M&S down the decades
IT’S 135 years since Marks and Spencer was founded in Leeds. Here in Newcastle, the first M&S was the original Penny Bazaar in the Grainger Market which opened in 1895 - and is still worth a visit today.
The store most of us will be familiar with, on the city’s Northumberland Street, began trading in 1932.
The retail landscape has changed beyond all recognition since those early days and even a shopping institution as well established as ‘Marksies’ has faced challenges in recent times.
Like other big names on the High Street, M&S has found itself under pressure from online competitors.
Last year it announced 100 of its nationwide stores would close by 2022 in a planned “transformation programme”.
When the Northumberland Street shop opened on September 16, 1932, Ramsay MacDonald was Prime Minister; King George V was on the throne; and Newcastle United had lifted the FA Cup for the third time just months earlier.
The store has undergone many changes and improvements over the last 87 years.
Between 1936 and 1951, it was extended several times. And throughout the 1960s, the store was expanded over four stages growing to 71, 500 sq ft.
On June 24, 1963, a self-contained food section was introduced with direct access from Prudhoe Street.
And in 1996, the store became the second largest M&S store in the country after Marble Arch, following the completion of a major redevelopment programme, increasing the sales floor from 72,000 sq ft to 140,000 sq ft, including a new customer restaurant with 300 seats.
Our photo selection comes courtesy of the Marks and Spencer Company Archive and recalls some of the various incarnations of the Northumberland Street store from 1932 until the late 1970s, a time before its major expansion in the mid-1990s into the store we know today.