Last month it was such a pleasure to visit the Tyneside Community Store in Wallsend, on North Tyneside.
Operated as a CIC, the non-profit organisation provides affordable goods and clothing for the local community, and runs the region’s biggest baby bank (by referral only), providing formula, nappies and other items to those in need.
Original Woolworths
And there’s a twist – the building that the Tyneside Community Store occupies at 73-75 High Street West was the site of the original Wallsend Woolworths, opened there on 20 April 1929.
Woolies later relocated to new premises at 2-4 High Street East on 29 January 1959, from where it traded until the chain’s collapse. That latterday property now houses Heron Foods – you can read what I wrote previously about Woolworths’ Wallsend history in a 2012 blog post here.
Woolies traces
Tyneside Community Store director Shakira kindly showed me all the behind-the-scenes areas, where there are still some traces of the Woolworths history, even more than half a century after the retailer vacated that building.
The highlight has to be the stunning – and remarkably intact – Woolies “tin” ceiling, hidden beneath the later tiles and dating from before the Second World War.
In a helpful 2015 blog post on the Historic England website, historian Kathryn A Morrison explains that the so-called “tin” ceilings that characterised pre-war Woolworths stores were actually a special kind of pressed steel, called Steleonite, with the iconic repeat pattern known as the “Plastele” design.
Gaps in history
The history of the property has lots of gaps, however.
When Woolworths opened there in 1929 it seems to taken over what was an existing building. The front has none of the usual Woolies architectural clues – and is evidently older than it looks – though the back extension appears purpose built, with a staircase and goods lift that are pure Woolies.
Indeed, following my visit, the aforementioned Kathryn Morrison was kindly able to find a wonderful picture of the frontage as Woolworths, in Historic England’s archives, that I’d never seen before.
However, we do not know exactly what the building was before Woolworths was there. Curiously, the upstairs almost has a warehouse feel, but a 1914 directory suggests that number 73 was then a butcher’s, Frank McKeowen, with no mention in that particular listing of what number 75 was.
Similarly, I haven’t yet dug into the archives to figure out who occupied the property after Woolworths left 66 years ago, though prior to its current use it was a branch of now-defunct furniture chain Perfect Home, as captured by me in 2012.
The missing links will, no doubt, be filled in time. For now, it’s good enough to just enjoy what we know about this unprepossessing but surprisingly interesting retail building, and the important role that it continues to play in serving the town.
A version of this post was originally published on LinkedIn here.
Can the past inform the future of your town?
Old buildings like this one are not just interesting for their own sake – on the contrary, as we have argued before, “if we want to give towns and high streets a future that is inspired by the best of the past, working with and celebrating that local heritage and distinctiveness is almost certainly the best way forward.”
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