C O N T E X T 1 4 4 : M A Y 2 0 1 6 29 goods. It was only from the 1930s that M&S specialised in textiles and clothing. This move up the social scale coincided with a major rebuilding programme, devised in conjunction with retail agents Parker, May and Rowden, starting in 1924. The mission statement was ‘A new type of store... incorporating architectural features that will make them a landmark...We believe that a beautiful building is a constant advertisement, which must result in increased trade’ (extract from chairman’s speech on store design, 1927, quoted in Morrison, KEnglish Shops and Shopping). The company’s architectural adviser Ernest Shrewsbury commissioned three firms of architects to design most of the shops. From this era date the shops, for example inWood Green and the 76 Briggate premises in Leeds. Marks and Spencer’s almost-deco Wood Green (Middlesex) branch opened in 1926 and was extended twice in the 1930s. It is of nine bays and three storeys, tiled in off-white, with a deep parapet. Until September 2015 it retained a splendid M&S public clock of art-nouveau design in green and gold. Windows above the originally black marble fascia are small and square, with elongated Crittalls above them. Second-tier windows in the third and seventh bays in the extended store are set in rather strange arched devices, flanked by recessed striations reminiscent of French shutters. The 76 Briggate store, also of 1926, and now a shop called USC, is very similar, even down to the window treatments. In the Leeds City Pevsner SusanWrathmell correctly calls it ‘curious’. In 1934 Robert Lutyens (1901–71, son of Edwin) was appointed consultant. He designed a 10-inch grid system, with shops faced with artificial stone tiles in various colours. Where older premises were adapted, their facades were sometimes altered. For example, the Walthamstow branch (now Lidl) had most of its Victorian fiddly bits shorn off. Hackney (1936) seems to have had a new facade added, in the 1920s style.This was all part of M&S’s modernity drive, and its move upmarket from its penny bazaar heritage. M&S at Chichester opened at 16–18 East Street in 1935, with a frontage of 37ft and sales area 7,300 sq ft. A rear extension of 1963 added 600 sq ft, and a side extension in 1965 another 900. In 1980, the first floor was converted to make a total of 26,200 sq ft. M&S Chichester is in the centre of a cathedral city, so the design was in chaste but assertive neo-Georgian, with high first-floor windows as if lighting a piano nobile. A massive dentil cornice adds to the impression of solidity and grandeur, and the brick detailing, emphasising the window openings, is of high quality. Probably by Robert Lutyens, it is in many ways the antithesis of 1930s deco.The facade – but not the modern accretions behind – is locally listed by Chichester District Council, although attributed to Lutyens senior. A similar design concept had been adopted the year before in the larger store at Cambridge, very close to Christ’s College. Woolworths was noted for its display windows, bronze-framed over mottled marble stallrisers, with curved glass accommodating the entrance. There was a major eradication of these by the company in the period c1965–90; very few survived, but one that does (with the bronze overpainted) is that in SaffronWalden High Street (now QD stores). Montague Burton could make the grandeur of his buildings reflect the significance of the town or city in which they stood. One of the grandest, that in Hull built 1934–35, by the company architect, HarryWilson, for instance, was faced with the Burton trademark greenish-black polished granite and gilded fenestration, with jazzy deco friezes.The building stands as a commanding presence overlooking the city hall, and instead of the usual billiard hall, housed the Hull customs department in its upper floors. In 2011 it was A Marks and Spencer shop in Chichester in 1958, showing the classic fascia with stallrisers and double entrance doors with kickplates (Photo reproduced by courtesy of M&S company archive)
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