Former Woolworths (now Heron Foods), New Washington (Concord) (17 Jun 2010)

Back in February, I blogged about the former Woolworths store in Sunderland’s Fawcett Street, which closed in 2004 following its acquisition by Primark.

At the time, I noted the curious lack of Woolies stores left on Wearside at the point of the retailer’s 2008 administration, with Houghton-le-Spring (#448) the last one remaining in the Sunderland area. As I’ve dug around more, however, it’s become clear that there are even more old Woolies on Wearside than I thought, with long-closed stores at New Washington (#1014), Seaham and Pennywell (#817), as well as the fairly short-lived Woolco (#2007) at Washington Galleries.

I’m imagining that the former Pennywell store is no more – perhaps demolished as part of the redevelopment of the estate’s shopping centre? – but I’d be curious to know when the store closed, where it was, and any memories of shopping or working there. I’ve got the store number – #817 – from an old edition of The New Bond, which would suggest that it opened in 1953.

Over to New Washington though, and I was alerted to the existence of that store by a photo, from 1959, on the Woolies nostalgia site, 100thBirthday.co.uk, which I found when hunting out information on Washington’s Woolco. According to the site, the New Washington store was a fairly late addition to the Woolies estate, opening as a self-service store in March 1959 in the then-new Arndale Centre. Apparently, however, business suffered once the enormous Washington Galleries Woolco opened down the road in 1970, eventually leading to the store’s closure in 1984.

'Arndale House' signage at Concord's Arndale Centre (17 Jun 2010)

It’s conceivable that the New Washington shop may have survived if it had only hung around a little longer, given that the Woolco estate was itself disposed of shortly afterwards – 100thBirthday.co.uk says 1985, Richard Hawkins 1986 and the Sunderland Echo 1988. Perhaps someone can advise on when the correct date actually was?

Naturally, I was curious to track down the New Washington Woolies and, indeed, to see whether the building was even still there. The first hurdle was working out where exactly New Washington was, given that it was a name I’d never heard used before. However, a little bit more digging – including references to ‘New Washington Post Office’ – helped me pinpoint the location as what is known today as Concord, close to the busy Concord bus station. Apparently, New Washington – now Concord - was the commercial centre of Washington new town prior to the building of the Galleries in the 1970s.

Former Woolworths (now Heron Foods), New Washington (Concord) (17 Jun 2010)

Happily, I found that the Arndale Centre is still intact, and that the former Woolworths property is still completely recognisable as the store featured in 100thBirthday.co.uk’s shot from more than fifty years ago. In fact, the whole parade is still rather handsome, with the façade of the former Woolworths unit retaining what looks to be its original green mosaic tiling – quite a delightful architectural feature. It’s just a shame that the first floor windows – open in the 1959 shot – have subsequently been blocked up.

Fittingly, however, the unit is now a Heron Foods, a status shared with quite a number of those Woolies that only closed down eighteen months ago.

Meanwhile, over at Washington Galleries, the main architectural clues to the former status of Woolco – now Asda – are its vast size, and the fact that the interior of the building still has something of the feel of a 1970s structure. At the time, of course, shops of that size – while common today – would still have been few and far between, in the days before Asda Supercentres and Tesco Extras had been thought of. Against this backdrop, it’s easy to imagine how exciting and impressive the enormous Woolco must have seemed when it opened forty years ago.

1970s view of Washington's Woolco

Former Woolco (now Asda) at Washington Galleries (17 June 2010)

Shots of the Washington Woolco seem quite hard to come by, but I’m grateful to Peter for finding the 1970s photograph above in a little book called The Visit of President Carter and Prime Minister Callaghan to Washington New Town, 6th May 1977.

As with the New Washington store, it’s remarkable how similar the building looks now to how it did decades ago – compare the colonnaded entrance, for example. Other than the signage, and the models of cars in the car park, little else has really changed.

While Washington’s two very different Woolies are both long gone, a little bit of retail history is certainly still readable in the buildings that used to house them.

Former Woolworths, Seaham (2 April 2010)

Recent comments on this blog about the former Woolworths in Church Street, Seaham have given me the nudge that I required, having taken some photos of the store back in April but not yet got round to writing about it.

Just like the Woolworths in Benwell and Byker, the Seaham shop is one that had bitten the dust long before the company’s administration in 2008. Featuring the five bays and central pediment that characterises Woolies stores from the 1920s and 30s, Seamaster suggests that the store closed down in the mid-1980s - a period when there were quite a few store closures following the UK business’s split from its American parent.

Former Woolworths, Seaham (2 April 2010)

In its scale and grandeur, the former Woolworths is undoubtedly one of the finest shop buildings in Seaham. This makes it a particular shame that the present shopfront is so dismal, disconnected architecturally from the upper half of the building, and having complete disregard for the property’s symmetry. It’s a far cry from the 1970s, when old photographs suggest that the building’s original and harmonious shopfront was still in place.

If its past as a Woolies is the building’s first story, then its second and more recent story relates to it being a branch of the clothing retailer Ethel Austin. When I visited in April, however, the Ethel Austin store had itself closed down, one of the first 114 stores to be shuttered following the Liverpool-based firm’s collapse – yet again – into administration.

Though too late for Seaham, a rump of 90 stores were rescued in April, following their purchase by the firm’s previous owner,  Elaine McPherson. However, the longstanding Ethel Austin brand looks set to disappear, with the stores remodelled into a new fashion and homewares chain called Life & Style, alongside the head office for the business moving from its historic base of Liverpool to Altrincham.

Time will tell whether Life & Style can succeed where Ethel Austin could not - or whether, as one commentator has observed, it is “just Ethel Austin with a different name”.  On balance though, it probably is the right decision – albeit a sad one – to ditch a 76-year-old brand that was starting to become so associated with failure. For now, however, the Ethel Austin name will no doubt live on in the fascias of closed-up stores such as the one in Seaham.

Byron Place shopping centre, Seaham (11 Sep 2009)

With the appealing (and almost fully let) Byron Place mall having shifted Seaham’s retail centre of gravity to the bottom end of Church Street since its opening in 2007, the prospect of the town’s old Woolies securing a new tenant anytime soon does seem uncertain.

Exterior of Byron Place mall, Seaham (11 Sep 2009)

However, it would be a neat conclusion to the story if one of the successor chains to Woolworths – such as Alworths – were to bring a variety store offer back to Seaham’s old Woolies building after an absence of a quarter of a century. Indeed, with Alworths opening stores in Scotland later this month, there must now be a reasonable chance of seeing Alworths stores in the North East before too long.

Whoever eventually moves in to Seaham’s former Woolworths, let’s hope that they also take the opportunity to do something about the dispiriting shopfront, allowing the property to once again be an object of beauty and pride on the high street.

Former Linthorpe Road Woolworths, Middlesbrough

Last week’s blog post about the long-closed former Woolworths in Benwell seems to have opened the floodgates to lots of comments and insights about other nearly-forgotten Woolies in the North East – many thanks indeed for all your contributions!

While Seamaster reminisced about the old Woolies in Seaham – closed in the 1980s – TAS was able to confirm that the long-departed store in Crook was, indeed, in the building that now houses Boots. Meanwhile, Peter shared his memories of buying film brochures from the former Byker Woolies in Shields Road (another ’80s casualty), while John from Gateshead alerted me, via Twitter, to a former Woolworths in Felling that I never knew existed – another one to add to the visiting list!

Former Woolworths (now Decorflair), Shields Road, Byker

Given this present flurry of archive delving, I figured it might be a good moment to recap the known locations of old Woolworths stores in the North East. First, here are the 33 Woolworths that kept going until the bitter end, and only closed down in December 2008 and January 2009 following Woolworths’ administration:

• Alnwick (#822)
• Ashington (#229)
• Barnard Castle (#534)
• Berwick-upon-Tweed (#232)
• Billingham (#820)
• Bishop Auckland (#116)
• Blyth (#544)
• Byker (Newcastle Shopping Park) (#1256)
• Chester-le-Street (#267)
• Consett (#388)
• Darlington (#28)
• Durham (#321)
• Gateshead (#154)
• Gosforth (#716)
• Hartlepool (#322)
• Hexham (#931)
• Houghton-le-Spring (#488)
• Jarrow (#434)
• MetroCentre (#1238)
• Middlesbrough (#1200)
• Morpeth (#439)
• Newcastle upon Tyne (Clayton Street) (#340)
• Newton Aycliffe (#1007)
• North Shields (#426)
• Peterlee (#987)
• Redcar (#275)
• South Shields (#104)
• Spennymoor (#278)
• Stanley (#873)
• Stockton-on-Tees (Castlegate) (#336)
• Stockton-on-Tees (Portrack Lane) (#1232)
• Wallsend (#351)
• Whitley Bay (#277)

Photographs and links to previous blog posts about those stores are given on the ‘Old Woolies’ page.

Next, these are the 16 18 North East stores, that I know of, that had closed down prior to Woolworths’ administration. As far as I’m aware, these are all stores that closed down years ago (i.e. the 1980s or earlier), with the exception of the Middlesbrough Music & Video shop (which reportedly shut in the early 1990s), and of course the large Sunderland store that only bit the dust in 2004:

• Benwell (#905)
• Blaydon
• Byker (63 Shields Road)
• Crook
• Felling
• Killingworth (Woolco)
• Linthorpe Village
• Longbenton [EDIT: Added to list, 21 Jun 2010]
• Middlesbrough (Linthorpe Road) (#8)
• Middlesbrough (Music & Video, Hillstreet)
• New Washington (#1014) [EDIT: Added to list, 3 Jun 2010]
• Newcastle upon Tyne (Northumberland Street) (#27)
• North Kenton [EDIT: Added to list, 28 Jul 2010]
• Pennywell, Sunderland (#817)
• Seaham
• Stockton-on-Tees (High Street)
• Sunderland (Fawcett Street) (#144)
• Thornaby (Woolco)
• Washington Galleries (Woolco) (#2007)

Former Woolworths (now Primark), Sunderland

Former Woolworths, Benwell

In both the lists above, I’ve included the store numbers in brackets where I have them. Within the Woolworths business, these numbers provided each store with a unique identifier, and are repeatedly used in old editions of The New Bond, when referring to particular branches. They were still in use right until the end, however, as highlighted in this useful 2007 PDF.

Stores seem to have kept the same number throughout their lifetimes – South Shields, for example, is referred to as store number 104 in the 2007 list, just as it was in an issue of The New Bond from fifty years earlier.

As far as I am aware, the store numbers also correspond to the order in which those shops were opened – hence the original UK Woolworths in Liverpool being #1; new stores mentioned in the February 1956 edition of The New Bond ranging from #913 (Kingsbridge) to #921 (Warminster); and the most recent Big W sites (such as Byker) having store numbers in the 1200s.

Where a store was rebuilt or relocated – Stockton-on-Tees’ #336, for example – it seems to have kept its original number; however, a new store opening up in a town that had had a Woolworths in the past (such as Middlesbrough), seems to have been allocated a new number (hence the modern Hillstreet branch being #1200, rather than taking over the former #8).

I’d be interested to know if there’s a complete list of store numbers these out there; I certainly haven’t come across one as yet, though it is possible to find the number for many stores by searching or browsing at Woolworths Reunited and 100thBirthday.co.uk.

Equally, if you know of any old Woolies in the North East that are missing from the list above, please add a comment below. I very much doubt that the list is comprehensive, and suspect that there may well be further examples, similar to Stockton, where an earlier store was replaced by a new one elsewhere in the same town.

Ethel Austin, Bishop Auckland

Reports that value fashion retailer Ethel Austin and its sister homewares business, Au Naturale, are poised to enter administration – less than two years after both chains were rescued from previous administrations - is sad and disappointing news, as well as being quite surprising in its timing. 

True, there has been talk of an impending refinancing deal for a week or two, following suppliers’ alleged complaints about not having received payments that were due before Christmas. However, the retailer had reportedly “vehemently denied that it was in trouble”, and has recently been opening stores at quite a pace – 30 to 40 in the last few months, according to the Independent. 

Indeed, as recently as last week Ethel Austin was announcing new store openings, its planned move into the former Woolworths premises in Carmarthen following its acquisition of more than 20 other Woolies sites nationwide over the last twelve months, such as Huddersfield, Fishponds in Bristol, Stone in Staffordshire, and Leven in Fife. 

Ethel Austin store, Byker

I can’t recall ever entering an Ethel Austin store, so it’s difficult for me to comment on what might have gone wrong, though it’s fair to say that many of the more established shops that I have spotted – in places such as Byker or Seaham – haven’t occupied great locations. I’ve always quite liked Au Naturale though, and was disappointed to hear only this week that its Washington Galleries store was closing down. Its stock is largely cheap and cheerful, but it’s always been a good place to go for reasonably priced, decent quality home accessories such as cushions, baskets, vases and coasters. 

Hopefully, whatever fate awaits Ethel Austin and Au Naturale, the future of as many stores and jobs as possible can be secured. However, as with childrenswear retailer Adams – currently in administration for the third time in three years – you do have to question how far a business that has repeatedly collapsed into administration is really worth saving. It suggests, surely, that something is fundamentally awry with the business model or brand. 

Indeed, think about those retailers that have been rescued from administration in recent years, and it’s much easier to bring to mind those that have later collapsed again – such as MK One, MFI and, only this week, jewellery retailer Diamonds & Pearls – than it is to think of any chain that has truly gone on to thrive. Little wonder, perhaps, when retailers are so often bought out of administration – in a pre-pack or otherwise – by the same individuals who took them into administration in the first place.