#beatties

The ever-popular Beatties store located at the rear entrance of the original Houndshill shopping centre, which is now unfortunately unrecognisable due to the shopping centre extension work carried out some time ago.

THE “BOOK A BOSOM PRIEST” – CLAN CARRUTHERS CCIS

The “Book-a-Bosom Priest” The Anglo-Scottish Borderlands were often laid waste in the times of the Border Reivers or raiders. The Church, reliant for its temporal welfare on the produce of its parishioners, suffered greatly. As the Border Reiver raids on each side of the English Scottish Border became a way of life, lands and crops were burned and cattle, sheep and insight or household goods were…

It's hyperbole, but given the retail atmosphere at the moment this could well be the last new department store to open in the UK. What an accolade...

Five years ago, Debenhams built their brand new store in Wolverhampton. It was shiny, it was modern, it revitalised a troubled shopping centre and it was a promise of things to come. Ultimately it was never joined by other retailers. It was another year until H&M opened alongside, and a further year until anything meaningful entered the centre.

Ultimately Debenhams announced their closure a mere two years after opening, a failure that was a sign of things to come in both the chain and in the retail market.

Frustratingly, in the year following that closure, the Mander Centre saw the boom in new signings that was expected to appear alongside Debenhams. We have many new stores, and while there is still a significant amount of the centre empty it doesn't feel like it any more.

Now that Beatties is to be redeveloped, House of Fraser are moving out and into the space that Debenhams have left behind.

The 90,000 square foot floor space is already a huge downsize from Beatties, which at a scrape off 300,000 square feet was one of the largest department stores in the country and a real destination. However, Frasers are sparing no expense in turning this into Mike Ashley's self proclaimed Harrods of the High Street.

The building marks a departure from the department store format however. Escalators have been removed and the store has been split into three sections. The first to open was Flannels, seen above, which sits on the ground floor and forms the upscale section of the store.

Below in the basement is Sports Direct, which has no link between the floors, forming a separate store but within the same building and with the same ownership. This includes many Mike Ashley brands, such as Evans Cycles and GAME:

The store isn't bad, though it worries me that all we have done is move retail around the city centre. Sports Direct have left Queen Street and GAME, who once had no less than four stores in the city centre, have moved from the neighboring and adjoining Wulfrun Centre.

Featuring a Belong gaming arena turns this into a destination however, and it is able to scale up or down depending on trends in the gaming market. Media such as Vinyl have seen a huge resurgance in physical ownership, and there is a growing video game book sector, something they could capitalise on in the future as video games continue to outpace film and television.

Upstairs then in the remaining 50,000 square feet of the building we get our replacement for Beatties. There is a surprising lack of photos online, so all I have is my shoddy attempts at capturing the facade while walking quickly past in a phone (I have had trouble before with this, at the start of the Debenhams redevelopment).

We'll see what we get with Frasers when it opens following lockdown in mid-April, but if Mike Ashley's aspirations are true, then we should expect to see something reminiscent of Harrods. Watch this space.

The loss of Beatties is huge and Frasers will never replace it. But in a way, losing the Beatties name like this, I don't think it was ever meant to. Beatties was a tourism drive from around the country as people visited its huge toys and model floor for one, amongst many other strong departments. It saw sprawling expansions right into the late '90s until the brand was bought by House of Fraser who swiftly removed any character from the store. Beatties of late was not really Beatties. Not my Beatties, anyway.

I don't, however, mean to suggest that this is a bad development in any way. What we are being given is good for various reasons:

- Retail in the city centre is oversubscribed, so consolidating into the centre may lend opportunities for redevelopment as parks and public spaces

- Sports Direct being limited to the basement floor drives footfall to other shops down there, including H&M

- Removing a lot of the departments from Beatties means these can set up as individual stores around the city centre