WHERE THAT PLACE USED TO BE
The combination of prompt from my 365 project, asking me to think about a place from my childhood that is now long gone, and the recent news that the Jenners department store is to close, has dragged me off into a roomful of childhood memories. Jenners, for readers not from Edinburgh, is, was, a big department store on Princes Street, across from the Scott Monument and just a short walk from Waverley Station. Jenners was THE department store, Scotland's equivalent of Harrods I suppose, and is the last to fall of the big shops I recall from growing up in the city during the sixties, the places that were major players in the city centre retail sector of the period.
It's no surprise that Jenners will be gone. Even without the impact that covid has had on shops the demise of the department store was already well under way. John Lewis may, or may not, carry on once the doors reopen, but it has always been the new kid in town, and plays no part in the memories of the time I'm taking myself back to. What follows is largely written from my memories of the period, so it's an unreliable memoir, but there were a couple of facts that I checked up on, one of which came as a big surprise.
Little Blyth remembers six of these behemoth stores in and around the Old and New Towns. But I'll begin with an honourable mention with an out of towner, because it ties in well with the place I'll be concluding with. There was a big Co-op department store in Leith, on Great Junction Street, where I recall being taken for my school uniform sometimes. Two technological marvels fascinated my wee boy self. The x-ray machine I put my feet in to see if shoes fitted correctly. And, best of all and a performance I could have watched for hours if I hadn't been dragged protestingly away, the pneumatic tube system that whooshed off the money my mother had handed over to the salesperson, and returned with change and receipt. Like magic to a six year old.
But back to town. Jenners was always top of the pile, and far too pricey for a young working class family to frequent. With two annual exceptions. In the run up to xmas we'd go in, not to buy, but look in wonder at the central floor space where stood an enormous xmas tree, flashily decorated, extending up and up through the surrounding galleries, topping out around the second or third floor. There was nothing else quite like it (and this was long before the trashy commercialisation of "Edinburgh's Christmas" we've now got and which I'm grateful to covid for sparing us this time round). The second visit came after the festivities, and the bargain hunting opportunities of the January Sales. I'm sure I received some late presents via that route...
A block along from Jenners, similarly placed on the eastern corner, was Forsyth's not quite as big, not quite as grand. I have no real memories of the place, except it was always known as "Big Forsyths", to distinguish it from "Wee Forsyths", a (mens?) clothes shop a few doors away and a totally different company. Completing the Princes Street trio was Binns, at the West End. In 1961, like Jenners and Forsyths to the eastern end of the street, it was handily placed for a train station, the old Caley station that fell in the Beeching cuts a few years later. Binns was mostly famous as a meeting place, specifically under the clock, as a handy landmark where you could arrange to hook up with friends. "See you at Binns" was a common phrase at the time. It was Frasers department store until fairly recently (but always 'Binns' to those of a more mature years), and it's lovely to see that the current restoration is bringing back the clock. It's to be a Johnny Walker Whisky Experience centre I think - whatever that is.
Two of my remembered shops were on The Bridges, the road that leads up to the old town across the top of Waverley. Patrick Thomson was never know as such, but simply called PTs. It occupied most (all?) of the eastern side of North Bridge, a huge sprawling place which, again, I recall little about. My main memory is buying coffee there (my parents favoured Blue Mountain mostly) in the early seventies. Further up the road, on the South Bridge corner of Chambers Street, was the place which provided the aforementioned surprise. My memory tells me there was a department store there called J&R Allan, and that it had the best food hall in the city. Google tells me that Allans closed down in 1953, three years before my birth. So what am I remembering? Was it a different shop which was as Frasers was to Binns - everybody still used the old name, no matter what it had become? Or is there some bit of information I'm missing? Who cares?
Finally (yes, finally) the department store memory that prompted this whole stream of recollections. All of the above were very traditional places, old fashioned even then, with formal Victorian and Edwardian facades. But in 1960, if you walked out of Binns and walked up Lothian Road to Tollcross, you could find the alien spaceship of department stores. Goldbergs, set well back from the road, looked so so different to anything else in town. The huge frontal glass area was a beautiful, brutal counterpoint to the stuffy establishment, with dramatic sculptures to each side of that wall of light. I don't recall what my parents might have bought there, and I imagine that the goods on sale weren't all that different to those in the places mentioned above. What I do remember was the technological wonder that surprised and delighted an easily impressed kid. Moving stairs. Escalators. It was like entering the future. And this was before we had Doctor Who! Simpler times.
The Goldbergs building was demolished in the nineties. There's a big block of flats there now, with a restaurant at the front where the steps up to the big glass front doors would have been. But oftimes when I see that block from the Tollcross junction I find I have Goldbergs in my head, and my child self who marvelled at being able to stand on stairs that carried me to the next level. Escalators don't impress me nowadays, but surprising technology still does, so maybe that wee boy remains within.
