Peggy Proudfoot

Designer and businesswoman

PEGGY PROUDFOOT, who has died at 97, was doyen of the Scarborough supermarket chain that still bears her family name, and for many years a prominent fashion illustrator, turning out window designs, hat boxes for the leading London stores and her own company’s distinctive logo.

Margaret Mary ‘Peggy’ Proudfoot was born in Pontefact and moved with her family to Scarborough as a child, initially to Merchants Row and later Westbourne

Park. She went to Scarborough Girls’ High School but it was at the Technical College School of Art, on Valley Road, that she developed her artistic skills.

After the war, in which she served as an Army sergeant, she began working for many of the London fashion houses, and her advertising drawings appeared in the New York Times and Vogue , as well as fashion magazines.

Besides taking on work for Harrods, Jenner, Binns and Marshall and Snelgrove, she designed material for the Rowntrees department stores back in Scarborough and York, contributing the Rowntrees company logo. Eventually, she expanded her business, establishing Fashion Illustrator Ltd.

But it was the Proudfoot supermarket chain with which she was most associated. She and her late husband, Wilf, who was also at various times an MP, hypnotherapist and operator of an offshore radio station, set it up in 1948, after Wilf had seen early American grocery stores.

Wilf, to whom she was married for 63 years, died in 2013, and she is survived by three children and five grandchildren.