[Closed] High street shops of yore

Preedy's was an important shop in my local town!

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Old folks round our way still refer to debenhams as 'spooners' -the department store that inhabited the building 40 years ago. In deference to this, i have begun to call all shops the name they had when i was little, so house of fraser is still Dingles, our 2 tesco metros nearby are gateway and esso, and when they build that new morrisons i will still be calling it superbowl. 😀

Radio Rentals. I used to love browsing the little A5 brochure of films you could rent. How times have changed...for the better might I add.

binners - Member

Like most things, its a Tesco nowadays

I bought my first bong from the headshop just at the top of the escalators.
And fake Levis from the Denim Shop. 🙂

Paperchase was good for obscure stuff.

Decoy Records was my favourite, pre IRA.

Wimpy of the year opposite our office, I've never been.

How could I forget ....

Geordie Jeans !!!!

Wimpy alive and kicking in Nam, Twickenham.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/ @51.447189,-0.328422,3a,75y,93.14h,74.69t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sSws-gix4JL78rUHIldKV8g!2e0!6m1!1e1

😆

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I loved Tandy!

pretty sure there's still a wimpy and a stolen from ivor in Huddersfield.

C and A is big in most of Europe, As is Intersport which we don't have many of left.

Joe Bloggs Shops, and Famous army stores (with no army kit what so ever) seem to have dsapeared.

Wow I remember a Stolen From Ivor in Preston. Didn't realise it was a chain!

We had one in Bury. It's where I used to buy my Joe Bloggs jeans.

Olympus Sports - or did I imagine that?

edit- found it

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It was a proper sports shop that sold equipment for actually doing sport, unlike the ones for clothing chavs

What about Stolen From Ivor? I used to get my "pulling gear" from them on a Saturday afternoon.

Also, Olympus Sports

jools - you wasted your time. I got this on page 1.

What about Laskey's? Sold TVs, hi-fi and (my fave) computers.

C and A is big in most of Europe, As is Intersport which we don't have many of left.

Also (regrettably) Netto.

There was a Stolen from Ivor in Northwich as well

run by a bloke called Ivor Lee who lived I think in Cheadle, big merc, personalised numberplate yadda

VG and Leos both taken over by the Co-Op from all accounts.

Timothy Whites - like Lakeland but with more brown and orange Tupperware than you could shake a stick at.

C+A only really pulled out of UK (maybe some other places too)

Don't think Bejam was renamed Iceland, but more a case of Iceland taking over many former Bejam stores?

Rumbelows, Laskys, Tandy (all for hacking BASIC on the old 8-bit home computers)

Allders (or All Ders as we used to call it, aged 9)

MFI (Made For Idiots)

Kwiksave (must have got half my student food from there, mainly cos the baked beans were better than the big supermarket own brands and only 16p/can)

I also had a jumper similar to the bloke in the picture...

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Our main supermarket when I was little was Saverite, with a Liptons actually on the high street with a normal shop front and all - and some other one I forget.

Then International built a HUGE purpose built shop behind the high st (pretty small in reality) that put paid to those. Then some years later still it became Gateway, then Safeway, then Safeway built a proper modern one outside town. All pretty much defunct, the big one is now a Morrisons afaik.

Selby's Tesco will always be Hillards to me.

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I'm still traumatised from the time I went there and Darth Vader hurt my hand...

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The Internet has let me down. I have searched hard but I can't find any piccies of any 'Chelsea Girl' or 'Concept Man' shops. They're all River Island now.

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No Frills bread for 4p anyone?

Kwik Saves had in-store beer/wine/spirit concessions called Liquor Save.

[i]"Do yourself a favour, be a liquor saver." was the jingle![/i]

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The one in this photo isn't the original Liquor Save logo.

Does anybody remember the Safeway in Shambles Square, Manchester?
And Sussex Armoury that sold airguns and crossbows?

As a really esoteric one, ow about Clover's Department Store in Kirkstall, Leeds?

My uncle worked there selling sofas and TVs (as they are basically the same???)

Been looking for an image but it appears to be a BHS now...

Rachel

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And Sussex Armoury that sold airguns and crossbows?

Aaaah yes… purveyors of black widow catapults to the youth of Manchester 😀

Radio Rentals. I used to love browsing the little A5 brochure of films you could rent. How times have changed...for the better might I add.

There's a Kwik Save in Little Lever near Bolton that's been opened within the last year or so but I think its the only one in the country.

Whether the guy bought the name or just used it is anyone's guess.

Round here there was CO-OP Normid which I think stood for North West and Midlands, was basically the good old CO-OP under another name.

There is a Wimpy in Maidstone too.

We used to have a Laskys and a supermarket from a chain called David Greig. Don't know if that was just a south east thing though.

I do miss safeway, but thats because i worked for them for many years, the morrisons takeover just ruined everything we knew about the company but thats a take over.

Virgin Megastores! great shops, i guess the bigger question is who will go next?

Shops of yore, where I have worked

Wardrobe Bolton
In Wear Matinique
Woodhouse
Chipie
McKenzie
Freewheel
Replay
Mountain Range Newhay

So I probably served a few you Manchester chaps over the years.

How about Fads.The bejam in muffin mans pic is the one in Croggy(crossgtes) in Leeds,remember it well.Also had a cousin who worked at Clover in Kirkstall.

Kwiksave - owned by Somerfield who were originally JHMills ,Dee Stores, carrefour(uk) International, Macfisheries , Macmarkets, Fine Fare to become Gateway in the 70s then Somerfield
Anyway they cherry picked the stores and converted them to Somerfield then ran the rest as a standalone business until they realised it was costing them money, they then sold the business on to a company called BTTF ( back to the future) which was supposed to take KS back to their original trading format and it didn't last due to lack of funds and buying power against the multiples
Closing the doors in 2007 for the last time the name has been bought by Costcutter to be used again and yes there is one store in Bolton but it's more a convenience store than a discounter
Btw Victor Value was bought by Kwiksave as was Liquorsave which was a seperate business owned by Northwest vintners ,
Spent best part of 20 years with KS and latterly SF and loved it, rough and ready but would do well now
They also bought Shoprite and a few others along the way too

Couple of slightly dodgy ones from me

Bata, closed after it was disclosed they made jackboots for the nazis during WW2 using slave labour

This one might ring a bell with anyone from East London, OTV in Clapton next to the canal. Dodgy looking bloke called Joe owned it and appeared in his own adverts on C4
Sold recon tellys and video machines, remember it well as it was next to my local The Prince Of Wales

Taylor mckenna ( toy shop)
Contessa ( underwear)
Weigh and save
DER (TV rentals)
Cheap Jacks ( jeans)

Showing my age now. Not exactly a national chain but a good portion of my spending money went here as a kid.

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Also mustn't forget Green Shield Stamp showrooms, when they shut quite a few became Argos shops

I remember the Green Shield catalogue, you could get a basic 1.3 Ford Cortina for about 800 books. We only had enough for a fishing reel and a chip pan, always did better on the Players No6 fag coupons.

Olympus Sports is a good call...was just a young kid when that was about but remember they had a running track around the store and i would sprint up and down that and one day Daley Thompson was there for some promotion and 'raced' me - I didnt know who Daley Thompson was at the time though!

Another one was Tower Records. The shop in Glasgow was great, really expensive but it was open to about midnight and had a great selection of records (particularly imports), computer games, magazines etc. And how could i forget the minidiscs and laserdiscs.

When it opened it was around about the same era as McDonalds first opened in Glasgow...hard to believe now but going for a burger, fries and milk shake there then popping into Tower Records next door felt exotic and exciting.

Bit later on then i still miss Borders Books particularly their magazine and newspaper selection, no-where else carries anything like the range they had.

Great Mills
Homeworld

I'd just like to add that having worked for Our Price between 98-02 I definitely don't miss that ****ing place.

There's a Kwik Save in Little Lever near Bolton that's been opened within the last year or so but I think its the only one in the country.

There's one recently opened on Manchester Rd, Castleton, Rochdale too.

Andy's Records was an ace music shop, used to have a better range of music than all the others like HMV etc.