Welcome to the Original Virtual Museum - celebrating Woolworths' century at the heart of British High Street Shopping
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please click a menu button Original Virtual Museum Home Page please click a menu button The Woolworth value store concept is born in the USA please click a menu button Laying the foundations as the first British Woolworth store opens in Liverpool in November 1909 please click a menu button Woolworths rapidly open forty-four stores in Britain and Ireland before facing a World War please click a menu button Bigger, brighter and bolder Woolworth stores in the Roaring Twenties please click a menu button Woolworths go to amazing lengths to keep all prices under sixpence in the Thirties please click a menu button Bravery and defiance during World War II in Woolworths' finest hour. We pay tribute to the sacrifices made and look behind the scenes please click a menu button Redefining the Woolworth brand for modern times in the 1950s, as prices go up and stores get bigger and bigger please click a menu button Superstores in and out of town, a new own brand and the opening of overseas Commonwealth stores during the 1960s please click a menu button Woolworth struggles to keep up during the rapid inflation and change of the 1970s please click a menu button Woolworth stores in more recent times, covering the period 1980-2008 please click a menu button
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Background to the Original Virtual Museum and copyright information about the contents Origins of the firm's legendary pic'n'mix and a century of chocolate, candy and confectionery in the High Street A century of music and entertainment in the High Street from sheet music and gramophone records to CDs and blu-ray discs A century of toys, games and fun in the High Street stores of F. W. Woolworth A century of fashion in the High Street, from paper patterns and sixpenny knickers to an extensive range of award-winning Ladybird clothing A century of cards, pens, pads and books from the shelves of F. W. Woolworth stores Pots and pans, paint and brushes, bulbs and compost and even toiletries - all in High Street Woolworth stores for much of the twentieth century Woolworths pioneered Christmas decorations in the 19th century and supplied presents for our parents, grandparents and great grandparents from their High Street stores Working conditions and pay rates at Woolworths over a hundred years and some of the people behind the brand-name Our cinema, quiz and picture gallery features Visit the new look 21st century Woolworths on line, on the site operated by Shop Direct Group
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They also serve who only stand and wait

Defiance to keep the stores trading during World War II
         
     
A London store with the windows shuttered for the blitz during World War II - scarcely any window is visible through the boarding.
Berlin for Tonight - a Mighty Midget threepenny book from World War II.
A defiant message from a London Woolworth colleague at the height of the blitz
         
One of the most famous British Movietone Newsreels of World War II shows the damage to shops in London's West End after a night of bombardment in the blitz.  As the voiceover says "In London's West End the self-confessed criminal sends his pupils to wreck and burn department stores and shops.  Indiscriminate bombing is the hallmark of the Hun", what you see is a colleague from Woolies with a home-made sign that summed up the spirit of the Blitz.
         
Tiny Mighty Midget Books like these helped many youngsters come to terms with scary nights underground in air-raid shelters at the height of World War II. They were threepence (1½p) each in Woolworths.
         
As they dusted down the display of best-selling threepenny Mighty Midget books, staff were reassured by the titles, which included "Wreckers over Munich", "Berlin for Tonight" and "I captured a U-boat".  But as you read this page and think of the people of Coventry, spare a thought for Dresden, and for Berlin as well as London, Hamburg and Hull and the suffering of the Ruhr Valley as well as Merseyside. Indiscriminate bombing was not only the hallmark of the Hun.
         
The Woolies store in High Street, Chelmsford, Essex was hit by an incendiary bomb in 1941, but survived to tell the tale

Just when the Germans might have won the Battle of Britain by completely destroying the country's air defences, Goëring ordered a change of tactics. The Luftwaffe was sent to bomb industrial cities and the coastal ports.  Night after night, the bombers kept returning.  And day after day staff and their Managers swept up, picked up the pieces and got right back to work. 

For example the store in Chelmsford, Essex, was hit by an incendiary bomb.  The store's own firewatchers put the fire out, cordoned off the affected area and re-opened for business!  Customers remember the terrible smell of scorched mahogany, and the fighting spirit of the staff.

 
         
The Stirrup Pump played a crucial role in Woolworths' blitz defences during WWII. Here three colleagues from the Newton Abbot store show off their firefighting kit after winning the county championship in Devon in 1942. They are Mrs. E. Tucker (née Spear), Mrs. Sanders (née Clements) and Miss D. Stone.
Employees were awesome in manning the defences. Every store was issued with a Stirrup Pump (left), a simple handheld device with a length of hose, which could be used like a fire extinguisher, spraying water from a fire bucket.

With fuel rationed, a number of London branches used horse-drawn carts to collect goods from the Warehouse at St Pancras. The Kingston-on-Thames store despatched their trusty steed and stockroom manager (right) twice a week to make the thirty mile round-trip. Further afield a number of managers, including Miss Froome from Camberley, rode to work on horseback. A young office clerk took responsibility for grooming and feeding the animal in her lunch break.
Woolworths of Kingston's store horse during World War II. With fuel rationed, many South Eastern stores resorted to the old-fashioned method to collect goods from the Company's Paddington warehouse.
         
Despite colleagues' best endeavours, a number of stores suffered severe damage from incendiaries or lost their roofs to bombs. The challenge was to find ways of getting them back up and running quickly. Executives considered this as much a public service as an attemp to make profit, and took pride in reopening quickly wherever they could. When the stores in Devonport, Plymouth, Coventry, Canterbury and Spalding were bombed, each was quickly transferred to temporary premises which had been cobbled together to a formula devised by the firm's Construction Department:
         
A guide to how temporary stores were opened quickly to replace those destroyed in the Blitz. Construction works were only attempted where this was agreed with the civil authorities and where the building materials were available.
         
The reconstructured store at Spalding demonstrates the simple re-roof and re-open theory. A picthed roof has been added on a temporary frame of wooden beams.
 The temporary Woolworth store in Smithford Street Coventry during World War II. It stood in the crater of the original Woolies and was constructed of a mix of bricks, corrugated iron, steel girders and wood - in fact anything that was available. With mass devastation everyone the challenge for the authorities was to find ways of restoring life as normal so that the key manufacturing industries could get back to work in support of the war effort.
A temporary Woolworths store was cobbled up in a nearby warehouse when Woolies in Canterbury, Kent was destroyed by enemy action in 1941. Customers were assured that the situation was temporary and they would soon have a new store back at the original location, adjacent to the Cathedral.
         
The temporary Woolworth store in the boiler room in Southampton had to take the place of two stores - East Street Southampton (No. 24) and Above Bar Street, Southampton (No. 128), which were cruelly both destroyed by German bombing in a single night in 1941.
         
Woolworths in Plymouth joined other retailers in re-opening in the local market after Old Town Street was wiped out by bombing raids night after night in 1941.
         

A key challenge during World War II was to maintain morale on the Home Front. Woolworth Buyers worked extensively with Government to find ways in which the stores could help, in a dialogue that really took hold when store colleagues bought Spitfires for the RAF. Prompted by Lord Beaverbrook the Government made a series of remarkable concessions:

  • At the request of Bill Lacey, the Head of Buying responsible for Food and Restaurants, ice cream was kept out of rationing. More remarkable was that Beaverbook gave the replacement of the refridgeration plant equal priority with the building of Spitfires, on the condition that Woolworth would target all available ice-cream stocks at the cities and towns facing the worst bombardment.
     
  • Also at Lacey's request tinned fruit and peaches were kept out of rationing, on the condition that Woolworths packaging experts worked with the Ministry on "tins without tin", experimenting with various bakelite, composition and cardboard combinations to come up with packaging rather like a modern tetra-brick milk carton.
     
  • To complete his hat-trick Lacey also persuaded the authorities to keep food in restaurants, include those at Woolworth, outside rationing, subject to the proviso that customers were not allowed to buy fish and meat in the same meal.
     
  • Woolworth was allocated big supplies of paper for the production of Mighty Midgets (illustrated towards the top of this page) which were tiny (10cm x 6cm) little war stories in a comic-like format. They had titles like "Girls in Wartime" and "The Dogs of War". Many millions of these books were sold at threepence (about 1½p), with prices maintained throughout the war.
     
  • Paper was also provided to continue production of "The New Bond", the Woolworths Staff Magazine which was distributed to colleagues serving in H.M. Forces or their families. The Company maintained a picture library of everyone serving and updated the gallery to show promoted and decorations (medals). They also printed lists and addresses for prisoners of war. The magazine actively encouraged store colleagues to write to prisoners, and to raise money both for the war effort and for relief purposes.
     
  • Throughout the conflict, thanks to intervention from the Ministry, supplies of Cardboard were maintained to allow jigsaws of patriotic scenes to be produced. The Lumar collection of 260-piece fully interlocking piece puzzles (illustrated below) was very popular. The firm accepted a loss to sell for sixpence as a morale-booster. Many a youngster was distracted from bombs falling overhead as they attempted the devilishly difficult puzzles in an Anderson shelter at the bottom of the garden, or on a London Undergound Platform.
         
War scene jigsaw puzzle from F. W. Woolworth during the blitz. Named 'Rescue', it depicts Nazi warplane D19 sinking at sea with the crew standing on the fusilage as an allied warship moves alongside to help out. Puzzles like this were sold for sixpence. Support from Lord Beaverbrook helped secure the raw materials to keep this loss-leading range on sale throughout much of World War II.
"A little piece in wartime." Price maintained at sixpence throughout World War II. These puzzles were credited with keeping many a young mind distracted in the Air Raid Shelters at the height of the blitz. One of the true wonders of Woolworth.
Patrolling the seas - a patriotic Lumar Jigsaw puzzle from Woolworths during World War II. Price - Sixpence.
         

After 1941 the nightly bombardment started to ease. For a while the main hardships were shortages and rationing, and the prolonged absence of loved-ones fighting overseas. Colleagues focused on raising money for the war effort. A popular approach was to display captured armaments or plane wings in a window and to collect donations in a bucket.

But in 1944 the blitz returned with a vengeance. Highly explosive doodlebugs (pilotless planes) fell from the sky in heavily populated areas. Sadly the rocket-driven super doodlebug, the V2, caused the worst civilian losses of World War II when the Woolworth store at New Cross Road, Deptford was destroyed at lunchtime on Saturday 25 November 1944. Find out more in our special tribute and memorial features here in the Original Virtual Museum.
         
You should see our store in Berlin! Indiscriminate bombing was not only the hallmark of the Hun.
         
         
If you have enjoyed our Virtual Museum website, why not check out our complete history of Woolworths in a 194 page, richly illustrated paperback book? A Sixpenny Romance is just £10.99, with free delivery in our on-line shop.
The special DVD, the Wonder of Advertising, is now available in our on-line shop for £7.50 with free delivery. A fully illustrated 194 page history of Woolworths, or a selection of professionally authored DVDs in our on-line shop