My Favourite High Street Shop - Gone! 🪦💔

[MoominMai]

We’ve had a Marks and Spark in our town centre for the last 96 years and this is the first weekend without it and I’m so very sad! It was a lovely large store on two floors with all the departments and a fantastic food hall.

What’s ultra annoying for me is that I get lots of my basics there from the Petite range which not all stores carry - or if they do they equate petite with slimness so all sizes feel too small sometimes!

It was just so convenient to order a few different items in different sizes - especially bras, collect them in store, try on and return any unwanted in the same day. Also lost the lovely cafe as well, which was the only place my elderly mom preferred to go for her weekly afternoon out cuppa.

Apparently M&S are I talks with the council to find suitable premises for the Food Hall though it’s anyone’s guess if that will happen.

More than my personal moans is just the greater sense of a huge loss to how things alway were and the fact that M&S for almost 100 years was just a reassuring presence almost - and yes I know quality has suffered and prices increased sometimes unjustifiably high - but it’s what it as an iconic British brand symbolised. Next had departed a few years prior to that and now the only biggest retail pull is probably Primark.

Feel free to let me know if I’m being unreasonable in being so affected!

The food side is keeping the fashion going. Went to our local fashion and home store yesterday, hardly any stock, all awful, full of very old folk. It's grim.

Food on the other hand. We have a town center one, an out of town, swanky new food hall, and one just about to open in the next village. That will be three in a ten mile radius!

It's definitely the death of the high street. I live in a big city, we have 3 large, lovely M&S stores in 3 large, lovely shopping centres. They really are great & I'm lucky that 2 centres are my side of the city, the other near my work, BUT one large city centre one has closed, and I honestly think the other will go at some point.

The city centre is still decent, but to be honest it's impossible to park & so many areas of it are down at heel that it's not a nice shopping experience. I went in summer to buy shoes for a wedding & it wasn't any better than the out of town centres. I think in future I'll only go in for John Lewis. Lots of the independents have closed. It's sad.

My mam too loved an M&S cafe. I always met her there with her vouchers for coffee (she had a card) & every Xmas, birthday, anniversary, house warming, gift for all of us came from Marks. She was a lover of Debenhams & BHS before they closed too. Her generation really loved/ love a dept store. My love of wandering through a store & oohing at towels/ bedding/ lamps on your way to buy a dress comes from her.😀

So, OP, I get your upset. I shall forever miss my mam every time I go in an M&S, but smile too. ❤️

We lost ours a while ago, we are getting a Stack, to join the other million coffee/food outlets. But I am looking forward to music.
We do have one in the out of town development.
I miss trying clothes on, if I order from M&S I do click and collect then quick try on, then bag is returned.

I’m in Leicester. They closed the one in the town down. We have a huge one at Fosse Park. It’s full of designer stuff, beauty store, expensive cafe, huge food hall and sadly no furniture. Not keen.

The M&S in my nearby city closed a couple of years ago. The only time I ever shop there is when I visit shopping malls or designer outlets a bit further afield. My friend visits the food hall in a small local one in a shopping park semi regularly and sometimes brings me something from the food hall. I wouldn't really notice if it closed down.

Mine went several years ago, I use on-line now.
Free delivery over £60, so I order what I want & add stuff to make it up to that amount.
But their sizing is so variable, I order trousers in 2 sizes & 2 lengths so I return 3.

I feel your pain OP! The M and S in my local town went for good back in September 2015. 80 years it had been there! I was gutted. I absolutely love M and S food, and although I don't buy it frequently (too expensive!) I did like to pop in about once a month and treat myself to some nice sandwiches (does ANYWHERE make better tuna or prawn sandwiches than M and S?!) and some decent ready meals. And I always used to get some goodies in for Christmas. I'm also a fan of their Cheese Tasters, and I hope that they never discontinue them,as they have a habit of doing with a lot of their food. And annoyingly, when you ask a member of staff what has happened to said item,they invariably deny ever having sold it the first place! I've had this happen on several occasions. Nowadays I have to make do with the M and S Simply Food,attached to a petrol garage that's near the pharmacy when I do my trip every other month to collect my prescriptions. It's OK but obviously a lot smaller than an M and S food hall,so has nowhere near as much choice.

Blaming immigrants for M&S shops closing. That’s new

They've now opened an M&S Food Hall in our town, which is good, although I wish they would add a counter where you can collect/return online items.

Others have mentioned BHS. Yes, they were brilliant for things like lampshades, which are a nuisance to buy online.

I really miss in-person clothes shopping and I now buy far fewer clothes than I used to. Not a bad thing, I suppose, but still missed greatly.

Our local town is rough, full of scrotes smoking weed and blasting shit music at full volume. I dont really enjoy going in, I might be a wimp but I feel quite intimidated especially on my own with a toddler. Most of it is charity shops, pound stores or vape shops now anyway. It does still have an M&S but I dont know how its hanging on, its never busy if we do visit. Such a shame as I used to love going into town in the late 90s, even if it was just to window shop.

M&S let men into the womens changing rooms.
Won't shop with them online or offline ever since and looking forward to their disappearance.
The sooner they are gone the better.

Our M & S food hall in a small town closed down over2 years ago. And a M & S in Walworth London that I used to go to when visiting closed down last August. That had been there over 100 years. Such a big loss.

M&S and department stores like Frasers, Debenhams, John Lewis used to be known as 'anchor stores', anchoring the shopping area in one place, attracting other stores to set up beside them because they knew they'd benefit from the footfall attracted to the anchor.

So many of these stores are gone now and the High Streets feel as if they've been set adrift, with the smaller stores not able to attract enough footfall on their own and more of them shutting too, the units increasingly being filled with charity stores, vape shops, barbers, nail bars.

My local M&S has not shut but has instead relocated to an edge-of-town site (ironically vacated by a closed Debenhams) and the town-centre shopping mall is half-empty now. The Food Hall was in a separate store on the main street so it is still there. I think losing the Frasers from the main street has had a bigger impact though, and I still miss that.

So many of the retail units in our town have switched to being cafes and restaurants too. It's getting hard to buy some things in this (fairly large) town.

We lost our M&S several years ago, a couple of years after BHS went and Debenhams, although quite small, that went as well. There is a reasonable size M&S a couple of miles out of town but the huge M&S is further along M27. I go there to meet friends sometimes.

Apart from TK Maxx and Next there really is nothing much in my local town any more.

We do now have a M&S food hall which opened in a new retail area about three years ago and much to my surprise, it seems to be doing really well.

Apparently M&S are I talks with the council to find suitable premises for the Food Hall though it’s anyone’s guess if that will happen.

We lose our M&S at the beginning of next year, and they've already decided where they're putting a stand alone food hall - somewhere where you have to have a car to get there, and it would have to be a full shop, not just popping in for a few bits.

We'll skip over the (seemingly well founded) rumoured bungs they got to move there.

I literally couldn't do without it, I go twice a week for food and get most of my clothes there too. It's like my happy place.

We have lost Clarks in our town and i just dread Marks going too. There would be no reason to go into town if they went.

Yes good point about the Christmas shopping, such a shame for the younger kids I think who won’t have our same memories. I remember in the 90s and 00s especially when all the big names including Woolies and BHS were there and there’d be late night shopping under the Christmas lights and it just felt so magical and lovely. The centre was buzzing then with some people just meeting for drinks after work in the town because the atmosphere was so lovely.

We currently still have a fairly large Waterstones though how we’re hanging onto that I don’t know and probably won’t be long before that also departs. Just so sad to see the town very slowly but surely decline. If Boots goes, I’m not sure I’ll have a reason to ever go up anymore.

Yes thank you, you’ve articulated my concerns perfectly about the loss of M&S especially after Next since they are ‘anchor’ stores and that’s why I fear for the other smaller retailers and it may perhaps affect places like Boots in my town eventually also 😐

We lost our big M&S in central Bristol several years ago. However they moving back into the city centre into the recently vacated House of Fraser store which is actually bigger than the old site.
We've had one at the Mall at Cribbs Causeway throughout and several smaller or food only stores too
DH worked at their food warehouse for years. He said that the food side of the business was propping up the rest. Its probably the same reason why they stopped selling furniture.

YANBU to be sad. The internet has given us much to be thankful for, but it has killed our high streets. It is such a shame.

Oooh a ‘flagship’ M&S - lucky you! 🙂

Yes that’s quite a nice large one. I used to regularly go when I worked at their y Waterfront in my 20s 🙂. Interesting they’re refurbing but then Merry Hill is non stop footfall I guess - I think it even gets coach trips down there at times! So I do get the investment in that one. It’s a bit too much out my way though where I live now unfortunately.

Oh no - I would be so upset if ours disappeared. I hope it doesn’t.

I always feel for those who cannot drive or who might be unable to get a bus (if one exists!) to the out of town branches (of any store). They are really stuck for browsing around and MUST shop online I suppose. But the High Street becomes empty and footfall reduces for all shops, then dereliction, then betting shops and fast food only.

Grim.