• Our booking engine at tickets.railforums.co.uk (powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!

What was the first "big" supermarket to open in your local area?

Status
Not open for further replies.
High Dyke

High Dyke

Established Member
Joined
1 Jan 2013
Messages
4,287
Location
Yellabelly Country
We had Lipton's and Tesco on the High Street in Grantham, but both of them closed over 30 years ago. Further along was Key Markets, which became Gateway before finally ending its days as Somerfield (ex-wife used to work for them). That site was rebuilt as a Lidl about five years ago. Asda came to town about 1999, replacing the swimming pool and leisure centre; whilst both the Football Club and Cricket club were ousted from their shared ground, in the mid-80's, to make way for Safeway, now Sainsbury's.

The other major shop in the town centre was the Co-op. This was split into two parts. The food and furnishing part was on one side of the street, whilst the electrical department - and at one time a café was across the road. Both locations closed many years ago. The food store became a fitness studio, an all-you-could buffet restaurant and is currently an evangelical church. The former electrical shop was initially a cut-price 'Scoop' shop, part of the Co-op, but these days is a Wetherspoon's.
 
Last edited:
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R

RailUK Forums

S

Shimbleshanks

Member
Joined
2 Jan 2012
Messages
1,020
Location
Purley
gazthomas said:
Hailing from North Wales we had to make do with Kwik Save until Asda opened. It was quite a long time before Safeway then Tesco came along
Click to expand...
When Kwiksave opened in Holyhead in the 1970s, what got my mother and the other ladies in the district squealing with excitement was not its size or the prices so much as the amount of CHOICE it had. Hard to believe now but the alternatives would have been corner shops and so-called supermarkets that wouldn't pass muster as convenience stores these days.
 
Butts

Butts

Veteran Member
Joined
16 Jan 2011
Messages
11,330
Location
Stirlingshire
Shimbleshanks said:
When Kwiksave opened in Holyhead in the 1970s, what got my mother and the other ladies in the district squealing with excitement was not its size or the prices so much as the amount of CHOICE it had. Hard to believe now but the alternatives would have been corner shops and so-called supermarkets that wouldn't pass muster as convenience stores these days.
Click to expand...

I remember in the early days and right up to relatively late the cashiers had to memorise the prices at Kwik Save (before bar code scanning) as the goods were not priced with the stickers found elsewhere.

Aldi was the same when it first opened as well methinks.
 
B

Bletchleyite

Veteran Member
Joined
20 Oct 2014
Messages
98,104
Location
"Marston Vale mafia"
PeterC said:
"Large" is something that has changed over the years. In the early 60s the old Rex cinema in Collier Row, near Romford, was converted into a Tesco. It was probably the biggest food shop I had seen at the time. Now I think they class it as a "Metro".

One of the first hypermarkets was the Carrefour at Caerphilly in 1972. My uncle had used his redundancy money to but a corner shop a few years before and wasn't best pleased to find that they were not only undercutting him but also undercutting his wholesaler.
Click to expand...

That's not changed. My local shop often has Morrisons branded food on his shelves, and there's no way that's because of a supply agreement. If he runs out of stuff, he just drives over there (about 5 minutes) and stocks up. It might make less profit but it's good customer service.
 
I

Ianno87

Veteran Member
Joined
3 May 2015
Messages
15,215
C J Snarzell said:
I actually remember the Middlebrook development taking place 1996/97. The Asda, cinema complex and the Bolton Wanderers ground (I can't think what the stadium is presently called!) were all built at the same time.

The Middlebrook complex has actually been expanded about three times in the last twenty years and is huge now (I much prefer it to the Trafford Centre for a meal and a browse).

Didn't British Aerospace occupy the site prior to the redevelopment in the 1990s or have I dreamt that one up?

CJ
Click to expand...

Middlebrook has barely stopped expanding ever since it opened - e.g. the recent double decking of parts of the car park!

Asda and the Reebok* stadium opened Sept 1997, the Warner Brothers (now Vue) cinema Jan 1998 and Hollywood Bowl was April 1998.

*Became the Macron stadium and now (glamorously) the University of Bolton Stadium

BAE used to occupy the site on the opposite side of De Havilland Way, off the east side of Lostock Lane (they even still did Air shows** until the late 90s!)

**That I could watch from my bedroom window.


I think the actual site of Middlebrook is partly a former waste tip that had returned to nature - I recall the start of development in the 90s was controversial.

I think it had been in planning for some years - Mansell Way used to come to an abrupt end with a harsh righr turn into the old Tesco store (the building still survives as part of Tyldesley distrubtion, as does the former petrol station kiosk): Horwich, England https://maps.app.goo.gl/V5k87ShbXXNyUFig7
 
GusB

GusB

Established Member
Associate Staff
Buses & Coaches
Joined
9 Jul 2016
Messages
6,647
Location
Elginshire
I would definitely agree that the definition of "large" has certainly changed over the years. My local high street had a Fine Fare, Wm Low and a Templeton's, all of which could probably be considered "Metro" size these days. There was a smaller Co-op in one of the side streets, and a few of the Mace/Spar type convenience stores located further out.

The first to build a big box was Fine Fare in the early 80s, and came complete with a coffee shop and filling station. It had the first automatic doors too, which to me was a novelty. It remained the largest store for a number of years and became an Asda via Gateway. The original Fine Fare site was taken on by Boots and they remain there to this day. I can't remember exactly when it stopped, but for years Fine Fare ran free buses to the outlying villages, and this practice certainly carried on into Asda days.

Norco (Aberdeen based Northern Co-op) was next to build a big store, having had no previous presence. They built it at the end of the High Street rather than out of town, and the Co-op closed around same time. Safeway eventually moved in, resulting in Presto (formerly Templeton's) closing and the staff transferring over. Morrison's took it on briefly before selling it on to Somerfield who then closed it completely. The building is now occupied by the council.

Wm Low was next, moving into a retail unit in the ground floor of a newly built multi-storey car park and Farmfoods moved into their original site. When Tesco took over the Wm Low chain, they ran the store for a few years and built a new Extra format store. Tk Maxx moved into their former site. Soon after, Asda decided it would have to up its game and built a new store on the site opposite. The original Fine Fare building that they'd occupied for so many years was demolished and B&Q now sits in its place.

In terms of large supermarkets, we've only got Asda and Tesco (although Sainsbury's deliver here), but Aldi, Lidl and M&S have appeared since.
 
K

kermit

Member
Joined
2 May 2011
Messages
592
Tesco opened what they described as a "Hypermarket", I think somewhere near Urmston, Manchester, in the mid 1970s. A TV ad in GranadaLand went "Come to Tesco Hypermarket, biggest in the land!!". So we went. As I recall, it had the worst-ever trolleys with seized wheels, and was like a cross between a shop and a warehouse - no particular improvement in choice, but slightly cheaper Heinz beans in huge racks/wire cages reaching up to the ceiling. Apologies if this takes us off-thread, but does anyone remember the brief interlude between cash and cards, when the tills at the supermarket would take in your proffered blank cheque, print it with date, amount, payee etc, and spit it out for you to sign? Has anybody preserved such a machine to prove to the yoof of today that they existed?
 
S

superjohn

Member
Joined
11 Mar 2011
Messages
531
I can remember those cheque printing tills being introduced when I worked at Woolworths around 1991-1994. You had to swipe the guarantee card (remember those?) and it would print the details on the back of the cheque, you had to put it back through the printer the other way up to do it though. There was a similar swipe and print process for card payment slips that were becoming more common with the arrival of the “Switch” debit card. There was no online authorisation, just a check against a daily downloaded hotlist of stolen/cancelled cards. Over a certain value the till would require an authorisation code to be entered which involved phoning the card provider.

There is an online Woolworths museum that has some pictures of the equipment (Olivetti I believe) in its 1990’s section.

Store systems

The growing importance of new technology to run shops and supply chains in the 1980s and 1990s, as retailers adopted hand-held terminals, PCs and EPOS.
www.woolworthsmuseum.co.uk
There is also a small Sainsbury’s Museum within the London Docklands Museum near Canary Wharf. It doesn’t have many physical exhibits though, it is more of an archive.

I doubt any are ‘preserved’ from any retailers. They are the sort of thing that are replaced in bulk and skipped. There is no retail equivalent on the NRM to save the everyday stuff.
 
Last edited:
K

kermit

Member
Joined
2 May 2011
Messages
592
superjohn said:
I can remember those cheque printing tills being introduced when I worked at Woolworths around 1991-1994. You had to swipe the guarantee card (remember those?) and it would print the details on the back of the cheque, you had to put it back through the printer the other way up to do it though. There was a similar swipe and print process for card payments that were becoming more common with the arrival of the “Switch” debit card. There was no online authorisation, just a check against a daily downloaded hotlist of stolen/cancelled cards. Over a certain value the till would require an authorisation code to be entered which involved phoning the card provider.

There is an online Woolworths museum that has some pictures of the equipment (Olivetti I believe) in its 1990’s section.

Store systems

The growing importance of new technology to run shops and supply chains in the 1980s and 1990s, as retailers adopted hand-held terminals, PCs and EPOS.
www.woolworthsmuseum.co.uk
There is also a small Sainsbury’s Museum within the London Docklands Museum near Canary Wharf. It doesn’t have many physical exhibits though, it is more of an archive.

I doubt any are ‘preserved’ from any retailers. They are the sort of thing that are replaced in bulk and skipped. There is no retail equivalent on the NRM to save the everyday stuff.
Click to expand...

Maybe the bigger manufacturers like Olivetti have "physical" archives, though it would cost a lot to store the amount of stuff they must have produced (sorry moderators, promise not to drag us any further off topic!)
 
D

Dibuzz

Member
Joined
19 Apr 2019
Messages
31
C J Snarzell said:
The town I'm from had a small chain of supermarkets known as Whelans in the 1970s. They were owned by former Blackburn Rovers player Dave Whelan who of course went on to take over JJB Sports and then later launch the DW brand name.

The Whelan supermarket chain were your traditional town centre supermarket with open plan aisles, typical shopping baskets and that cheesy music that would always be played in shops of that era.

Whelan eventually sold his businesses to Ken Morrison in 1978 and the Morrisons chain didn't expand themselves to out of town supermarkets until the late 1980s. The first large Morrisons store I remember was Preston docks.

CJ
Click to expand...

We used to get the bus to Whelans every Saturday.
The building used to be Sutton Oak Locomotive shed before it was Whelans.
 
G

gswindale

Member
Joined
1 Jun 2010
Messages
797
Where I grew up,. hillards was the first "large" supermarket, opening in 1986 before being taken over by Tesco - there was already a smaller Tesco in the neighbouring shopping centre that subsequently closed after the take over, which I understand was originally a Victor Value store
 
J

John Griffiths

Member
Joined
24 Mar 2019
Messages
255
Location
The Canny Toon
The first supermarket in Twickenham was called Downs/Downsway, part of a south London chain, and not a big shop (the Main shopping street also had a Sainsbury 's, very old fashioned, built and unaltered since the 20s or 30s in a form the company had adopted at the turn of the century: long marble counters each side; lots of assistants; cheese cut to order with a wire thing. This was later 60s, early 70s. The first big supermarket I remember was just over the boundary in Isleworth, must have opened 1970, called Key Market (or Keymarket). A world away from Sainsbury. It had an in- store bakery (I was sent for bread and doughnuts every Saturday) and - modernity to end modernity! - conveyor belts at the checkouts.
 
E

eMeS

Member
Joined
12 Jun 2011
Messages
954
Location
Milton Keynes, UK
telstarbox said:
By the way the Sainsbury's Archive website has lots of photos of their supermarkets, often taken when they were opened or refurbished. You can search for a specific branch here: https://sainsburyarchive.org.uk/branch/branches
Click to expand...
As a student, I can remember going in the Sainsbury's in central Cambridge just the once, somewhere between 1959 and 1962. By today's standards it was unbelievable in that there were separate queues for each "department". It was awful, but what else was there at that time?
 
GusB

GusB

Established Member
Associate Staff
Buses & Coaches
Joined
9 Jul 2016
Messages
6,647
Location
Elginshire
John Griffiths said:
The first supermarket in Twickenham was called Downs/Downsway, part of a south London chain, and not a big shop (the Main shopping street also had a Sainsbury 's, very old fashioned, built and unaltered since the 20s or 30s in a form the company had adopted at the turn of the century: long marble counters each side; lots of assistants; cheese cut to order with a wire thing. This was later 60s, early 70s. The first big supermarket I remember was just over the boundary in Isleworth, must have opened 1970, called Key Market (or Keymarket). A world away from Sainsbury. It had an in- store bakery (I was sent for bread and doughnuts every Saturday) and - modernity to end modernity! - conveyor belts at the checkouts.
Click to expand...
Wire-cut cheese was still very much a thing when I was a Queue-buster in Safeway in the late 90s :) I hated when anyone asked for Parmesan...
 
Mcr Warrior

Mcr Warrior

Veteran Member
Joined
8 Jan 2009
Messages
11,959
At 422A Barton Road, Stretford, Manchester, there was a local supermarket known as "Nevin's" (still there but now a Co-op Food outlet) which was certainly trading in the mid 1960s. Although not that large a store in the current general scheme of things, it was far larger than any of the other corner shops / general grocery stores in the area.

When Tesco opened a store in the then recently-built Stretford Arndale (Stretford Mall) in October 1971, they invited the boxer Muhammad Ali along for the opening (remember when celebrities opening supermarkets was a big thing?)

Understandably, the event was absolutely swamped out, the crowd apparently thought that Ali was there to hand out free jars of "Ovaltine". Certainly, no concept of "social distancing" then!

52381B45-0381-4DD8-BE5B-34F7CF63E933.jpeg
 
Last edited:
G

gg1

Established Member
Joined
2 Jun 2011
Messages
1,917
Location
Birmingham
Supposedly the branch of Tesco opened in the centre of West Bromwich around 1970ish (5 years before I was born) was the biggest in Europe at the time, it closed 10 or so years ago. It did have two floors which was pretty unusual at the time but each floor was probably only about the size of one of the larger Tesco Metros.

Fast forward to the 80s, Savacentre in Oldbury opened which for it's time was huge but is now pretty average. It's USP was it included Sainsburys and BHS in a single store so you could buy clothes and electricals the same time as your weekly shop which of course became the norm at all large supermarkets by the late 90s.
 
Busaholic

Busaholic

Veteran Member
Joined
7 Jun 2014
Messages
14,140
John Griffiths said:
The first supermarket in Twickenham was called Downs/Downsway, part of a south London chain, and not a big shop (the Main shopping street also had a Sainsbury 's, very old fashioned, built and unaltered since the 20s or 30s in a form the company had adopted at the turn of the century: long marble counters each side; lots of assistants; cheese cut to order with a wire thing. This was later 60s, early 70s. The first big supermarket I remember was just over the boundary in Isleworth, must have opened 1970, called Key Market (or Keymarket). A world away from Sainsbury. It had an in- store bakery (I was sent for bread and doughnuts every Saturday) and - modernity to end modernity! - conveyor belts at the checkouts.
Click to expand...
That would have been one of the last old Sainsbury's: I remember we had those in Bromley and Beckenham too. The very last one was in Rye Lane, Peckham, and, working for London Transport at the time, I used my staff pass to visit it in its last week, inventing a spurious excuse for the urgency of me going to Peckham bus garage!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Top