• Welcome to this forum . We are a worldwide group with a common interest in Birmingham and its history. While here, please follow a few simple rules. We ask that you respect other members, thank those who have helped you and please keep your contributions on-topic with the thread.

    We do hope you enjoy your visit. BHF Admin Team
  • HI folks the server that hosts the site completely died including the Hdd's and backups.
    Luckily i create an offsite backup once a week! this has now been restored so we have lost a few days posts.
    im still fixing things at the moment so bear with me and im still working on all images 90% are fine the others im working on now
    we are now using a backup solution

Rackhams Store

I have noted that a London (Oxford Street) store will stay open as will the one in Plymouth. Have not yet seen how the Birmingham one will fare.
 
Legal & General who own the House of Fraser building in Corporation street have announced plans to turn the building into offices and a hotel. The building is currently on a short term let to Sports Direct who are currently operating the House of Fraser stores. The building was bought by Legal & General in 2014 for £71.4m.

The plans also include shops, restaurants, cafes, leisure facilities, bars, communal space etc.
 
My days at the back of Rackhams revolved around the young ladies, two to be honest that I was courting in the 60's. In those days a few buses stopped around there , there was a large door maybe more than one where you could do your kissing and canoodling before the buses arrived, after coming out of the West End. I always felt I'd been cheated out of precious canoodling time with the walk from the West End
 
From the Birmingham Mail archives images.

I remember the lovely window displays
6516FB85-DD6B-4045-A7F8-7A0E6ED38A48.jpeg014E10B3-9F80-4358-B87E-0213F4F857D0.jpeg


And the make-up counters - of course

5117F0FF-EC2C-48A8-8216-87812FFED440.jpeg

Never queued for the January sales but plenty of people did
D2691173-277C-4366-A334-8A789C580251.jpeg

And if you were well heeled it must have been THE place to buy your wedding dress

E2BC7973-167F-432D-91CC-72D2396CE514.jpeg

Viv
 
Oh yes, the perfume department! It was where I bought my first bottle of Guerlain's Jicky. Never investigated the wedding dress dept. Was it on a special floor?
At one time (1980s?) didn't they have a sort of ladies' club, where you could go and sit down or write a letter? I think it was something like £10 a year.

Viv, your photo was of the make-up counters, but I think perfume was nearby.
 
Last edited:
I too don’t remember a wedding department Maria. Probably tucked away for privacy.

I remember the Vidal Sassoon salon very well. Used to get my hair cut there regularly. And it was a very good cut. Hair was always glossy and #leek afterwards. Remember this was before the invention of hair straighteners. Seem to remember it being a really large salon, with many rows of seats. Viv.
 
Re #32 and #33 - I used to catch the bus (number 12) to college in the early '70s outside Rackhams and loved to see their Christmas window display. I seem to recall they had a theme which ran across all the windows. You knew when it was coming as they covered the windows while the display went up.
 
The Wikipedia page says the Birmingham store is secure, after the owners of Sports Direct bought the company out of administration.

House of Fraser aka the Back of Rackhams seen on Temple Row.



I keep walking past the blue plaque for Mr William Sands Cox who established a Medical School on this site in 1825.

Photo taken in 2010.



Some recent Corporation Street views of the House of Fraser.



 
When we got married we didn’t have any money, so the wife went to the back of Rackhams and came back with £25 and 25p. I said who gave you 25p? She said “All of them”
 
I thought Rackhams had previously had a shop in Colmore Row. Its window had been damaged by bombing during the war. Like similar others, the window was boarded up with just a small glass pane in the the middle.
 
JohnWish said:
I thought Rackhams had previously had a shop in Colmore Row. Its window had been damaged by bombing during the war. Like similar others, the window was boarded up with just a small glass pane in the the middle.
Click to expand...
The only shop in Colmore Row I remember with boarded-up windows and small glass panes was Boots the Chemists on the corner of Bull Street.
ColmoreRow1947iOS.jpg

Rackhams on the corner of Temple Row certainly boarded up their windows after blast from WW2 bomb damage on the opposite corner.
corner_of_Temple_row__bull_st_after_bombing.jpg
oldmohawk ...:)
 
ellbrown said:
The Wikipedia page says the Birmingham store is secure, after the owners of Sports Direct bought the company out of administration.
Click to expand...

Wiki might say that but the landlord says differently. See my post 26 above

DavidGrain said:
Legal & General who own the House of Fraser building in Corporation street have announced plans to turn the building into offices and a hotel. The building is currently on a short term let to Sports Direct who are currently operating the House of Fraser stores. The building was bought by Legal & General in 2014 for £71.4m.

The plans also include shops, restaurants, cafes, leisure facilities, bars, communal space etc.
Click to expand...
 
Wiki is often suspect, especially when it not updated by those who post on it.
I believe this leasing arrangement to Sports Direct applies to other UK H of F stores.
 
Whoever did the edit had a ref to an August 2018 Guardian article.

Any photos of the Temple Row site from before the current building went up. As in the Georgian buildings, or were they bombed during WW2?
 
O dear my first post on BHF and I might be wrong. I left Birmingham for a bomb-free part of Yorkshire in 1941 aged 5 (my father had been 'directed' there to make Rolls Royce engines). Prior to that going into the shelter every night was just what you did. At the end of the war we came back and I was less innocent. The bombed houses I expected. What intrigued me were 2 shops with boarded up windows with small panes of glass in the middle. I now realise they were linked by a bus route. We used to catch the 15 or 16 in Colmore Row (ie where there was 'Rackhams'). We got off in Green Lane, Small Heath by Third Ave. where there was a newsagents, also with such a window.
As a lad, as now, I am not much into ladies' clothes shops but I thought I knew that the shop in Colmore Row was Rackhams. I left Birmingham in 1965 but returned often. When the big Rackhams in Corporation St opened I remember thinking “How did that little shop manage to expand to this size?”.
I have just taken a walk along Colmore Row (care of Google). About where I thought the shop in my memory had been, was a shop (in August 2018, for sale and previously a solicitors, Davisons) at 75/77. The shop I remember was single-fronted but this is double but that was 70-odd years ago.

Was there a ladies shop there that I thought was Rackhams or am I more senile than I thought?
 
This may have been posted before but I like it as it shows the pre-Corporation Street store (corner of Bull St/Temple Row) and it has lots of material displayed in the window.
I wonder if that’s because people were still making their own garments in the 1950s, and/or was it because Rackhams had their own tailors in store ? Ironically Burton’s Tailors High Street Art Deco building can be seen to the left. Viv.

118FDC1F-CFAD-40B7-BFB3-F4812388CE9F.jpeg
 
My mother used to buy dress making patterns and material from Rackhams both from the old store and from the new store. In the new store the patterns were at the foot of the curving staircase from the Temple Row entrance.
 
Oh yes, remember the large books of patterns that you could browse - like wallpaper sample books. Forgotten about those. Viv.
 
Out of date wallpaper pattern books were wonderful - when you could get them - for children to use for drawing and other projects. I have seen walls papered with them on a couple of occasions.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top