High Street names that have completely vanished

Mum_of_1

All these names & not many are recent; just shows that the retail trade is constantly evolving.

I saw Next mentioned, who were formed after Hepworths (remember them?) bought the ladies clothing chain Kendalls in the very early 80's.
Interestingly Next bought Grattan (catalogue shopping), owning it for only about 5 years before selling it on the the current (German) owners.

Another long-gone menswear chain is John Collier.

My father managed a John Collier, then a Burtons before progressing and my uncle managed a Hepworths.

Thrugelmir

Mum_of_1 wrote: »

All these names & not many are recent; just shows that the retail trade is constantly evolving.

Contracting even. Dominance by a few. With Amazon setting the benchmark for big box warehouse shipping operation models. Which without political interference or an unexpected hiccup is likely to squeeze further.

earlywormgetsthebird

Here are two more "high street names" which in times past were well known, but now have completely vanished:


Tower Records.
Blockbusters.
& with kudos to Graham Devon above, Our Price, of course.



...not to mention those who never made it past the financial crisis such as Alliance and Leicester (taken by Santander)

zagubov

I remember VG stores. And Mace and Spar. Actually they're probably everywhere except for my corner of SW London/Surrey borders.

I remember loads of supermarket chains that don't exist anymore : Templeton's (used to work in one on Byre's Road), Galbraiths, Cochrane's, William Low's, FineFare?, Safeways, and many more. Most maybe based in Central Scotland, but some were across the UK.

Goldbergs department stores.
DER, Rediffusion, Radio Rentals, Granada, loads of TV hire places. They'd fill a high street like phone shops do now.
Birrells and RSMcColls newsagents. I think one sold Walls and the other sold Lyons Maid ice creams.
Olde Worlde Inns (I think they were a chain of Stakis bars/restaurants).
Firkin pubs. Brilliant, but bought up and converted into ordinary boring pubs.
Pizzaland and Pizza Piazza. Better than most chains around today.

lindens

earlywormgetsthebird wrote: »

Here are two more "high street names" which in times past were well known, but now have completely vanished:

Talking of which - Past Times

westernpromise

When did Kardomah Coffee Houses disappear? I remember one in Ruislip in the late 1960s.

prowla

westernpromise wrote: »

The point one of these blokes made to me is that regardless of what eaterie you go into, the food is always the same, In pubs it's steak and ale pie, fish and chips and chicken tikka. Or it's pizza/pasta. And so on. It's not just that all the eateries are Bella Pasta or Cafe Rouge. Even when they're not the menu is the same. He's right.

Bath does have a few independent shops but the overwhelming majority there and elsewhere are just the usual chains. Carphone Warehouse, Waterstones, M&S, etc etc. If you were blindfolded and set down in any British town then unless you could see and recognise a really obvious landmark - Bath Abbey, King's College Chapel - you would have no chance of guessing where you were. Nothing about Bristol distinguishes it from Brighton or Poole or Chester or Bournemouth or Oxford or Shrewsbury. All very same-same. This isn't really true of Germany, which is surprising considering how much of it was bombed flat then rebuilt all at the same time.

When I worked in Bath I'd go to Loch Fyne, a Thai restaurant near the Hilton, a pub with local sausages for Toad In The Hole, the Hotel I happened to be staying in, and so-on.


I never had fish & chips, steak & ale pie, etc.


Last time I went (earlier this year), there was a patisserie which was doing some interesting stuff and also cafes up an alleyway parallel to the main street.


But yes, in general, British towns are just too samey, too homogenised, and that's why they're not interesting places to go to; when I do go, I try and find independent shops which offer something different.

NBLondon

Sapphire wrote: »

Swan & Edgar and Biba have gone.

Biba still exist as a label - owned by House of Fraser where they appear as concessions (at least for the next few weeks).

Don't know about Army and Navy Stores.

They were bought by House of Fraser in the 70s (as were lots of department stores but operated under the locally known names - Binns or Hammonds when I was growing up...)

Malthusian

westernpromise wrote: »

The point one of these blokes made to me is that regardless of what eaterie you go into, the food is always the same, In pubs it's steak and ale pie, fish and chips and chicken tikka.

No, regardless of what eaterie he goes into, the food that he orders is always the same. If a man walks into a hundred pubs and can only find steak and ale pie, he has the same problem as the person who thinks that everyone they meet is an !!!!!!, and the man who thinks all his bones are broken when it's just the finger he's poking them with. The problem is the customer, not the pubs.

A local could easily find him something different, but it probably wouldn't be worth the risk of your tedious risk-averse friend whinging that there's nothing he wants to eat on the menu.

If you were blindfolded and set down in any British town then unless you could see and recognise a really obvious landmark - Bath Abbey, King's College Chapel - you would have no chance of guessing where you were.

In much the same way as if you were asked to identify random people without looking at their face you would have little chance. "If you remove something's distinguishing features it's really difficult to distinguish them" doesn't tell us much of value.

In much the same way as there are a limited number of body shapes, hence it is difficult to tell people apart without looking at their face, there are only so many different shapes a street can take, hence it is difficult to tell any towns apart anywhere in the world if you're not allowed to look at landmarks.

This isn't really true of Germany, which is surprising considering how much of it was bombed flat then rebuilt all at the same time.

I bow down to your ability to distinguish one gigantic avenue or grid lined with DMs and H&Ms from another.

Unless you have an encyclopaedic knowledge of every local shop in the UK and know that Rosie's Vegan Cafe is in Poole whereas Vegan Rosie's Cafe is in Bournemouth, how on earth would independent shops help you identify which town you were stood in? In the absence of a sign saying "Chester Food Awards Silver 2014" independent shops provide no more clue as to where you are than a chain shop. In fact if you're trying to identify a town by its shops, chain shops will be of more help than independent ones, because a chain shop is much more likely to still be there in the same place it was when you last visited. An independent shop is much more likely to have closed down and been replaced.

What makes a town identifiable, other than its landmarks (which we're not allowed to look for), is its natural and man-made geography. I would be reasonably confident of being able to identify any UK town I'd spent more than an hour in, providing I was somewhere in the centre. This is because most UK towns have a distinct shape formed by random growth over the years. German towns and cities by contrast are often built in straight grids due to being repeatedly blown up and subsequently re-developed (often by Communists who saw no reason not to build nothing but grey cubes arranged in squares).

*edit* All that said, most towns are boring and homogenised. There are only a limited number of ways a settlement can be distinctive, and most of the people who are capable of making them distinctive bunch together in towns like Bristol, Bath, Berlin, Hong Kong, wherever.

Outlying towns and villages are much more likely to be boring and lacking in distinguishing features. This is because anyone who lives there who could create something distinctive moves to Bristol or Berlin at the earliest opportunity. Those who remain in the boring homogenised towns remain because they don't care about this stuff. When they do visit Bath they probably go to Pizza Express or a Greene King pub like your friend and complain that it's all just the same stuff they get at home.

Not every settlement can be a tourist destination, or there would be very few tourists in the first place.

NaughtiusMaximus

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Our price. Spent quite a lot of time in there with headphones on!

I was surprised they lasted as long as they did, they always seemed to be more expensive than HMV and Virgin.

A few which haven't been mentioned:

Braggs - taken over by Greggs
Pizzaland - taken over by Pizza Hut
Escom - 90s computer store, probably killed off by online retailing