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Lewis's Department Store

  • Thread starter Thread starter Kandor
  • Start date Start date
Sorry I can't get this picture to work.

This silly thing is Ican open the picture on the forum.

I can't stop it coming up as an attachment.

All the other pictures on the Home Guard have come out right, this picture on the same programme and settings do'esn't.

Ray
 
I hadn't heard of the book about lewis's by Asa Briggs before. It is available from Abebooks, but i expect the local studies library has it. The picture is actually bull St, though the text doesn't make it clear. George Berrill, 33 Bull St was a grocer, wine & fruit merchant
Mike
 
I went into Lewis's in Liverpool in March 2009. I was quite surprised to find it was almost the same, except for shape, as our own Lewis's. Quite bizarre really, the flooring, the staircase, all exactly the same. Shame it has gone, too. Shortie
 
Just found this. My son in about 1973-74.
pencil.png
I am sorry I made a pigs ear of that.
 
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Thanks for posting the video and shots of yours truly with your car Aidan. My brother had a car similar to yours. His was bright red. The head lights were a bit different if I recall rightly. There used to be one in the old Science Museum years ago. They were great cars.
 
I remember seeing Father Christmas and Mr Holly in Lewis's very well. My hubby is from Leicester and had never heard of Mr Holly!
 
I would imagine that the video depicts an elaborate and clever Christmas marketing ploy. My car was also bright red but comparing to the vid I can see that I was sold a defective model with dodgy headlamps. :rolleyes: No wonder it took so much maintenance - but it was OK once I put the sparkplugs from Dad's old mini in the glove compartment.

On the same site there are a number of Lewis's related videos such as
Christmas shopping 1961
and
New Year sales 1959

My Mom worked there for a time and I think she used to dread the sales as she was shocked by the behaviour eg customers pulling things out of other customers hands and the initial opening where there were always a number of casualties in the crush.
 
Gosh, what a great forum and a brilliant thread! It's certainly brought back a few memories for me as I worked at Lewis's between 1968 and 1978. It's good to see a couple of postings from my old mate Colin - we started at the same time and I went on to be best man at his wedding - how are you doing bud?

A few things mentioned earlier in the thread have rung bells with me: those signal lights - yes, they were for alerting staff when they had a call. Mine were red and white and I still think about them whenever I see a car with its reversing and stop lights on together!; somebody referred to Clark Gable in a thread - that reminded me of a poor soul who used to come in regularly and regale us all with how she'd been married to him, in the war, last week; Don Pickavance - I remember him well, he was a nice guy although I always found Mr Aaron a bit scary! The other person in that team was Mr Tucker who was the senior manager in charge of display; Gerry England - he was my manager for a while and he was very scary and bad tempered. I eventually had a big falling out with him and was transferred to the training department where I eventually became Training Manager, quite a big move as I've spent the rest of my working life in training in one form or another; the lady in the Staff Office who somebody was asking about was Mrs Waldron. Her bark was worse than her bite as well; somebody mentioned the half-day induction that Saturday staff went through - I probably delivered that in the early seventies; the porters with various disabilities - most of them were war veterans who'd been taken on as a result of legislation. There was a little guy, whose name escapes me, who used to work the lifts and stand on the staff entrance checking parcels. He had a wooden leg and I remember him trying to run across Corporation Street after a trip to The Cabin and his leg fell off in the middle of the road!

Some other memories: we used to go to college with kids from Grays and Rackhams and I remember being on the roof one winter having a snowball fight with mates on the roof of Grays across Bull Street; I also met my future wife on my first day at work - she was one of the Miss Selfridge babes; I worked for a while on the furniture floor (manager was Jim -'don't call me Rafferty' - Raftery, also Pete Johnson who I think is in one of those prize day photos). All the phones were connected together and we used to wind colleagues up with spoof calls - a couple I remember were somebody 'phoning Johnny Severn, manager of dress materials, complaining that the material and pattern he'd bought weren't big enough for his wife's bum, and somebody phoning Tom Kennedy, ASM on Kitchen Furniture, to say that the sink top that had been delivered had a hole in it. We all used to listen in and heard Tom trying to explain that the hole was for a plug!

I remember 'Smasher Day' when we all put in a massive effort to maximise sales - one time I sent a note out to all ASMs telling them that if they wanted to stay over they should book a bed on the bedding dept and breakfast would be served to them first thing - somebody from USDAW took it seriously and I had to keep a low profile for a while.

There's loads more where this came from but work beckons. Maybe more later.
 
Welcome to the Forum TDH. Thanks for posting your fascinating memories of Lewis's. Sounds of "Are You Being Served" TV programme.
I enjoyed reading your stories very much. Like many people on this site I have great memories of shopping at Lewis's ,visiting Father Christmas, going to the Roof Garden, and the fabulous Food floor.
 
Welcome TDH I loved reading your memories. I will always remember queuing on the stairs to see Father Christmas. The highlight of the year and a dear memory for most of our generation in Brum...........happy days! ....hair cuts were a bit scary though!
 
Thanks TDH, it is nice to read your 'inside' memories of the store. I used to have my hair cut there until one day the barber told me I was going bald and ought to have their special electric scalp treatment. Frightened the life out me and I never used them again. 40 years later I still have a full head of hair (somewhat thinner and greyer) so he was wrong.
oldmohawk:)
 
I don't remember there being a barber's shop in my day, I'm pretty sure it was just a Ladies Hairdressers, up on the third floor.

I do remember the ice cream machines that a few people have commented on. You wouldn't have enjoyed it quite so much if you'd heard some of the stories doing the rounds when I was there!!

I remember that, as a kid, we were really well looked after. We were given meal tickets to subsidise lunches - one and sixpence I think they were worth. We were all expected to go to day release to do something - a retailing qualification, or catering, or hairdressing, and there was other stuff we could do if we wanted. There was a Duke of Edinburgh's Award group, I remember a gang of us being entered for a 50 mile walk, there was a judo club run by Frank Smith who was a manager down at the Tyburn Road depot. Every year there was an awards night (which I ended up organising in later years) where people were given their certificates and a bit of a cash prize as well (someone posted some photos of such an event earlier in this thread).

One of the highlights of the year was the staff Christmas dance. In my time it was held at The Top Rank Suite in Dale End, dancing to the Joe Ward Sound (March of the Mods a speciality!), and there was always a bit of embarassment next day when one confronted the person one had been snogging with the night before!

Christmas was always fantastic. There was the usual atmosphere in a big store that everybody experiences, but as a member of staff it was even better. My first manager, Cyril Warrilow of Household Fancies (!) warned us all not to go OTT on Christmas Eve, always to no avail. We'd start in the Basement and there would be parties in nearly every stock room, plus, most offices, and if you were really lucky you'd be invited in to the telephone exchange for a drink. I have vague recollections of playing with all those wires and plugs, and of stuffing a hanky down some poor unsuspecting girl's trumpet! Then there was the Miss Selfridge party - nuff said already!! Any customers who came in on the afternoon of Christmas Eve was bound to get a bargain!
 
This thread also makes me think of one of the worst days in my life, as I'm sure it was for many, many Brummies - Friday 22nd November 1974.

As I've indicated, there were loads of young people working at Lewis's and The Tavern in the Town was one of the regular, after-work haunts.

I was married by this time and our first child had been born a couple of weeks before, so we weren't out that evening.

I'll never forget arriving in work on that morning, still numb from the news of the previous evening. My office was on the second floor and I had to walk through Miss Selfridge to get to it. I knew the girls and managers well - I mentioned before that my wife had worked for Miss S - and as I passed through the department, the supervisor, Joan North, who was a great friend (and godmother to one of my sons), was in tears, as were most of the other staff. She was comforting a couple of girls and when she saw me she left them, put her arm around me and told me that a couple of the girls had been injured, but also my wife's best friend, one of our bridesmaids and very very close to us, was thought to have been one of the fatalities.

My wife was at home nursing our new baby so I called her mother and asked her to go round so that there was someone there when I made the call - you can imagine how it was.

The rest of the day was horrendous - the whole place was in shock, there seemed to be bomb alerts every few minutes (although I'm sure it was less frequent than that), at one point as it was getting dark I looked out of my office window which overlooked the Queensway - the road had been closed and an army Land Rover was approaching a suspect vehicle. It was almost surreal.

At home time I had to walk down to Digbeth to get the bus back to Hall Green, past the Tavern which already had loads of flowers outside. It was gloomy and wet and everyone was walking in the middle of the road in New Street (it was before pedestrianisation) - I was terrified in case another bomb was around and I'd be caught by glass, although there was hardly any left in the shops opposite the pub.

The whole experience was dreadful, and to this day, all these years later, I can't walk past the Yard of Ale.

I'm glad that there's a memorial to the people who were killed that night and I often go and have a look, and remember Paula (Marilyn) Nash, and that horrible day.
 
Chris - My husband and I loved your memories of Lewis's and all the staff!! Do you happen to remember my hubbie's dear departed (Miss) Phyllis Hooke? she worked in fabrics and retired in the 1970s, we think. She always treated him to a bag of sweets from the store at the weekend. Hope to hear from you,
Kind regards
Jo
 
Hi Goldfinch,
Thank you for your kind words and I am glad you found my memories of interest, but I am sorry to say I can't remember Phyllis Hooke, the number of staff employed there must have been over over 1000 /1500 or more at the time that I was there, (before self service) and that was some 50 years ago, and the fabric department wouldn't be an area that I came into contact with very much, sorry.
Kind regards Chris B
 
 
I'm very familiar with Lewis's - child memories - up the escalators and down in the lifts, and after too many times asked to get on my bike by the liftman. Why is it now called the Minories? What is the origin? - or have I missed something?
 
The Minories originally was a road which ran under Lewis's and it had a rubber surface to keep the noise of traffic down.
 
In reply to AustinLancer,
There wasn't a Toys R Us in Priory Square - it was across the road from the Square, Dale End , underneath the Albert St multi storey car park, opposite what was the Carling Academy / Hummingbird / Top Rank . It closed a few years back.
 
I hope you don't think I'm being pernickety, Wendy, but the Minories were there long before Lewis's. In the late eighteenth century there were the Upper Minories and the Lower Minories. The present Minories (in so far as the old maps were not very accurately surveyed) seems to be approximately on the site of the Upper Minories . The 1889 map shows the south west end as being the site of the church of St Thomas the Warner (?). there was once a priory in this area. A Minoress was a nun, so there must be a clerical connection to the name.
Mike
 
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