Lewis’s Fifth FloorA Department Story

Lewis’s Fifth Floor: A Department Storyp h o t o g r a p h s b y s t e p h e n k i n g

They used to say “If you want an elephant, give us time and we’ll get one for you!” you know, that was the kind of place it was!

For Pops

Lewis’s Fifth Floor: A Department Storyp h o t o g r a p h s b y s t e p h e n k i n g p h o t o g r a p h s b y s t e p h e n k i n g

… and of course when we got that man showing his tackle on the front of the building they came from everywhere to look at him. I remember my sister had some friends who came especially from Ireland and every day they came down, stood on the opposite side of the road and they couldn’t believe it, because at that time that just wasn’t heard of, never mind practically in the middle of Lime Street…

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t h e k i t c h e n s 62

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PrefaceStephen King

Before embarking on this project I barely knew of the fifth floor’s existence. I thought it was just an urban myth. I had only picked up stories about a floor within Lewis’s Department Store that had been closed off to the public years ago but still retained its contents from the 1950s.

In February 2008 I stepped into the lift in Lewis’s when on a shopping trip. After nodding to the gentleman operating the lift, I stood looking at the floor in an awkward silence. I noticed the deep grooves worn into the floor where he and presumably dozens before him had stood at their post. His well-worn but highly polished shoes seemed to fit comfortably into their tattered surroundings, pride of place almost. It was this image that jolted me into initiating a conversation with him. I asked if the stories I’d heard were true. He told me that the fifth floor had indeed been closed to the public for some time, and that some of the original features and decor from the restaurants and hair salon had survived. It also transpired that after fifteen years of service he was going to be retiring in a few days.

This spurred me on to try and see the fifth floor for myself; it sounded like it would be a great place to photograph. I had no particular plan at this time, just to shoot something a little different. I was intrigued more than anything. On my first visit I was confronted with the fifth floor’s vast forgotten spaces that told of past opulence and glamour but through a veil of decades of neglect. Although a little dusty, it was still visibly impressive: banks of bespoke geometric lighting, seating booths of blue leather, murals of ceramic tiling and an almost intact hair salon all sat in ghostly suspension with the store’s ‘muzak’ still filtering through the Tannoy. A far cry from its heyday, it was now home to a pack of plastic dogs, a forest of pink Christmas trees and all the other accumulated debris that thirty years of free storage space had left behind. This random juxtaposition of original fittings with contemporary shop displays and point-of-sale props made almost every room a visual exploration. It was striking and eerie all at once.

The fifth floor lent itself so well to photography that it was quite overwhelming as to where to start. Taking photographs is itself a system of editing visually… at the simplest level it’s just applying a frame to

what you see while standing in the right place, a matter of choosing from your given possibilities. In some cases, as in this one, the possibilities are infinite. So do you shoot indiscriminately or do you tread carefully? The abandoned details gave me clues to the mixed history this floor had lived through. It needed to be made sense of in some way; a narrative was needed. People were needed. For me, it was an obvious decision to ask the employees who had brought life to the store for all those years to put the pictures into context. Only they would have the insight, the humour and more importantly the stories to document the store with any integrity. We tracked down 40 current and former employees of Lewis’s, and over two cold months in early 2009 the fifth floor and its staff were photographed, many of them sitting for me in their original place of work. Some were interviewed later by Claire Hamilton (and filmed by Jacqueline Passmore) about their experiences during their time at the store. Extracts from these interviews accompany the images throughout this book.

It was fantastic to meet such a singular group of people; employees from past and present alike all had the same ingrained work ethic and dedication to their employer. It is a rare thing to witness, especially within the retail industry. Mothers, husbands, daughters, cousins and friends all shared some part or in some cases the most part of their lives in this space. There was a pride and camaraderie that reached through generations and recessions, and that instantly brought the store back to life. They made sense of the random collection of objects that cluttered up much of what had now, by default, become a photography studio.

Working among all of this wasn’t the easiest of tasks. My method generally consisted of rearranging dusty and often heavy objects in an attempt to make a workable studio or moving and adapting the studio to fit in with the junk and intermittent electricity supply. Most images were whittled out of an idea by using this approach but governed by what could be moved and how much space I had. Some things I simply couldn’t get to, while some were hidden beneath layers of detritus and often it was just a case of getting grubby and peeling stuff away to view the scene. The images in this book are as found, sometimes cleaned up a bit but, however peculiar, they really are what they seem. At the time of writing, the floor where the lift never stops is still just how I found it, though not for much longer.

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Lewis’s Fifth Floor: A Department StoryDeborah Mulhearn

Lewis’s department store was founded in Liverpool in 1856 through the vision of one man, David Lewis, a merchant who wanted to make quality goods widely available to a working-class clientele. Beginning as a family-run shop, the company grew steadily into an innovative and influential retail empire that built large department stores in nine more provincial cities and at one point owned Selfridges in London. Lewis’s employed thousands of workers and served the needs of millions of customers the length and breadth of Britain. It was usually the largest department store in its locale and was also a place where generations of family members worked, enjoying the distinct camaraderie and working patterns and traditions of a family firm.

There were other department stores in Liverpool, but everyone knew Lewis’s even if they didn’t shop there. It was a world in miniature, where shoppers could buy everything they needed under one roof, and the staff might include up to four generations from the same family. Lewis’s is now defunct as a trading company (though the new owners retain the name), and while the building is still a Liverpool landmark, inside it is a shadow of its former spectacular self. It was once a famed emporium of glamour and spectacle that drew crowds from miles around and became the subject of urban myths, part of a retail phenomenon that changed the way we shop and the architectural landscape of our cities. Despite its decline, and the decline of the department store in general, Lewis’s remains a household name. Much more than a place to shop, Lewis’s is a Liverpool institution that has been in the city for over 150 years and has a secure place in the affections of Liverpool people. Even if it stopped trading as Lewis’s, it would still be referred to as Lewis’s by the locals.

This book is a personal response by Liverpool photographer Stephen King to a unique part of his hometown’s story and character, as well as being a visual investigation of Lewis’s and of Liverpool’s retail history. Allowed access to the shop’s long-closed fifth floor, Stephen was able to capture both the glamour and style of a vibrant retailer and the melancholy of the passing of those glory years. His

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photographic record falls into two sections. One set of photographs centres on the physical spaces of the store’s fifth floor, which once contained a busy cafeteria, two restaurants and a hairdressing salon, all thriving in the 1960s and 70s but closed since the 1980s. It had been a place of mystique and panache, with specially commissioned artwork, elaborate gourmet dining and extravagant parties, but now it is a repository for a surreal collection of unwanted retail paraphernalia. The second group of photographs offers portraits of current and former Lewis’s employees in their workplace, in some cases quite literally in the place where they stood for much of their long working day. This photographic record is accompanied by anecdotes, reflections and reminiscences drawn from interviews with the subjects.

One of the most striking things about Stephen’s photographs are the colours: bold and unapologetic aquamarine and air force blue, maroon and mustard yellow, as bright and arresting as a restored Renaissance painting. The 1950s were a difficult but also hopeful time for people emerging from the restrictions and rationing of wartime, and living and working surrounded by bombsites, as many people were in Liverpool. The designs of the 1950s were an attempt to banish the drab and down-at-heel and celebrate the actual and metaphorical introduction of colour into people’s lives.

When Lewis’s reopened after the war, one of the first city-centre firms to start rebuilding after the blitz, a smart new building was created of Portland stone with classical elements including columns, capitals and cornices. Sir Jacob Epstein’s statue, The Spirit of Liverpool Resurgent, over the Ranelagh Place entrance, signified not only Lewis’s but Liverpool’s bright future. Epstein’s bronze figure is immortalised in the refrain of the folksong ‘In My Liverpool Home’ – ‘we speak with an accent exceedingly rare / meet under a statue exceedingly bare’. And it’s true. It’s a meeting place and a destination. Even now, people getting off the bus outside Lewis’s in Renshaw Street will have asked for the fare to the store, not the street.

The naked bronze man caused both mirth and controversy when it was unveiled in 1956: an eighteen-foot tall, muscular, male figurehead standing on the prow of a ship. ‘You could hear the gasp in Birkenhead,’ as one employee noted. Staff would sneak into the Balcony Bar’s powder room directly above the statue and hang out of the window to ogle him. There were a flurry of outraged letters in the local press, but there were as many responses defending Epstein, and ‘Dickie Lewis’ was quickly accepted as part of the landscape

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and folklore of the city. He still stands in silent semaphore above the city shoppers and workers, part of the fabric of the city for more than fifty years.

Inside, the new ‘resurgent’ Lewis’s boasted marble hallways, fluted columns and Art Deco balustrading, and escalators as well as lifts. Shopping habits were changing and the consumer society was beginning. The interiors were light, bright and well equipped for the modern shopper. The interior designs on the fifth floor were influenced by the 1951 Festival of Britain, a celebration of British design held on London’s South Bank, which kickstarted the careers of many successful artists and designers. Designers looked to science and technology for inspiration and the designs for furniture, furnishings and fittings were based on magnified atoms and molecules and the crystalline structures of minerals and metals.

The cafeteria seated 600 people and is the most intact of the fifth floor rooms today. It has decorative pierced metal screens above vinyl benches and a ceramic tiled mural made by Carter’s of Poole. This pottery company had designed a large mural for the restaurant at the Festival of Britain and its surviving work now fetches high prices at auction. The Lewis’s mural was most likely the work of Carter’s celebrated in-house designers, Alfred Burgess Read or Peggy Angus. The hand-painted and hand-printed tiles portray oversized and colourful kitchen utensils, fruit and vegetables stretching for sixty-five feet along the servery wall. Further wall tiling depicts repeating geometric patterns of knives and forks and brightly coloured abstract patterns. The ball-and-rod light fitting is typical of the crystalline designs popularised in the 1950s.

The other dining rooms, the Mersey Room and the Red Rose Restaurant, were waitress-service restaurants. The Mersey Room featured wooden wall panelling depicting Liverpool’s history and growth from King John’s charter in 1207. It was designed by the influential Design Research Unit in London, which was also heavily involved in the Festival of Britain. This etched panelling was discovered carefully concealed behind plasterboard when English Heritage was preparing the listing of the building. Of three small squares cut in the plasterboard, the first two had revealed little of interest. Behind the third, a coat sleeve from a Bluecoat boy could be seen, a reference to Liverpool’s oldest surviving city-centre building.

The Red Rose Restaurant was silver service, with bone china, crisp white linens and solid silver cutlery. It was the select place to eat, where ladies and gentlemen were served discreetly at their favourite tables

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by meticulously trained waitresses in maroon uniforms. The main feature of this long room was an extraordinary bronze sculpted screen in three pieces designed by the American sculptor Mitzi Cunliffe, best known as the designer of the familiar gold theatrical mask awarded to BAFTA winners. This acted as a room divider and portrayed the Wars of the Roses, with a repeating pattern of spurred knights on horses with medieval armour. It weighed two tons and had to be lifted into place through the roof. It was cut up and removed when the restaurant closed in the 1980s and is believed to have been returned to Cunliffe who installed it in her home in the south of France.

Like many Victorian department stores, Lewis’s has a fascinating and complex retail history. David Lewis was not Welsh as many believe, but was originally named Levy, the son of a Jewish merchant in London who sent the 16-year-old David to Liverpool’s Lord Street to be a draper’s apprentice. He soon learnt the trade and decided to set up on his own. Lewis’s opened in 1856 selling boys’ and men’s clothing, and grew steadily throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. It was a family business with strict codes of decency and fair dealings. David Lewis and his wife Bertha had no children, and when David died in 1885, control of the firm passed to his nephew Louis Cohen, and then to Louis’ sons Rex and Harold.

A retail revolution designed to ‘democratise luxury’ was happening and Lewis’s played a significant role not just in Liverpool but nationally. Out went the moral obligation to buy if you entered a store, and the assumption that you would haggle for what you wanted. This was replaced with the pleasant, leisurely experience most of us associate with city centre shopping today. Lewis’s motto was ‘Friends of the People’ and the shopping experience was meant to be inclusive, not exclusive. Lewis’s catered to the masses, unlike shops such as the more elitist Bon Marché, which David Lewis had also bought. Lewis’s quickly became famous for its clever advertising and spectacular ways of drawing the crowds, such as the hiring of the steamship Great Eastern, which over half a million people visited.

The store sold record quantities of newly democratised products and commodities such as Lewis’s two-shilling tea, and created splendid window displays and the famous Christmas grotto, which people queued for hours to visit. It introduced immensely popular pass books, or notebooks, with Lewis’s advertisements on the cover, and ‘Penny Readings’, small books with extracts from literary classics. It was an innovator of central

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buying, staff training, half-day closing and fixed prices. At various times in its history it boasted its own zoo, a garage, a savings bank that opened on Saturdays, and a travel bureau.

Lewis’s stores opened in other provincial cities including Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, Glasgow, Leeds, Hanley and Leicester. But none of these became as synonymous with its location as Lewis’s Liverpool, its historic home and a byword for quality products at competitive prices. Lewis’s entered Liverpool folklore with expressions such as ‘you look like one of Lewis’s standing there’, meaning you look like a shop mannequin. Much of its history is undocumented and anecdotal, so its recorded and unrecorded stories have the ingredients of urban legend. It’s said that the Beatles played on the top floor at a staff dance in November 1962. Did they really play a gig there? And did packs of rats really swarm across the road and up the steps of the Adelphi to escape the burning building during the blitz?

Staff consistently describe their time at Lewis’s as being part of a family. People met and married while working at Lewis’s and many clocked up forty or fifty years of service. People got jobs through mums and dads, brothers and sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles. The hours were long and the work was demanding, but the care taken of employees made it a desirable place to work. It was almost a world in itself, with social events, a sports club and welfare department for the staff. Staff socialised together. They went bowling, horse-riding, climbing, played football with teams from other stores, went on car rallies and treasure hunts. The staff parties were legendary. And so were some of the characters: Dave the maintenance manager, Carol from wigs, Chef Ken and the Max Factor lady who never left her post, even to go to the toilet.

Solid, stately firms like Lewis’s are a nineteenth- and twentieth-century phenomenon, where customers could wander and wonder and employees joined a staff family and stayed for their working life if they wanted to. Lewis’s had an illustrious past but did not move with the times or reinvent itself to compete effectively with rivals in the merciless rationalisations of the 1980s and 1990s. One by one Lewis’s closed or sold its stores in other cities, including Selfridges in London, which it had bought in its post-war golden age.

Lewis’s has had an unhappy few decades. In Liverpool, its historic home, the savings bank was sold to Lloyds in 1981 and the head office moved to Manchester in the early 1980s. One by one the upper floors closed and became, in the words of a former employee, a ‘ghost ship’. Only four trading floors are left. In

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March 2007 the company was sold as a going concern to Vergo Retail, who retained the trading name of Lewis’s. Lewis’s, however, has survived fires, wars and financial crashes, and plans are afoot for another resurgence. The building is now part of the Central Village site, owned by Merepark, who plan to develop it into a shopping and leisure complex, with Lewis’s at its heart. Liverpool City Council has approved plans to incorporate Lewis’s into a mix of retail, office and hotel space, all opening onto a new public square. This will retain some of the building’s most historic features, including the striking frontage with the Epstein sculpture and the fifth floor tiled mural.

Once Lewis’s was in a prime location, between the two railway stations and opposite the Adelphi Hotel. But since September 2008 when Liverpool One opened, the focus of the city centre has shifted towards the river, and it remains to be seen whether Renshaw Street and Ranelagh Street will ever recover their former vibrancy. The next few years will bring challenges for retailers in general and department stores in particular, as shopping patterns change and traditional ways of working die out. Add to this the deeper issues of the recession, the growth of internet shopping and competition from supermarkets, and the future for department stores such as Lewis’s is uncertain.

The Lewis’s building, along with some key fixtures and fittings, was belatedly listed Grade II in 2007 by English Heritage, when it was realised that its future was uncertain and its architecture and artworks unprotected and at risk. This means that the owners have to discuss any change of use plans or alterations with local authority building conservation officers. They cannot make changes without consent, but this does not mean that changes can never happen. Many of the fixtures and fittings are in a precarious state and may not survive the transition. Because of its quality and importance, the Poole mural must remain in situ and specialist conservation work has to be carried out by the owners. Other elements from the fifth floor, such as the Mersey Room panelling, are safeguarded but could be reused elsewhere within the building.

The sculptures and decor are unique to Lewis’s and invaluable to Liverpool, and Stephen King’s photographs remind us how we take our surroundings for granted and how quickly the visual memory fades. However, though time and traditions pass, it’s the staff that bring the building and its spaces to life. The story of Lewis’s cannot be told without them.

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t h e l i f t s

You weren’t allowed to go in the front way; you had to go in the back way. Even going home you’d go the back way. My sister and I were always late, I would try and sneak in the front and if you got caught or if you were late you’d had it. They were very strict.

You know, it’s like watching Grace Brothers in Are You Being Served?, that was typical Lewis’s. I still do it now in work, you know when they get in the lift I say, “Going up all floors, lingerie, haberdashery and menswear” and they all skit me but that’s what they had in Lewis’s. You don’t get that now, you just get a voice saying “Third Floor, Second Floor”.

As you went into work they used to play Ken Dodd’s “Happiness” to get the staff to be upbeat… I’ll never forget, Ken Dodd’s “Happiness”.

Bill Jones Porter, Dispatch Department, 1977–present

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The lift attendant jobs were always offered to a disabled person. Lewis’s were very good in employing disabled staff, and the lift attendants were nearly always people who had been injured during the war. They might have had only one arm or one leg, so they were employed for operating the lifts. Lewis’s were very good looking after the staff like that.

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Steve Hampson Warehouse Assistant, Pre-Retail, 1977–present

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We used to have a lot of our staff dos on the fifth floor…

We used to go to the Red Rose restaurant and then also the cafeteria where you’ve got those great tiles. I don’t know if you remember but the BBC used to do road shows and Kid Jensen and Dave Lee Travis actually came to the store and did a road show one day.

It was supposed to be over a lunch hour but it took quite a few hours to do and I got interviewed by Kid Jensen, I was very nervous. It went out over the radio… but that was great you know, all the staff were made up.

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I think you’re just so involved, like a family, you’re working together, you all want it to succeed, you want a good day, you want everyone to go home happy whether it’s the staff or the customers. We can’t please everybody but we always try to.

Rita Simpson Sales Assistant, Food Hall, 1985–present

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We used to refer to that as “the golf ball ceiling”. The lights are like golf balls, small round things. They were just a conventional size bulb you could buy in the shops, but instead of a pear shape they were just a round ball. Unfortunately fifteen years down the road, somebody in their wisdom decided that it might be better for it to be a bit brighter, so they stuck a bigger sized bulb in than it was designed to take. Consequently most of the lamp holders were shot basically, because of the heat. They were gone.

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Tina JacksonFloor Manager, Retail, 1961–present

I’m Tina Jackson, I started in Lewis’s in 1961.

I’m a floor manager on the first and the second floor. I started off originally on the ground floor in the stationery department where we also had a massive big book department. It was like running a library. We used to be one of the biggest book departments before Waterstones and people like that. We had all the educational books, Penguins and things like that…

I remember when Lady Chatterley’s Lover came out and they used to come up to the till and they used to turn it over so you didn’t know what they were buying, but you had to look at it to see what it was and get the price.

I was there for quite some time and then I moved to the record department. In Liverpool then the only main record departments were Nems, ourselves and Rushworths.

I was there when the Beatles started off and it was fantastic. We used to order the records ourselves. The record companies used to come in every month and they would play the new releases and you decided what you were going to buy off them. We had to produce our own chart that the BBC used, you know, you would write down all the records that you sold. Looking back now I think some people could have fiddled it because if you put the record number down I don’t know how many times you’d get them into the charts and then they’d get on Top of the Pops…

I was on there for over twenty odd years, it was a great department.

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My name at the time was Marie Trainer. I worked at Lewis’s when I was 18 and I was there about three or four years in the Red Rose restaurant. Now, the Red Rose restaurant was an upper-class restaurant in the store and you had to learn silver service. We served morning coffee with toasties, teacakes and for lunchtimes we had an à la carte menu and we had a set menu which I think was 3/6d. We did afternoon teas as well.

It was a nice family atmosphere because I had three sisters working there, my Aunt Bella worked there and my cousin Carol and cousin Cathy worked there too. It was like a family business but you knew your place. When you were young, you got the furthest station. The older waitress got the station by the door. A station was five tables and my station when we first started was at the far end of the restaurant. You can imagine going in the big kitchen and you’re carrying three plates to your customers and you had to go through the swinging doors right to the very end of the restaurant to serve your meals and then walk back and get teas or coffees; so you were constantly walking backwards and forwards.

It was the 60s and I’d just got my hair done and I was into fashion; I came down the stairs with this overall and apron on and I thought that I wouldn’t bother with the hat, and I was told, “Miss Trainer, please put your hat on!” So I had to pin my lovely jet black hair back and put on this hat. I thought “Oh God, I look awful. I look like one of the old waitresses.” You’d look at your future and these old dears walking round, you know, and I thought “Oh God, is this it? Is this my life?” … but the first day is always nerve-racking, finding out how to do things.

Marie Conway (née Trainer)Waitress, Red Rose Restaurant, 1965–67

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The cafeteria was quite a large place, massive, very, very busy… really busy. A lot of the staff ate there because it was quite reasonable. The food was very wholesome, good home-cooked food and of course it was great for children.

I always remember the noise, the clattering of trays and knives and forks and the steam where they made the pots of tea that were going all the time. They used to do some fantastic knickerbocker glories and they’d be so tall, you know, and girls would have to stand up to eat them!

It was very modern and the tiles were beautiful, they were of knives and forks, dishes and cups. I think they were pastel colours more than anything else. The cafeteria was very, very modern… really modern when I think about it no, very clean…

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My name’s Alan Killen. I started in Lewis’s in 1954 straight from school in what was Head Office Publicity on the old side of the building. In those days Lewis’s Liverpool was the Head Office and all the other stores – Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow etc., all sent in their requirements to Liverpool in the way of tickets and posters and blocks for advertisements.

At that time, in the mid-50s, it was still being put back into shape after the war damage. You used to have to go through into the new part but it was still very much all in wraps, and there were only certain areas that were operative. And, of course, then the final day arrived when they opened it and the statue was unveiled, well, that was something else. We all stood there and wondered what this statue was about. When the drapes came off, the gasp from the crowd outside must have been heard in Birkenhead…

We all had to do two years Army, Navy or Air Force service in those days too. The girls lost their boyfriends for two years and some of them were glad, anyway that’s another story. When you did National Service the company had to give you your job back, but if you signed on for three years then they didn’t have. So, I just did the two years and came back to it.

Well, my job was what they called “Ticket Editor” and I was responsible for all the tickets and the posters within the store, the descriptions on them and that they conformed to what they should be. People from each department would send their requirements up to the publicity department. There was one lady on the haberdashery department who wanted a display card making. I had to point out that you couldn’t do a card that said, “Give her a Belt for Christmas”. That’s true, she actually asked me for a display card saying “Give her a Belt for Christmas!”

Alan KillenTicket Editor, Store Publicity, 1954–1960

I’m Rita Rooney. I worked on the perfumery department from September 11th 1967 until I retired on January 24th 2008, my 60th birthday.

Every day I’d go into Lewis’s and say to my friend “Please find me a job”. Eventually she took me off to the fifth floor but I ran away terrified that my mother would kill me. Finally I plucked up the courage, and she took me back, she put her head round the door to the staff manager and said “She wants perfumery or toiletries or you can keep your job”.

I finished up on the perfumery department. I was two and a half days in to staff training and I came home and said to my mother, “Don’t worry mother, I won’t be there long”. Unfortunately or fortunately, whichever way you look at it, I was there forty years.

Rita RooneySales Assistant, Perfumery, 1967–2008

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Joanne TimsonCatering Assistant, Catering Department, 1982–present

As a junior we used to get a sixpenny meal ticket and a threepenny meal ticket from the welfare department. So you presented this ticket and you got a lunch, a basic lunch, and the threepenny one was for your tea in the afternoon, a cup of coffee and a cake. That was something…

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My name is Reg Goodall. I started working for Lewis’s in 1952 for John Stubbs who were the tiling contractors. We did a lot of work in the kitchens as well as for the murals outside the serveries. Carter Tiles from Poole in Dorset made the mural. They transferred the tiles up and we sorted them out and fixed them, you know.

I don’t think Carter’s are going now. They were a very big firm, the main office was in London but the works was in Poole in Dorset, that’s where the murals were made.

There wasn’t a big problem fixing the tiles or fixing the murals, it was quite easy actually. The setting out was difficult but we got that with combat. It was very good at the time you know, very good. One portion is all knives and forks and the other is all fruit and vegetables and what have you. Very unusual.

Our boys eventually worked in Lewis’s, cleaning the tables in the cafeteria of a weekend when they were students, and one worked in the advertising department.

Reginald GoodallWall and Floor Tiler, John Stubbs Ltd, 1952–1954

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You had the big cafeteria at the far end of the corridor and it was lovely to see the tiles. I remember that from my school days because I went to school in Rodney Street, the Staines College, and at the time my mother actually worked in the store herself so I used to go down from school with my friends and have lunch in there. Of course I used to cheat, because mum would say “Shirley’s coming down for her lunch” so I’d go right to the front of the queue and get my lunch and walk out…

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I can remember going in to the self-service restaurant before I worked in Lewis’s and the tiles were, oh, just something that you’d never seen the like… they were iconic and still are iconic.

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We’d go there for special treats and things, it was a beautiful, beautiful shop, it was really lovely, a privilege to work there. You were quite honoured to say “I work in Lewis’s”, you know… you weren’t ever ashamed to say it.

The cafeteria was great because I was there in the 60s and all the young lads used to hang around there. You had to walk past to get changed because our changing rooms were at the other end of the cafeteria, so you had a chance to eye up the boys as you went past.

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It was like a family I suppose, like lots of businesses and certainly that sort of business, you were pretty close-knit people. In the early 60s there were approximately 1,300 staff in that building. It was a phenomenal area, you know? Every floor was occupied, occupied by that many different things. It had printing departments, poster studios, the whole works. It was unbelievable.

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We had three different types of restaurants, we had the self-service, we had the waitress service and the silver service and you know they had one massive big kitchen.

When they started dismantling everything you realised that you didn’t appreciate how great it was because everything was stainless steel, and when you looked at the ceiling tiles the money they must have spent on it, you know… everything was really the best.

t h e k i t c h e n s

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My name is Les Rietdyk. I joined the Army as a regular soldier and came out in 1952… Working in Lewis’s is the only job I’ve had since then.

In 1952 the place was still getting renovated and repaired after the war so the only space they had for us was in the basement. Eventually catering went up with the two restaurants and the cafeteria on to the fifth floor.

Chef Kemp was very experienced, good in all departments; you were constantly being trained; you couldn’t waste a minute. He was only a little man but he was tough. He was a good man, a clever man; he could do anything… he was stern but fair. He would go down to the servery and come back with a special order. Afterwards he’d come up and say, “There you are, there’s a tip for you, half a crown”, he’d never put it in his own pocket.

I used to come in at seven o’clock in the morning and work until three and if there was any overtime, which we were glad to get, we’d do that too.

My first job was to light all the ovens. The kitchen also used to cook all the chickens for the shop, which amounted to 250 a day, and 500 on a Saturday… that’s a lot of chickens – they all had to be done by ten o’clock and then I would start preparing for lunch. At the end of the day they’d have sold them all and they’d come up and ask us if we had any left.

I didn’t enjoy Christmas. Lewis’s had their own poultry and fish departments and they’d take orders for turkeys to be cooked and picked up on Christmas Eve, so there would be about 300 turkeys and 800 chickens! I don’t know how we ever got them all done but we did. At the end of the day you had to make sure that your department was clean before you went home. I did that for many years until Chef Kemp suddenly died and I got his job.

It was hard work but I enjoyed it. I wouldn’t have stayed thirty-five years if I hadn’t. I was made redundant in 1986. When I was leaving, I got a dozen shirts and these shoes and they’ve lasted well…

I was sad when I heard the store might be closing. I think a lot of people would be because it became an institution. People got to know each other and took the firm to heart. I could have gone to Fords when it opened, they were paying three times as much, but I chose to stay here and I’m glad I did. It becomes part of your life and the older you get you don’t want to change much. I enjoyed every minute of it.

Les RietdykHead Chef, Catering, 1951–1986

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We did all the tiles in the kitchens. That was hard work, more so than the mural in the cafeteria. You knew you had done a day’s work when you’d done it.

We tiled all the ceilings and the walls in the kitchens. Very unusual but we did… the architect specified them.

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Chef Michel… he was Swiss and very old- fashioned. He used to carry his knives round on his belt and he used to say “You hungry – you ask. You hungry – you steal, I chop your hands off!” You believed every word he said, he would chop your hands off I’m sure, so nobody ever picked!

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It used to hold 150 to 200 people and that’s just in the Red Rose, and you’d have about 80 or 90 in the Mersey Room and about 300 in the cafeteria. You’d have to be very careful when you were talking to the chefs. Know your place, because he could make you wait. If you wait and your customer doesn’t get their meal then there goes your tip. So you had to have a good working relationship with the Chef. You’d want to kill him but you can’t, you have to be nice to him.

My manager was Mr Hodgkinson. Mr Hodgkinson was very tall, I’d say about six foot two, and our head chef was Chef Ken who was about five foot three. In the middle of the kitchen there’s a staircase to the top kitchen and if Chef Ken wanted to tell Mr Hodgkinson off or make a point he’d stand on the third step and meet him eye to eye. So you always knew there was trouble when Chef Ken stood on the main steps!

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Everything was really spotlessly clean; I don’t think anybody ever complained that things weren’t clean. There was a massive dishwasher, massive when you think about it now, and I think there were three people who used to work on it just putting dishes in and out. We used to score the cutlery, put it in a big tray and there’d be a big sink they’d have the cutlery in, and the water would be absolutely boiling. They’d put the cutlery in and lift it out and I could always remember them shaking because it was really scalding hot…

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My name is Mary Spreadbury. I first worked in Reece’s grillroom as a commis when I was 15. I left school and went there, my mother worked there before me, and my auntie worked there before me, and my uncle worked there before me and one of mother’s friends who worked there knew me even before I was born, so I was part of the Lewis’s family really!

When I was about 18 and I finished my training in Reece’s grill I was sent over to Lewis’s to the fifth floor in the Red Rose restaurant as a trainee manager. I had gone from wearing a “waitress’s outfit” to wearing what they called a “manager’s outfit” which was a suit. Even now I love suits, everything in my wardrobe is suits. It was a navy blue suit, four-inch heels, I always wore stilettos even working all those long days and a little white blouse underneath with a little white rosette, which I was told to change because as it was the Red Rose restaurant I had to wear red.

I was a “seater” there. I welcomed the people at the door and asked them how many there were for lunch or what have you. Sometimes they had to share tables because it was so busy so you’d say to them “Do you mind sharing a table?” and some people would say “No I’d rather wait”. I was always taught to tell them the truth, so if it was fifteen minutes’ wait it was fifteen minutes’ wait, if it was five minutes’ wait it was five minutes’ wait…

I used to stand there all day and show people to their seats, help the girls clear the tables if they needed, answer the phone, take reservations so I was always on my feet. I used to go through shoes like nobody’s business. People used to be amazed, they used to say “Aren’t you tall!” I’d have four-inch heels on and a beehive and those days I weighed about seven and a half stone, so I looked like a long Twiggy. I mean I was Twiggy before Twiggy even existed.

I’m not one for photographs to be honest with you. I like it when I’m with my grand- children or weddings, christenings and that kind of stuff but to actually stand there and have a photograph taken for no apparent reason except for Lewis’s seemed a bit bizarre; but it was funny that day going up to that floor again and seeing it. It was like time had just not moved, everything was exactly the same as it was, like walking through a ghost ship. It was really, really funny and it brought back so many memories and so many people. I think when you get older you start thinking back, and, you know, it was really nice to go back there…

t h e m e r s e y r o o m

Mary SpreadburyTrainee Manager, Catering, 1954–1961

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We’ve had some great times on the fifth floor… When I first started there, the Mersey Room used to have a 5 till 7 club for the juniors. We never used to work late on a Thursday so you used to go up and have records playing and we would have a dance, but that was only for your 15- to say 18-year-olds… we used to get subsidised meal tickets because we weren’t on as much money as the people over 21, so that was a nice time for us.

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The keys to the archive room were in my office up until Owen Owens taking over… There were huge oil paintings of David Lewis himself and all the past well-known directors in there. There used to be a model of the Great Eastern. Lewis’s hired the Great Eastern in 1886 or something like that and it was a big showpiece on the Mersey. They took all the middle out of it and had a circus and everything on the ship. This model ship used to be set in to the wall of the Mersey Room. A beautiful thing, you know, it was a properly scaled down model in a big bronze and glass case. It was taken out when we did Furniture On Five, and it was in the archive room until about 1989. I had to ship that out to head office, when head office was changed to Salford Quays, so it was sent there. A bronze bust of David Lewis was sent and loads of other stuff too. Anyway… once other stuff started to disappear I said “I don’t want the keys any more, keep the keys”.