Shop was institution
Nostalgia editor STROLL around Newcastle city centre, look hard enough and you’ll see telltale signs of what used to be.
Take the attractive black and white doorway mosaic (top right) on Grainger Street. You’ll see it as you enter the Grainger Market, but it recalls a longtime shopping institution that once operated on the street.
Isaac Walton and Co were tailors and outfitters who ‘suited and booted’ generations of Tyneside customers.
The business opened in 1887 on bustling Grainger Street.
Much later, in the decades after the Second World War, children would flock to the prestigious store to be fitted with school uniforms.
In our image from 1950, a time long before the arrival of ‘designer’ clothing and the preoccupation with brands, the store proudly proclaims some of the items of clothing it has on sale – handkerchiefs, pyjamas, boys’ stockings and underwear. A sign in the neatly designed window reads: ‘In the circle of quality.’
One former employee, Sylvia, contacted The Chronicle to fondly recall working at Isaac Walton.
She was employed in the Grainger Street store in the early 1960s for three years after leaving school and said it was a “brilliant place to work”.
Sylvia worked in tailoring services as an alteration hand and was managed by Mr Ogilvy. She mainly did suit alterations but she also had to sew leathers onto riding jackets and braids onto sailor uniforms.
She recalled the intricacies of the job: “Mr Morris, one of the tailor men, showed me one of his tricks of the trade which meant customers came back for an extra fitting. We had to put big tacks down the sleeves and sides of suit jackets, as well as down the suit trouser legs to make it look like the suit wasn’t finished when really it was.
“I also learned how to felt collars on men’s suits. When a man tried on suit, we had to push our hand up the collar and if we could feel a bump of material we had to unpick the collar and push the bump up into the collar and resew it by hand.” Over the years, the business occupied three different sites on Grainger Street.
In 2019, from its Westgate Road base, Isaac Walton Tailoring is still delivering bespoke, top-end tailoring.