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Pauline Govier will miss ‘old Woolies’, where she has shopped for 80 years |
‘It’s really sad news – I shall miss old Woolies’
Loyal customers lament passing of a High Street landmark
THE piles of calendars lying near the shop’s doorway feature a band popular only months ago but now already forgotten – it demonstrates just what a fickle world it can be.
But it had always seemed some things stayed popular whatever the fashions – and for the loyal Woolworths customers who were still piling into its Camden Town branch this week despite its imminent closure, the reality that the nation had fallen out of love with the household name still didn’t make sense.
“It’s a real shame to go from selling nothing over sixpence to selling nothing at all,” said Pauline Govier, who has been shopping in “Woolies”, as she affectionately calls it, since the 1930s and cannot understand why it's closing.
Mrs Govier, now 83, used to be taken to the Kentish Town branch by her mother when she was a child and started shopping in the Camden Town branch when it opened.
“We used to get a ha’penny and I used to get a bag of broken biscuits – me and my brother would share them,” said Mrs Govier, from Haverstock Hill. “That was 80 years ago.”
Mrs Govier, who was looking for a bargain in the stripped aisles, said she has shopped at Woolies every week for most of her life but hadn’t been able to visit recently and was shocked at the state of the store.
“It’s sad,” said Mrs Govier of the store, which has been a permanent fixture in her life. “If you wanted anything they sell it. You want knitting needles, cards, cotton, sweets or paint – you always spend more than you want to when you come in.”
The Camden Town branch is understood to be something of a jewel in the Woolworths property portfolio and is expected to be bought by a supermarket when it closes on January 5.
The branch in Kentish Town was being stripped out this week, already closed to customers.
But Mrs Govier, who first began visiting the shop when goods were sold over old-fashioned counters, nothing will match Woolies.
“I shall miss old Woolies,” she said. |
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