Littlewoods department store in Gateshead closed in November 2005 after 66 years of trading, part of a nationwide sell-off to Primark in a £409m deal that ended the chain's high-street presence.
The Gateshead branch opened at 214 High Street in July 1939, just weeks before the outbreak of World War II. As a busy general-merchandise retailer, it quickly became one of the town's most popular stores, selling clothing, footwear, homeware, furniture, toys, cosmetics, gifts, small electricals and more.
Fond memories of a thriving High Street
In the early 1980s, the High Street was still thriving. Alongside Littlewoods, there were big-name stores like Boots, Woolworth, and Burton. There were banks, building societies, plenty of pubs and multiple independent shops. A Top Rank bingo hall traded in the Art Deco building that once housed the Odeon Cinema.
Not far away, Shephards department store on West Street attracted shoppers from across Tyneside, while Jackson Street was home to a major branch of the North Eastern Co-op. The town even had its own weekly newspaper, the Gateshead Post, published between 1946 and 2003, whose main office was on the High Street.
End of an era
Reporting in November 2005 on the store's impending closure, the Chronicle noted: "Littlewoods lies in the shadow of the multi-storey car park, which is earmarked for demolition when the town centre is modernised."
All 120 Littlewoods stores in the UK, including five in the North East, closed. Between them, staff at the Gateshead store had clocked up more than 200 years of service, the longest-serving being a mother-of-two with 39 years. Regular customers were devastated at the closure, it was reported, but High Street traders told how they were simply unable to compete with big modern centres like Newcastle's Eldon Square and the Metrocentre.
No trace today
Today there is no trace of the old store, one of many buildings cleared to make way for the new Trinity Square complex, a huge retail, leisure and student accommodation development that opened in 2013. Littlewoods in Gateshead, like the chain nationwide, now exists only as a fond retail memory.
