Welcome to the Original Virtual Museum - celebrating Woolworths' century at the heart of British High Street Shopping
- - - - -
please click a menu button
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
please click a menu button please click a menu button please click a menu button please click a menu button please click a menu button please click a menu button please click a menu button please click a menu button please click a menu button please click a menu button please click a menu button
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
please click a menu button please click a menu button please click a menu button please click a menu button please click a menu button please click a menu button please click a menu button please click a menu button please click a menu button please click a menu button please click a menu button
- - - - -

Launch of the Woolworths Virtual Museum (2004)
 
Woolworths 2002: old firm, new values The chain's demerger from Kingfisher marked the cue for some soul searching about Woolworths' heritage and values. The incoming CEO, Trevor Bish-Jones called on a company old-hand and history buff, Paul Seaton (author of this site) for help. At the time the author had established a large personal collection of 'Woolania', including many products, photographs and documents. Occasionally this material had been shared for internal communications and made available to journalists preparing stories about British shopping or new store openings.

In place of a 'death by Powerpoint' history, Seaton proposed to make a film. He digitized thousands of images and documents and photographed some of his many heritage products during March 2002 in preparation for the movie.

The finished film amazed the senior management of the firm. It seemed that neither the CEO nor his top team was aware of their Company's rich heritage. None had stopped to wonder how the brand name had captured the hearts of the nation. New values were derived from the film and agreed at Board level and two copies of the film were requested - a 15 minute teaser to introduce the new values at team meetings and a longer 45 minute version with the complete history as a memento for every colleague to take home. The Group's wholesale division was able to oblige with 30,000 VHS copies, produced for just a few pence each.
 

Nicole Lander, who headed Corporate Affairs at Woolworths Group from 2001 and 2004, and built a strong reputation as one of the best communicators in British industry

 

One of the new CEO's top team, the firm's celebrated PR and Corporate Affairs guru Nicole Lander, believed that the story should be shared more widely. She suggested perhaps a book or film for customers, schools and journalists, and explored options. Among her discoveries on-line was a small museum website from Sainsbury's, which included stunning photography of some of the supermarket's earliest stores, as well a pen portrait of shopping with the chain in times gone by. Perhaps, she suggested, this might be a way forward.

It was agreed that, while the Company could not provide funds, they would be pleased to offer editorial autonomy, subject only to a check by the Company Secretariat for any potential legal issues. They would provide hosting for a museum website and suggested that Seaton should use the same '3D and 6D Pictures' nom-de-plume that had allowed him to retain copyright in his film production.

The original home page of the Woolworths Virtual Museum when it launched in 2004

 

The original version of the museum went on-line as museum.woolworths.co.uk in 2004. Written in Microsoft FrontPage, it included a persistent navigation bar in a frame above each of 160 pages of content. In keeping with the prevailing IT dogma of the time, the images were severely scaled and compressed to keep the bandwidth requirements to an absolute minimum. The self-imposed constraint was not driven by a desire to save space or cost on the web, but rather to make the site accessible to home users, who at the time generally had slow dial-up connections to the Internet.
An example page from the original Woolworths Museum, showing a day in the life of a colleague in the 1930s

 

The Woolworths web team at sister company Streets-on-Line, led by Trevor Voss, received page content on CD-rom and published it to the Internet, in a dark corner of the Unix-based Sun Solaris platform. Initial expectations were that traffic would be comparatively low.

To the surprise of everyone (and particularly the author) within weeks the Museum was attracting heavy traffic, with many visitors from the UK joined by a surprisingly large numbers of page requests from the United States of America and Canada, which had no permanent memorial to the five-and-dime. The grandsons of the Founders (who all continued to meet periodically), made contact, jokingly complaining that they had lost several days' work, glued to the content.

After more than a million people visited the site it was given a server of its own. Between 2005 and 2008 10% of all of those visiting woolworths.co.uk also visited the Virtual Museum, with many starting with the Museum and moving on to make a purchase from the main website. At its peak, as part of the store-based company, the main site generate a sales volume approaching £100m a year.
 
On TV - Shopping for England, directed by BBC Bristol's Georgina HarveyThe BBC's Bristol-based web unit highlighted the site and prompted a BBC4 television programme in The Edwardians series, 'Shopping for England', which looked forward to the firm's hundredth birthday and compared and contrasted the operations of the first two American retailers to brave the British High Street - contrasting Harry Gordon Selfridge's affluent emporium in Oxford Street, London with Frank W. Woolworth's 'every day store for everyone'. The programme was repeated a dozen times on BBC4 and later on BBC2 included two credits, naming Paul Seaton as both a researcher and an interviewee and acknowledging the content from 3D and 6D Pictures. The programme was the Radio Times choice of the day and was awarded five stars.
 
The original 1950s gallery home page from the Woolworths Virtual Museum (2004)

Recognition for the war pages of the Virtual Museum came when Paul Seaton was invited to contribute a chapter to the official commemorative book marking the sixtieth anniversary of the D-Day landings, which is now reproduced in this updated, unofficial Original Virtual Museum.

He was also invited to contribute to an official history of The Spitfire, after the publishers spotted details of 'Nix Over Six' on line. The RAF also announced plans to name a modern day fighter Nix Over Six 'in recognition of the few'.

The war coverage also appears in the London Fire Brigade's website and in a number of works related to the V2 attack in New Cross and was commended by the Imperial War Museum.
Total eclipse of the heart

In a cruel twist, the Virtual Museum inspired a BBC Radio 2 documentary 'The Wonderful Sound of Woolies', which was recorded in the Summer of 2008 for transmission at Christmas. The programme featured a musical trip down memory lane from sheet music in nineteenth century America through all of the own labels from Little Marvel to WorthIt!, with appearances by members of the Typhoons (once described as better than The Beatles), Dame Vera Lynn and Sir Henry Cooper MBE, all hosted by much-loved veteran presenter Brian Matthew, once the star behind the Embassy Records version of 'Goodness Gracious Me'.

Producers contacted Seaton shortly before transmission to ask if he would like his quote 'I am proud to work for Woolworths in their hundredth year' to be edited out. The programme was to broadcast as the stores were closing down. He said 'no, leave it as it is'. And they did. The Guardian's review of the programme (typical of the broadsheets) awarded it a full five stars with the comment 'If sentiment alone could save a business, Woolworths would be opening stores, not closing them.'

 
 

One million people visited the Virtual Museum in the week when Woolworths went into Administration, and English Heritage approached the author, describing the site as a 'national treasure' and encouraging him to complete the 100th birthday rewrites that make this updated version. The goal was not to produce an 'e-museum' but an 'A Star' museum - a permanent testament to the stores chain.

Please tell us how we did.
 

Shortcuts to other Exhibits in the Original Virtual Museum

2000s Gallery

2000s Overview    Death by Demerger    New values and a new direction    Visit a Big W store

Market Towns and City Centres     The Smaller Stores    Multi-Channel Retail    Wholesale & Media    WorthIt! Value Comeback

Launch of the Virtual Museum    Meet the team    The Lighter Side    Wooly & Worth    Collapse and Rescue

 

Museum Navigation

Home Page    Recent History Gallery     Visit the new Woolworths on-line

 
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 in our on-line shop. A fully illustrated 194 page history of Woolworths, or a selection of professionally authored DVDs in our on-line shop