What Happened to Woolworths? | The Store That Was on Every Street in Britain скачать в хорошем качестве

What Happened to Woolworths? | The Store That Was on Every Street in Britain

What Happened to the Woolworths? | The Store That Was on Every High Street in Britain Subscribe: ‪@beforebritianforgot‬ Every Woolworths in Britain smelled the same. Beeswax and paraffin from wooden floors polished every Monday morning. The pick 'n' mix counter stretched the length of the shop — chrome scoops, porcelain bowls, cola bottles, flying saucers, foam bananas. Your mum gave you a paper bag and sixpence and for five minutes you had the hardest decision of your week. It started with an American who never set foot in Britain. Frank Woolworth sent a Yorkshireman named William Stephenson to Liverpool where they opened the first store on 5 November 1909. Nothing cost more than sixpence. Sixty thousand people came on day one. Within twelve years there were a hundred stores. At the peak, eleven hundred and forty. Every high street in the country had a Woolies. They sold everything. Light bulbs, knitting needles, Miners lipstick, broken biscuits by weight. The restaurant did Arctic Peaches — ice cream with tinned fruit — and everyone remembers it. Embassy Records sold cover versions at half price. By 1987 one in four albums in Britain went through a Woolworths till. Christmas didn't start until you'd been to Woolies for tinsel and baubles at a penny each. Tens of thousands of teenagers got their first Saturday job in the maroon uniform. On 25 November 1944 a V2 rocket hit the New Cross Road store. A hundred and sixty-eight people killed, thirty-three of them children. Staff raised money from their own wages for two Spitfires named Nix Over Six Primus and Secundus. The 2001 demerger from Kingfisher stripped £614 million in property. Poundland took the value market using Woolworths' own idea. On 26 November 2008 Deloitte arrived. Forty-two days later all 807 stores were gone. On the last day some stores sold at sixpence prices. The way it all began. YouGov 2022: forty-nine percent of Britons want it back. Not the saucepans. The feeling. Saturday mornings. Mum holding your hand through the door. The weight of that paper bag. The woman behind the counter who said that's a quarter love, anything else.