Luckily for this BHS, it's on a world-class street. For Premier Inn, the hotelier involved, it was an opportunity too good to miss. And the demand is there. We're creating jobs too. Edinburgh has lost four of its main department stores in the past few years, but, fortunately, there are solutions under way for all of them. Filling the gaps in smaller towns is a much greater challenge. In Dumfries, the old Debenhams store is still vacant. It's the biggest retail unit in the town, with no takers so far for the space.
Through crowdfunding, donations and public money, it's buying old, empty, shops and bringing them back to life with new tenants. We stand or fall on our own two feet," he says. Would he like to take on the former Debenhams site as well? Some of form of intervention is needed, he believes, to avoid the store sitting empty for years. Throughout the s it experienced decline, with many Binns stores closing down — including the Sunderland site in A change of hands at House of Fraser in led to all the remaining Binns stores, save for the Darlington branch, to be renamed as House of Fraser.
It opened its first British store in and closed down all sites in the country in , resulting in the loss of jobs. At its peak, Peter Robinson operated from 39 stores in the UK. The Topshop chain debuted in as a section in a Peter Robinson branch, and in the basement of the Oxford Circus store was converted to be a Peter Robinson Topshop. By the end of the s, Peter Robinson had disappeared from high streets, and Topshop continues to occupy its former Oxford Circus flagship site.
Interestingly, during the s John Lewis — the man himself, that is — had a successful career with Peter Robinson — so much so that he was partnership opportunity in , which he declined. He founded the now-famous John Lewis chain that same year. The building now houses Debenhams and TK Maxx, although the Debenhams section ceased trading earlier this year.
Over the years, it fell under the ownership of Harrods and then House of Fraser. The store was the first in the UK to be fitted with electric lighting, escalators, lifts and plate glass windows.
The store was well known for its toy and hardware departments, and for its unusual location away from Oxford Street and on the edge of the City of London district. In the late s a second Gamages store opened in Romford, Essex, but this had a short lifespan as it closed down in the early s.
Do you remember any of these? What other department stores could be on this list? Tell us in a comment below. My mum worked there in the hosiery dept. Woollands in Knightsbridge. One of the upmarket Department stores which began its life initially in Wolverhampton was Beatties. Boswells in Oxford was one of the oldest department stores in the world opening in Only closed this year after years of trading.
Six branches in the South in its heyday. Analysis of UK high streets suggests gaps left by department stores may be permanent.
Joanna Partridge. Sat 28 Aug The buyer is understood to be local but it's unclear what plans they might have for the site. Multi-storey shops won't exist in Southport in future," says David Myers, who owns an opticians in the town centre. Southport lost its other two department stores, Debenhams and Beales, this year. It needs a change of use, for instance there could be a hotel or residential on the upper floors and then split the ground floor for smaller, individual shops with realistic rents and rates.
Like Southport, most of the BHS units were very large, with multiple floors, and costly to re-let. Of the 91 stores which have been re-occupied, more than one fifth According to the data, Next has taken on four former BHS sites. But finding retailers to take on a big, new space is a lot more challenging now. Before coronavirus struck, landlords increasingly looked to leisure to help fill the gaps with venues like mini golf, rock climbing and gaming becoming more popular.
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