of Big W, located on the outskirts of the town at Station Road in Pool. Kingfisher’s new superstore format brought together ranges from across its fascias – Woolworths, obviously, as well as Comet, B&Q and Superdrug. However, the demerger of Woolworths Group plc from the rest of Kingfisher, on 28 August 2001, rather undermined the Big W concept, rendering the stores as very large Woolworths branches in all but name.

The store lasted barely four years before its closure – with the loss of 133 jobs – was announced in January 2005. Where 14 of the 21 Big W stores – such as those in Stockton and Tamworth – were downsized and rebranded as Woolworths, the seven with permission for food retailing were sold to Asda and Tesco, with the latter picking up the Redruth site. The store shut as Big W on 4 February 2005, opened as Tesco Extra later that year, and continues to trade today. A photo, I’m afraid, will have to follow next time I’m in that part of Cornwall.

You can quibble whether Redruth’s Big W really counts as an ex-Woolworths, given that it never traded under that fascia. However, I wonder whether there are any other localities that can claim to have had two different Woolies shops open and close over the last century, without still having a store in place at the time of the chain’s 2008 collapse? Answers on a postcard please…

Former Woolworths, Launceston (21 Feb 2011)

The hazard of doing so much travelling around interesting towns is that I end up with more retail-related photographs – and topics to blog about – than I ever have time to cover. Back in February I spent a lovely (but occasionally wet) few days in the South West, managing to combine sightseeing around beautiful Cornwall and buzzing Bristol with visits to no fewer than 11 ex-Woolies.

I plan to blog about all of these over the coming weeks, but first up is one of the most historically interesting former Woolworths sites I’ve come across – the one in the delightful town of Launceston (pronounced ‘Lanson’), in Cornwall (store #812), which opened as Woolies in 1953 but closed twenty years later.

Former Woolworths, Launceston (21 Feb 2011)

Regular readers will know that many of the Woolworths I’ve blogged about in the past feature the distinctive architecture that characterised the chain’s purpose-built stores of the 1920s and 30s. This is barely surprising, given that between the opening of Redcar (#275, and one of the early examples of the design) in 1927 and Belper (#725, and one of the last) in 1938, Woolworths’ store count grew by 450 shops – an astonishing rate of growth, even by modern standards.

After the war, however, it was the 1950s before Woolworths really started to grow again, adding another 250 or so shops during that decade. By this time, Woolies stores were tending to occupy modern premises in new towns and shopping precincts – such as Brentford (#829, opened March 1954) or Peterlee (#987, opened c.1958) – alongside some infilling in smaller market towns that had missed out during the first wave of expansion.

Former Woolworths (now M&Co), Alnwick (23 Jan 2010)

In contrast to the pre-war, new-build approach, new stores in these locations – like Launceston, Alnwick (#822, above) or Hexham (#931) – tended to occupy existing buildings. However, prior to Woolworths moving in, few properties can have had such a rich and notable history as the one at 5-7 Southgate Street in Launceston.

Built as a large town house and shop by Mr King, a ‘clothier’, in the early- to mid-eighteenth century, I understand that the property was subsequently occupied by a Mr Nicolls – selling clothing and groceries – and later by Cookes stores, prior to Woolworths’ arrival.

Recognising its architectural and historic importance, the building’s Grade II* Listing today places it among the top 8% of protected buildings in England. However, I understand from local historian Jim Edwards that this very status was what caused Woolworths to pull out from the site, finally closing the doors to its store on Saturday 9 June 1973.

It seems that the poor condition of the building, and Woolworths’ inability to secure Listed Building Consent for the modernisations that it wished to make, simply rendered the store too much trouble to keep open. Its twenty-year lifespan as a Woolies makes it, on the scale of things, one of the chain’s shorter-lived stores. Like all Woolworths, however, its presence in the town is fondly remembered. Indeed, when I phoned Launceston Library for further information, the very nice woman who answered revealed that she had – by pure coincidence – worked there herself as a schoolgirl, 43 years ago.

One upside of Woolworths’ departure is that the building retains more of its original fabric, both inside and out, than might otherwise have been the case. According to the Listing record, its extant original features include the hornless sashes with thick glazing bars on the front elevation, and original cornices, ceilings and panelling internally. However, ceilings that were still decorated when Woolworths moved in were apparently lost during subsequent modifications.

The elegant transomed shopfront, dating from the early 20th century, is also intact, though the discordant modern treatment of the restaurant and shop parts – one section green, the other blue – makes it less easy to appreciate. The same shopfront is clearly shown in a c.1960 Francis Frith view, when the store was trading as Woolworths.

Indeed, the iconic view towards Launceston’s medieval Southgate Arch is one that has changed little over the decades, as comparison of the two similar images below shows. Again, the Frith site features an almost identical view from the 1960s.

Postcard of Southgate Street, Launceston, c.1908

Southgate Street, Launceston (21 Feb 2011)

The Grade II Listed black and white pub – today’s Baker’s Arms, but formerly the King’s Arms, built on what was originally 5-7′s garden – is clearly visible in both views above, as is the building on the corner of Broad Street (today’s Oxfam), also Grade II listed, with its distinctive slate-hung façade.

The building on the far left of both shots – today’s Halifax – is also the same, even if it has been rather modified since its days as an ‘Aertex Cellular Depot’. Though the name on the fascia is too faint to make out in the c.1908 view, it was, I believe, a business called Procter and Kent. Perhaps unwisely, the business kept gunpowder, oil and paint on the upper floors; when the upstairs caught fire on one occasion, I’m told that the people of Launceston were treated to an unplanned firework display!

The main change between the two views is the replacement of the redbrick building at no. 3 in the top shot, on the site of the present-day Wroes department store. Still present in Frith’s 1960s view, the old building projected further out into the street than its replacement, which is why the property at nos. 5-7 beyond is almost entirely obscured. For any small market town, having a successful independent department store is an incredible asset; it’s just a pity that the building – which presumably predates Wroes’ arrival in 1992 – is so much drearier than the one that it replaced, and rather out of keeping with the surrounding street scene.

Back to nos. 5-7, however, and for all that the property is architecturally important, it is also significant as the birthplace – on 23 April 1758 – of Captain Philip Gidley King RN, one of Launceston’s most famous sons. This fact is commemorated by both a blue plaque on the front façade and another plaque attached to the shopfront.

Commemorative blue plaque, 5-7 Southgate Street, Launceston (21 Feb 2011)

Commemorative plaque, 5-7 Southgate Street, Launceston (21 Feb 2011)

The son of the Mr King who had built the house, Gidley King was the founder of the first European settlement on Norfolk Island, serving as its Lieutenant Governor. Later, in 1800, he became the third Governor of New South Wales, supporting the establishment of settlements in Van Diemen’s Land (today’s Tasmania), including Launceston – named in honour of his birthplace.

Today, Tasmania’s Launceston has over 100,000 inhabitants, having far outgrown the 7,000-strong population of its Cornish namesake. Ironically, the city also accommodates several branches of the Australian Woolworths – a supermarket business that has no link whatsoever to the US and UK chain, other than copying its name when, in 1924, “it was discovered that F.W. Woolworths hadn’t registered the name in Australia and had no plans to open in Australia.”

Screenshot of Moores Furnishing website (17 May 2011)

When I visited Launceston (UK), I was expecting to find the old Woolworths building occupied by Moore’s Furnishings, a business that was – and, in fact, still is – advertising its Southgate Street shop as “the finest furniture and bed store in Launceston.”

Instead, however, I found the property vacant and ‘to let’ (through Kivells), and seemingly in the midst of redecoration. Meanwhile, the Italian restaurant, Roberto’s, that occupies the rest of the street frontage and all of the basement level is also up for sale.

I understand that Moore’s had occupied the site for just a few years, following on from other post-Woolies occupants including the Castle Café, which took over the site after Woolies closed, and a clothing and furniture store.

Jim Edwards tells me that, as far as he’s aware, there are no specific plans for the building’s future use. One way or another, however, it looks like this fascinating and historically rich building will soon be starting yet another phase of its evolution as it nears its 300th birthday.

Many thanks to Jim Edwards and to Sandra from Launceston Library for their help in filling in some of the gaps in the story of 5-7 Southgate Street.

Queen's Parade frontage of former Woolworths, Hartlepool (4 May 2011)

As I briefly noted last week, Middlesbrough’s ex-Woolworths store isn’t the only one on Teesside to have recently found a new occupant. At the end of March, it was reported that Hartlepool’s former Woolies (store #322) – empty since the retailer’s collapse – is set to reopen as BHS in the autumn.

Originally opened in Lynn Street on 7 July 1928 (more of which in a future post), Hartlepool’s Woolworths branch moved to the then-new Middleton Grange Shopping Centre in 1970. The store originally had a large food hall, which was removed in 1986, and the store itself was downsized in 1990. As I observed previously, the space that Woolies freed up 21 years ago now houses Peacocks, Quicksilver and the British Heart Foundation furniture store, the latter accessed from the street rather than inside the shopping centre.

British Heart Foundation store, Hartlepool (16 Nov 2010)

I’d never visited the Woolworths store when it was still open, so wasn’t entirely familiar with the unit’s internal configuration. However, the drawings accompanying BHS’s recent planning applications for the site – H/2011/0207 and H/2011/0208 – make things much clearer.

Queen's Parade frontage of former Woolworths, Hartlepool (4 May 2011)

Despite a large proportion of the ground floor being occupied by other tenants since 1990, the plans make clear that Woolworths retained almost all the first floor. In the picture of the external (Queen’s Parade) frontage above, the ex-Woolies unit stretches the full width of the first-floor level – including the whole of the section with windows – with the British Heart Foundation store occupying just a small corner of the upper level facing Victoria Road, below.

BHF's two-storey corner unit, from Victoria Road (16 Nov 2010)

Looking at the ex-Woolies from Central Square inside the mall (below), I’d always assumed that the actual sales area covered both these levels, reinforced by the fact that there was an upper level fire exit in Victoria Walk, opposite The Galleries café. However, my impression from looking at the existing floor plans is that the post-1990 Woolworths’ sales area was, in fact, restricted to the ground floor, with the first floor used only for storage and staff rooms. I’m sure someone from Hartlepool can clarify whether that was indeed the case!

Former Middleton Grange Woolworths, Hartlepool (17 Sep 2009)

Against this backdrop, BHS’s plans for the site are especially interesting. As well as retaining a 13,948 sq ft sales area on the ground floor, new escalators will connect to a further 8,073 sq ft sales area on the first floor. There will also be a 2,019 sq ft, 119-seater café, which – if I’m reading the plans correctly – will feature new glazing overlooking the mall’s Central Square.

On the downside, the plans show that there will only be a fire exit – and no public entrance – to Queen’s Parade. Before it was downsized, the Woolworths store had a prominent frontage overlooking Victory Square, and reinstating this for Peacocks and BHS would go a long way to addressing the relentlessly inward-facing feel of Middleton Grange. As it is, the tatty Peacocks frontage – with shuttered windows and old signage – is a disgrace, looking for all the world like a closed-down shop, and doing nothing to knit the store into the pedestrian routes surrounding the shopping centre.

When I visited Hartlepool last week, there were signs of work going on inside the soon-to-be-BHS store, but nothing much to see due to all the windows being blacked out. Given the omnipresence of Middleton Grange’s security, I resisted the temptation to take any further interior shots, but will do my best to sneak something once BHS actually opens.

Screenshot of BHS Hartlepool job ad (9 May 2011)

Various positions, including Store Manager and Restaurant Manager, are already being advertised on the BHS jobs website, which reveals that the “exciting new concept store” is set to open in October, and confirms that it will offer “an exciting range of products, across Fashion and Home, to inspire our customers, along with a brand new Restaurant.” This suggests that Hartlepool’s BHS may open slightly ahead of the new Northumberland Street store in Newcastle, thereby giving us a tantalising taster of what we can expect to see here on Tyneside later in the autumn.

It may have taken Hartlepool two-and-a-half years to find a new tenant for its old Woolworths, but, ironically, it’s ended up with one of the best outcomes of any town or city in the North East. Back in December, while filming in Hartlepool with the BBC, I flagged BHS as one of the obvious potential occupants for the site, and it’s great that the unit is being filled not only with a quality name, but with a 24,000 sq ft store that will actually have more retail floorspace than its predecessor. Hartlepool still lacks a proper department store such as Debenhams, Beales or House of Fraser, but BHS’s confidence and investment should give the town centre’s fortunes a welcome fillip.

Original former Woolworths (now Store Twenty One), Redcar (4 May 2011)

One of my main motivations for visiting Redcar yesterday was to get a photo of the town’s original former Woolworths at 19 High Street, above, which – inexplicably – I’d failed to spot when I was there the previous time.

I should have known from the store number of the Redcar Woolworths – 275, giving an opening date of 1929 – that the more modern building at 39-43 High Street, now occupied by the Yorkshire Trading Company, below, couldn’t have housed Redcar Woolies since the beginning.

...and its 1950s (?) replacement (4 May 2011)

Redcar’s original Woolworths, as regular readers will expect by now, is classic interwar Woolies architecture, with all the usual features – redbrick and white render, with small windows either side of a three-bay-wide pedimented section. Curiously, there are two additional bays on the right-hand side, suggesting that it was at some point extended – rather like the store in Llandudno.

Original former Woolworths (now Store Twenty One), Redcar (4 May 2011)

The design of the main section, interestingly, is almost identical to the original Woolworths in Byker’s Shields Road, below, though Redcar’s is in a generally better state of repair. This similarity is unsurprising – Byker was store number 276 to Redcar’s 275, meaning that the two stores would have been built and opened within just a few weeks of one another.

Original Woolworths, Byker (27 Sep 2009)

The old postcard, below, shows a yet-to-be-pedestrianised Redcar High Street in what I think is the 1950s, with the Woolworths store visible, in its original location, on the far right.

Old postcard of Redcar High Street, c.1950s

If you click on the image above to enlarge it, you can see that the Woolworths store has its upstairs windows open, revealing an art deco design very similar to those shown in the photo of the Byker store. Sadly, I understand that the Byker ex-Woolies’ original windows have been ripped out and replaced in just the last few months.

One piece of information I’m not clear about is when exactly Redcar’s Woolworths moved from its original location to the new site. My hunch, however, is that it may have been in the late 1950s, given that the replacement store still has in place its distinctive 1960s Woolworths shopfront, complete with shiny black stall riser.

Former Woolworths, Redcar (17 Sep 2009)

Bringing this post nicely full circle with the previous one, about Redcar’s ‘virtual shops’, the town’s original Woolies site happens to be a property that has only recently acquired a new occupant after years of standing empty. The expanding fashion retailer Store Twenty One opened its new store there only a few weeks ago, reunifying the two parts of the building that had previously housed a McDonalds restaurant and a card shop.

This makes Redcar the fourth Store Twenty One branch in the North East to have a Woolworths history, following the chain’s recently opened stores in Stanley, Jarrow and Houghton-le-Spring (pictured below) – all sites vacated following Woolworths’ 2008 collapse. Just as elsewhere, the retailer’s new Redcar store is surprisingly smart and appealing for a value chain, and certainly makes a positive impression on the streetscape.

Store Twenty One, Jarrow (24 Jul 2010)

Former Woolworths (now Store Twenty One), Houghton-le-Spring (1 Mar 2011)

Former Woolworths (now Store Twenty One), Stanley (12 April 2010)

Owned since 2006 by Indian textiles group Alok, Store Twenty One may not be an especially well-known retail name, but its aggressive expansion in the last few years has certainly played an important role in regenerating North East high streets – often in locations that other retailers might have overlooked.

The downside, of course, is the restructured business’s failure, as yet, to make a profit, though pre-tax losses for the group (including QS, as well as Store Twenty One) have fallen from a peak of £27.5m in 2007 to ‘only’ £6.4m in 2010. With the owners promising a “definite” profit for the year ending March 2011, it has to be hoped that Alok’s investment in new and improved stores comes good before too much longer.

With the ex-Woolies in Hartlepool and Middlesbrough now in new tenants’ hands (as BHS and Discount UK repectively – more on that in a future post), my reckoning is that of the 33 North East stores closed following Woolworths’ collapse, just four remain empty – in Wallsend, Peterlee, Newton Aycliffe and Newcastle. Coincidentally, none of these are locations where Store Twenty One currently has a presence.

With Alok reportedly seeking to double its UK store numbers from the current 200+, perhaps it could yet snap up the lot? Whenever it happens – and it may not be too much longer – the North East achieving a 100% hit rate of Woolies reoccupations will certainly be a cause for celebration, reinforcing the sense that even in the midst of an economic downturn there are still plenty of expanding retailers seeking out the right space.