Background to the Original Virtual Museum

This website covers the whole history of Woolworths stores from the first openings in America in 1879 to the final closure in the British High Street on 6th January 2009. The site author, Paul Seaton, dreamt up the idea of a Virtual Museum and built the original as a hobby, alongside his day job as a Systems Manager with the store-based chain, persuading the Directors to serve it as part of woolworths.co.uk in June 2004.

The Museum proved a hit with the public and stimulated many enquiries to the author as well as suggestions for improvements and additional storylines. The author set to work on an enlarged and improved version which he planned to publish as part of the chain's hundredth birthday celebrations in 2009. Work was well progressed when the Company collapsed unexpectedly in the Credit Crunch.

Fortunately Shop Direct Group has rescued the brand and are now taking it forward in their own way. So this is now a fansite!

The Virtual Museum first opened its doors in June 2004 - the 125th anniversary of the opening of the first F. W. Woolworth Five Cent store in Lancaster Pennsylvania on 21 June 1879. It provided the first archive of the Company's history and took the story from that first opening right into the twenty-first century.

It proved a big hit with the public, attracting plaudits on the Internet and more than three million visitors over the following five years.

Many people got in touch to share memories and ideas for new features on the site, or to ask questions.

Since the demise, encouraged by former colleagues, broadcasters and English Heritage, the work has been completed and published. The new version covers the whole history of the British store chain, and is one of the most comprehensive sites of its type anywhere in the world. It uses the very latest multimedia to tell the story in sound and video as well as in words and pictures.

On the site visitors can visit a Woolworths store a hundred years ago and find out what it sold, and what it was like to shop and work there. It remembers the fallen of two World Wars and the heroes who set the chain on the road to success. It examines what made the chain such a phenomenon and reveals some of what went wrong towards the end. It develops storylines and suggestions contributed by many visitors to the original version. In particular it addresses requests for more high resolution pictures, films and music following removal of some of the constraints originally imposed by the company. Some of the rich content requires Adobe Flash 9 or above and a broadband connection.

To help visitors to navigate the site and to improve accessibility and indexing on the Internet, the old frames layout has been replaced by a navigation bar at the top of every page. The exhibits are arranged in "e-Galleries", each on a different theme.  Some show a span of time (for example "the 1910s"), while others concentrate on one of the chain's ranges (like "Music and Video"). There is also a search tool, a special multimedia section and some lighthearted interactive exhibits. The goal was to create a site that is easy to navigate and that offers rich multimedia content with simple, no-nonsense terms and conditions.

PLEASE NOTE: this is a fansite. The Woolworths, WorthIt! and Ladybird brand names are now the property of Shop Direct Group Ltd. The Chad Valley brand is the property of Home Retail Group Ltd. Neither organisation has supplied or approved any of the content presented here. All trademarks are acknowledged, and as a courtesy we have a link to the new on-line Woolworths in the top navigator.

If you like the Original Virtual Museum please bookmark the site and tell your friends.  If you don't, why not drop the author a line with your ideas for improvements? All feedback will be very welcome!.