What has happened to shopping over the years?

Why would children today ever visit shops other than supermarkets or in shopping malls? That’s how shopping is done these days and where they would see an instore florist or cobbler. Their mother would have taken them from being small children, often driving there in her own car and combining it with lunch somewhere. No longer the rare treat that it would have been when we were young, when mothers certainly didn’t have their own car! In fact, few families did. And as for launderettes. I think children today would be fascinated by them. It wasn’t even something my own children were familiar with growing up in the 70s when washing machines started to become affordable.

Children today are also fully conversant with shopping online or home deliveries from supermarkets.

The first Ladybird books were published in the 1900s and became easily the most popular and informative children’s books. The most popular of them ever in the millions of titles that they produced was the one commemorating the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana in 1981.

In 1965 there was one called ‘Shopping with Mother.’ The cover showed mother, bunch of flowers in her arms, walking away from a greengrocer’s shop with two excited children. In 2000 there was a book in the ‘How it’s done’ series called ‘Shopping on the Internet’ with a family sat round a computer screen.

Napoleon said that the British were a nation of shopkeepers. That was true once, even in Sheffield.

I remember the local shops when I was a child. There were no supermarkets, so every shop was a specialist one. The owner cared about your custom and you were never given what Sheffielders would call manky produce. It was always top quality

The shopkeeper knew you by name. He asked about your family, he commiserated if you had been ill and he didn’t hurry you. No matter if there was a queue. They didn’t mind as they were too busy talking to other people in the queue. No one seemed to rush in those days. Women, for the most part, didn’t work, and there seemed to be all the time in the world for socialising even though there were no labour savings devices to help with the housework when they did get home. Shopping could often take all day.

There was nothing wrapped in plastic and no carrier bags. My mother’s shopping bag had a layer of soil at the bottom where the potatoes had been tipped after being weighed at the greengrocers. Then there would be apples, oranges and vegetables added before she moved on to the next shop. If it was the grocers, butter, lard and cheese would be sliced, placed onto greaseproof paper and then into a little brown bag.

It was considered a treat when mother took us on the tram into town. Sheffield was a place of elegant buildings and large, sophisticated department stores like Cole Brothers, John Walsh, Cockaynes, Stewart and Stewart and Marshall & Snelgrove. If mother wanted a smart hat for a special occasion, in a time when women wore hats every day, even to go to the local shops, she went to Madam Marie’s on Division Street. We didn’t very often shop in the ‘posh’ shops as C & A or B & C Co-op on Angel Street, were more affordable.

B & C Co-op was a splendid shop. A real treat would be to go for a cup of tea and a cake to the Society Park Restaurant.

The restaurant was the last word in splendour then. Mind you I didn’t have much to compare it with, but it seemed very elegant with its trellis screens, pergolas and artificial palms. It served good plain English food and when they had pie days there was a bottle of Henderson’s Relish on each table. There was once an attempt to introduce the customers to chilli, but it didn’t sell and so they discontinued it. It was certainly waitress service right up to the 1990s when it became self-service which wasn’t considered quite as classy but was still very much missed when the store closed in 2008.

At one time, Sheffield was an exciting place to shop. There were the major department stores, but also every specialist shop you could possibly want, like Hibbert’s, my father’s favourite art shop. Trading since the 1930s, it closed its doors in the 1990s due to increased taxation.

For shoes, Saxone, Lotus, Stylo and Timpson. For music, Cann the Music Man, Bradleys and Violet May’s. Fashion of the day was purchased at Sexy Rexy, Van Allen and Chelsea Girl and for weddings, the bridal shop Joan Barrie. You could have your hair done at Ideal Salon, Marjorie Dalton, George France or Roger Sherwood.

For men’s clothes there was Harrington’s in Castle Market, Winston’s on Snig Hill, Austin Reed, Horne’s with a sculpture of a man on the wall outside, John Collier (remember the jingle – John Collier, John Collier – the window to watch!) or have suits made at a plethora of tailors.

In the 1960s certainly you could spend a whole day shopping in Sheffield with a break for a coffee at The Sidewalk café on Chapel Walk much favoured by local musicians, but bit by bit, the shops disappeared almost without you realising it. Of course, the Internet is so much easier, but not nearly as much fun as the shopping we remembered.