WEB PAGE NO. 2884 20h February 2022 First Picture: Goodbye Woolworths

Second Picture: Comet Closing Down Sale

Third Picture: Dusty Springfield at Radio Rentals

Forth Picture: FHW advert

High Street stores that have disappeared We all remember Woolworths going but here are a few more. Dixons. The electrical chain, founded in Southend, Essex, in 1937, closed in 2006. Many of its High Street branches were rebranded Currys. digital. Dixons remained as an online brand, but later this also came under Currys. But the Dixons name lives on through the Dixons Carphone brand and Dixons Travel, which operates at several UK airports.The Dixons name came when founder Charles Kalms flicked through a telephone directory, looking for inspiration. C&A. One would have thought that this store was a permanent fixture in all High Streets. The stores announced its withdrawal from the UK in 2000, with the loss of 4,800 jobs. Its 109 shops had come under increasing competition from other mid-market clothing retailers, such as Gap and Next, the company said. The last UK stores, in Hounslow, west London, and Bradford, closed in May 2001. Founded in the 1920s by the Dutch brothers Clemens and August Brenninkmeijer, C&A, at least in the UK, was accused of failing to move with fashion and recorded several losses in the late 1990s. Radio Rentals. Even with the help of Dusty Springfield at the Ideal Home Exhibition, Olympia the brand eventually failed when folk strted to buy TV sets and not rent them. Set up in a back street in Brighton in the 1930s, Radio Rentals catered for a growing demand for radios. The rental model continued through the introduction of television and, later, video cassette recorders - about to take off in 1976. During the late 1970s a newspaper advert for a long-play video recorder mocked a national obsession with the ITV soap opera Crossroads, known for its wobbly sets and criticised for the standard of its acting, stating: "It can take 16 episodes of Crossroads (if you can)." Radio Rentals gradually became amalgamated into the TV and domestic appliance rental firm BoxClever. The Radio Rentals brand continues in Australia. Freeman, Hardy and Willis another high steet name now gone. The shoe manufacturer, with beginnings in Leicester in the 1870s, became a familiar presences in hundreds of High Streets. A series of adverts in the 1950s referred to it as "our happy family shoe shop". Freeman, Hardy and Willis) became part of the British Shoe Corporation and ceased trading in the mid-1990s. Comet. Founded in 1933 as a business charging radio batteries, Comet opened its first store in Hull in 1968, expanding rapidly after that. There were 236 stores when it went into administration in November 2012, reduced to 49 by the time the final closures happened a month later. Comet ran up losses of £95m in the year to April 2012. Dewhurst The chain of butchers shops, founded on Merseyside in the late 19th Century, had 1,400 outlets by 1997 but went into administration in 2006. Its traditional model faced increasing competition the supermarkets started packaging meat in plastic containers . Stay in touch Peter gsseditor@gmail.com