Fantasy High Street From Yesteryear!

Oakley’s in St Albans, a marvellous delicatessen. Lyon’s, the ABC, Thrales cafe and an independent department store , Greens .
Also a marvellous art shop. VADOS .

I miss BHS . I’ve always had a soft spot for them since my summer job there in 1971. All individual counters and tills then. I worked on the handbags and umbrellas counter. When we weren’t serving or tidying the counter we had to stand obediently by our till and no chit chat allowed between staff. If you had to speak to the person on the nearby counter they had to be quietly addressed as Miss and their surname .

I felt very grown up especially the first time I was invited by staff after work to the Berni Inn for prawn cocktail and steak and chips 😊

HelterSkelter1

I worked in Bentalls for a few years from 1970. Behind the scenes was amazing. So many staircases and busy departments. It felt like an enormous theatre and the stage was the store. I loved it. So exciting for a 20 year old. I think they had the first personal shopper who said everything must have pzazz ... a word I had never heard before !!!
And the beàuty department was stunning.

Bentalls still there! although driving past a week or two ago has been re branded as Fenwick, the parent company I believe. I loved it too, such a myriad of different departments, whiled away many a Saturday afternoon there, friends and I, we called it "Bent tools" back then that appealed to our sniggering juvenile minds.

C&A
Chelsea Girl
Etam
BHS
Littlewoods
Woolworths
and Bruccianis (Leicester bakery chain, loved by my late MIL) for a coffee and bun

HelterSkelter1

Caleys in Windosr and the original Bentalls in Kingston. And a department store in Lewisham which had lambs to feed at Easter....did I imagine that. Was it Chiesemans??

When I walked into Caleys for the first time at the age of 10 to buy my school uniform I had never been anywhere so magical.

For many years after that I spent hours and hours in the fabric department, sitting on the stools flicking through the pattern books looking for my next creation.

My lifelong love of all things JL started then and has never waned.

I live about 4 miles from Windsor and all my friends and I miss Caleys sooo much. oh the china and glass and the fabrics. Windsor has never been the same.
When we moved to my town we had more than 5 butchers, 2 fish shops, a big greengrocers and bakers. All gone. We do have a Waitrose so all is not gloom, but I loved my shopping with babies in a pram. And we had a Woolworths, a wool shop and a lovely craft shop. Now we have about 20 places to have coffee!!!

We visited our French twin town in September. Although it has a considerably smaller population than our home town, (albeit quite a large catchment area) it has a huge market, lots of butchers and bakers, patisseries. a haberdashers(!!!), fashion shops, furniture shops, antique shops, all distributed along charming little cobbled streets with lots of character.

Our town on the other hand, which is in a picturesque part of Southern Germany, also with a sizeable catchment area and, as I said, a larger population ,does not have a main street or a centre as such, due to its origins. The shops that used to be the hub of the commercial centre are empty. Many shop owners have retired, parking is a problem. Corona finished off some businesses.

The local bakers have all shut down but are slowly opening up again as Turkish or Balkan bakeries which have just the one kind of white bread (which no German would touch with a barge pole; they are used to 20 kinds of dark breads). We have a market on a Tuesday morning with 4-5 stalls selling limp lettuce, eggs, cheese and one or two with home produce in season. There are a couple of pharmacies, plenty of döner places, a travel agency and loads of Turkish barbers. Thanks to the university here in town, there are at least two well-stocked book shops.

So my dream high street is the one in our French twin town - exactly as it is.

Dolcis shoe shop. I got my first pair of high heels there!
Home and Colonial deli!

Dolcis and lily and skinner
Freeman hardy and Willis
Ravel , can’t think of any more

The prices in the shoe shops!!!! 39/11 affordable 49/11 reasonable 59/11 oooh a bit pricey. And the differences were just 10 shillings. Just 50p. Crazy.

I remember wanting a pair of Cathy McGowan shoes, 89/11 in Dolcis. Totally out of reach. 49/11 in FHW was more my mark.

HelterSkelter1

I worked in Bentalls for a few years from 1970. Behind the scenes was amazing. So many staircases and busy departments. It felt like an enormous theatre and the stage was the store. I loved it. So exciting for a 20 year old. I think they had the first personal shopper who said everything must have pzazz ... a word I had never heard before !!!
And the beàuty department was stunning.

Snap! I was a junior in Bentalls too, but a bit earlier than you, from 1963 to 1965. Such a huge store and a maze of corridors and passages behind the scenes. I worked in the Skirts department, and had the unenviable job of packing for the other branches in a tiny airless back room. But, happy days!

And one last memory before I cry!! we had a hardware shop where you could buy a few loose nails in a brown paper bag and the owner would serve them with as much care as he did if you were buying a lawn mower.

I lived near Kingston from 1964 - 1970 and my mum worked in Bentalls. I thought it was an amazing department store.

A bit off thread but did any of you who lived in or around Kingston ever go to the Cellar Club? My friend and I used to go every Saturday night and we loved it

DanniRae I grew up in Guildford and it was a treat for Mum to take me to Kingston on the Green Line Bus to shop at Bentalls and C & A.

I’m obviously older than some of you! I can remember borrowing £1 from my mum to buy a pair of shoes from Dollis for 19/11.

My school uniform had to be bought in Bentalls. I don't remember any other department, that was expensive enough.
I do remember the way the money was sent in cans on an aerial pathway, and the change came back the same way. I presume my mother paid by cheque though.

From so many posters on this thread being familiar with Bentalls at one stage in their youth, would it have been possible we could have rubbed shoulders with one another without knowing we would some time in the future be posting on a website called Gransnet! What a bizarre thought

None of your store names are familiar to me, but it's funny, I just had a memory the other night about going into the watch or clock repair shop in our town as a child with my mother. I happened to be on the hour, and all the clocks were chiming at once, it was quite glorious!

Saturdays included going to the baker's to pick out our own pastries, the butcher's and sometimes the stationery store which I loved.

I'm afraid my small town is sorely lacking in variety in shops downtown. Most are closed with papered over windows.

I miss Jane Norman for its reasonably priced clothes. Plus all the cool girls at school carried their PE kit in a Jane Norman bag.

Ravel bought my first son his fancy Christmas shoes there when he was four. Freeman hardy Willis again my first pair of black patent ankle strap shoes with my first wage!

Woolworths BHS and C&A

Woolworths, C&A and BHS.

I live in the Netherlands and we have C&A. It's a Dutch company

Another user of Bentalls in a past life; I grew up in Hampton and remember going with my mother and sister to Bentalls in the 1960s. We had to put on proper dresses, no slacks, and my mother wore a hat. We would have lunch in their cafeteria - meringue glaces were my favourite pudding.

Another much missed shop - Laura Ashley.