RECESSIONS have come and gone, the internet has arisen, out-oftown retail parks have been built, but Boots is still at the heart of Bishop.

The chain of chemists was formed in 1849 when herbalist John Boot opened a shop in Goose Gate, Nottingham.

It was, though, his son, Jesse, who masterminded the expansion with the tantalising slogan, “health for a shilling”.

By 1914, Boots had 550 branches across the country – one of which, Branch Number 562, was on the corner of Victoria Avenue and Newgate Street, Bishop Auckland .

The chemist acquired the lease on the shop – £160pa – from Chapman Masons and Company, took a few months to fit it out, and opened for business in 1912.

It was a very different world back then.

You could walk into Boots and ask for a packet of Erasmus Will’s Wind Pills and no one would think any the lesser of you, providing you had a shilling.

The finances were very different, too. In 1922 – a decade after opening – the shop took £12,615, which works out at just £242 a week.

Then the General Strike and the Great Depression set in, with the coalfield around Bishop Auckland as hard hit as anywhere in the country.

 

Consequently, in 1931, the shop took £11,523 – £221 a week.

It was obviously enough, though, for the shop to survive, and in 1976, Boots bought the Three Tuns pub eight doors down Newgate Street and demolished it. A new Boots arose in the pub’s place, opened on September 28 by long time local Boots employee, Syd Marshall.

Perhaps a little partisan, Syd – whose widow, Margaret, will be guest of honour at Wednesday’s dinner – described the new store as “without doubt, the finest shop in Bishop Auckland!”

It looks, to Echo Memories at least, to be a typical piece of uninspired 1970s architecture, but it took £1,200 in its opening hour.

And, best of all, after all these years, it is still trading.

An exhibition marking its centenary runs in the shop from Wednesday to Saturday.