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!

Didn't realise this🙄

Pedestrianization hasnt helped......i agree with a PP. No one is going to want to carry a wedding dress or a prom dress especially if its raining yes i know they put them in something aloft while they walk out of town because no parking. Someone shared an old black and white Christmas pic of our high st recently. Cars in traffic going down the high street probably after Christmas shopping. Now if ppl wanted pedestrianization wouldnt they have done it themselves back then?

I remember that beaties store, I used to love going there before Christmas every year when I was a kid, seeing the beautiful decorations and Santa, I feel really sad for my children that I can never take them to that beaties as I know they would have loved it, too many things have gone.

This is why I can’t leave London. I’m just made of stern enough stuff to do without M&S football.

I really miss a good department store eg Debenhams - wasn't outrageous in price, great place to wander all the sections to find something if you needed cheering up. I miss House of Fraser too although was more pricey.

Ours went sometime ago. B&M now, which I do frequent, but I can’t have a coffee overlooking the centre of our little town, order clothes in, get excited about the sale, or browse for food bargains at the end of the day on the way home from work!

However I have to stop walking through town thinking: that’s where Marks, Debenhams, Beales…Littlewoods, Woolworths etc etc were!

Wow, consider yourself lucky if this is all you have to worry about in life. Jeez

It’s really sad. Online shopping, rates for shops and the terrible economy for working people have jointly ruined the high street.

I remember going to the ‘Home Stores’ and Debenhams for lunch with my nan. The magic of the town centre at Christmas. We’re lucky enough to have some thriving town centres nearby but the small high streets have certainly struggled. It was a nice social time and I do wonder what people have replaced it with.

Town near me when the M&S shut down it was the start of a serious decline. People stopped going into town as much and loads of other shops shut too. Barely anything left now.

Always one 🙄

I think younger people don't "go shopping" as a leisure activity. My mum regularly went to the shops to browse etc, it was an activity in itself. In hindsight it was incredibly consumerist, spending such a vast amount of time planning & thinking about what to buy. I think its probably a good thing fewer people do this, my younger nieces and nephews are really environment conscious and are really into having less "stuff", recycling/reusing etc, its great.

Im 40 and in all honesty, i haven't been shopping (physically) in years. I try to buy a lot less and what I do buy, i buy online, I've got really good at knowing what brands and styles will fit & a lot of things come with free return labels now so i just send back anything I don't like.

It was a nice social time and I do wonder what people have replaced it with.

I think people are more into health and fitness, everybody is dog walking and doing fitness classes and cycling/running etc. Both my parents do a lot more exercise and active leisure than my grandparents did at the same age, my kids and i do too.

M&S was the first big store to go in our town centre around 7 years ago. Then Debenhams, another big department store, and various smaller high street shops. There’s an out of town retail park with a big M&S and various other brands also decamped there, but the town centre high street itself is utterly dead retail wise as now just full of crap shops and sketchy people roaming about. Such a shame.

Happy for it to be me 😊

No YANBU. I felt like this too when the small M & S closed in our town (supposedly voted one of the best places to live in England by the way) to open in a nearby town's new development. We have had a lot of new shops and restaurants but no basic store to buy every day bits and pieces which they are so good for! I still miss it and as my beloved Mum, who shared many a happy trip browsing in there with me, died at the same time they left - it felt like a bereavement.

Pedestrianisation came into being because city centres were gridlocked, shoppers were enveloped by exhaust fumes, it was awful. You'd get home and blow your nose, with a load of black coming out onto the tissue.

I think M&S are rubbish and has been for years, hence the multiple closures. Their sizing is all over the place. The price for the quality is inconsistent. The foodhall however is excellent and what’s carried the clothing side of the business for years. It simply couldn’t turn around the business, but had a very long time to try due to food funding it.

I used to love getting my underwear there, but even that has gotten poorer in quality in recent years.

The other thing playing to their disadvantage is they don’t specialise in anything. They stock everything. As such the day of the giant department store is more expensive due to the size of the premises and they have niche, and frankly better, competitors clipping at their heals.

What is sad is the job losses that come with the closure as the department stores are often large.

Our Local M&S Closed & reopened as just a big Food Hall. I miss it being a normal M&S Store as it was handy to pop in for presents last minute, or for creams & lotions when I ran out. It saved the hassle of going in to town.

Ours is small, two floors, and is closing next year. They're opening a food hall out of town instead. I like to go in and actually see things, though ours doesn't carry much stock so it's more of a pick up for click and collect orders. It's been gradually diminished over the years.

I would say people I know buy more stuff as it is just the click away - and often isn’t quite right size,colour etc etc but often isn’t returned.

Agree. The majority of people of all ages are actually buying more! Probably poorer quality and overpriced but it’s a fact unfortunately. Fast fashion is a symptom of that.

I heard today, on the radio, that a lot of clothing, bought online, which we return, is just junked. It’s too expensive to get it back into ‘the system’ to resell …

I had a student job in a place where they examined returned clothes & repacked them, but that was a long, long time ago, back in the 70s/80s