A RETAIL phenomenon spanning eight decades was remembered fondly yesterday when former staff of the family-run Doggarts store chain were reunited at an exhibition opening.

Volunteers at the Bishop Auckland Discovery Centre, in County Durham, have collected memories, photographs, clothing and furniture bought from Doggarts for the seven-week display.

Founded by Glaswegian baptist Arthur Doggart in 1895, the Bishop Auckland shop had the best site in town, facing both the Market Place and Newgate Street, and was always the leading branch.

The company opened 17 stores and had ten left when recession and high wage costs forced the company to close in 1981.

Mr Doggart, a philanthropist but a shrewd businessman as well, spread his empire through mining communities into Ashington, Billingham, Chester-le-Street, Consett, Darlington, Durham, Gateshead, Houghton-le-Spring, New Shildon, Peterlee, Seaham Harbour, Shildon, Spennymoor, Stockton, West Stanley and Wingate.

Selling everything but food, he introduced the Doggarts club -an interest-free credit system enabling poorer families to furnish their homes and clothe their children on credit.

Back-to-back houses made it easy for agents to call for weekly payments, and most families had a club book.

Mr Doggart's grandson, Sandy, who launched the exhibition yesterday, said: "There must have been something of Grace Brothers about things that went on.

"It was a very happy place to work. Mr grandfather laid down very strict rules, but people were well looked after."

Staff who joined Doggarts were give a book of store etiquette, and were told to be at their counters by 9am.

Men wore suits and women were dressed in navy blue or grey.

A disciplinarian, Mr Doggart fined staff a penny when they wasted company paper or string.

In lighter moments, there were parties, dances and trips to the seaside. Some staff got married, in the true spirit of the Doggarts family store.

During the war, with male employees called up to fight, women took over their duties.

Men who were left behind worked all day and could spend the night helping the war effort on Fire Watch.

In the 1970s, Doggarts had its own rally car, driven in the RAC Rally by Nicky Porter, of West Auckland, with Sandy and his brother, Jamie, navigating.

Shoppers remember handing their money to the counter assistant and waiting for the change to come whizzing back through an overhead system of pneumatic canisters.

Cliff Robbins, the manager at the Bishop Auckland store when it closed, knew all the members of his team well and remembered everyone at yesterday's reunion.

Now 78, he joined the company as a trainee salesman in 1941 and worked his way up to the board of directors.

He said: "We had some very good times. It was a happy place to work."

Godfrey Smith worked behind the scenes as an electrician, starting aged 15 in 1959 on eleven pence and three farthings.

He said: "We had a team of French polishers, cabinet-makers, carpet-fitters and others working behind the scenes all the time."

He believes there may be pieces of the Lamson Paragon pneumatic tube payment system left in unused sections of the old Bishop Auckland building.

Another piece of Doggarts' history missing yesterday was a sample of the distinctive hand-made price tickets, each painstakingly painted by two qualified artists and one assistant.

To help researchers gathering information about the painters, call the Discovery Centre on (01388) 662666. The exhibition opens to the public today and runs on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, from 10am to 3pm, until August 6.

Published: 23/06/2005