does any one remember Robbs department store in Grange rd in the 60s I worked they for 4yrs all the girla were great and I made some great friends there

Yes I do. Didn't they have a resident housekeeper to keep the girls in check?

I certainly do! Had the big staircase didn't they? I remember buying an olive green and an orange skinny rib polo neck jumper there at the start of the 70s. I loved those jumpers! I think my mum used to get my school uniform there too.

They did the school uniforms and I ate in their restaurant because I couldn't stand school dinners. They must have been reasonably priced!

I remember it in the 1940's. My mother used to take me there sometimes for lunch. The cafe was called the Oak Room & we went up in the lift, which had the attendant with white gloves.

White gloves.?... My, how standards have fallen these days! It looks like I'm going to have difficulty purchasing my next silk smoking jacket and telescopic cigarette holder now that such genteel establishments have gone. Dreadful !

Yes, Chris, I was talking late '40s, too. I think I also ate in the Co-op Restaurant. Must have been cheaper!
We were taught manners, wore ties, passed ladies on the road side of the pavement and raised our caps to ladies. How times have changed!

Hi, Pinz, have you tried eBay?

I started at Robbs on the sweets and tobacco department, then moved to the front office accounts and enquires, I remember when you needed change for the till it went down a tube by air and came back up to you same way,and a remember a local group the valkyries putting on the christmas lights and playing on Robbs roof one christmas, and there was a resident housekeeper called sally, And you had to call everyone Sir and Madam and the customer had to be always right bring back those big department stores they were great.

I went to school (Moorland House in Heswall, now demolished) with Andrew Robb of the family. Thought it must be great to own a shop like that.
What happened to it, and to Andrew, I wonder...

The Co-op restaurant had self service in one part of the dining room and silver service in the other didn't it? With the waitresses in their black uniform, white aprons and caps in the silver service part. I remember my grandma taking me there for tea and an assortment of cakes arriving on tiered plates.

In my first job in the early 70s one of the men in the office next to ours always raised his hat as he passed any female. It made us all feel really special.

Robbs had the booths for listening to records didn't they? I always wanted to do that, it seemed so grown up!

I think rushworth and Drapers moved to robbs in the 60s jeeps and they did have the booths to listen to the latest music

They're a blast from my past too! I used to work near to their shop in Whitechapel, Liverpool. Did they have a shop in Grange Road too or am I just imagining their Liverpool shop front?

I Googled them and see they went into liquidation in 2002. The last bit of the article in Wikipedia said "GENERATIONS of pop-pickers will remember the sound-proofed booths in Rushworth's shops, where you could listen to a record before deciding whether to buy it."

Yes, the shop was near Charing Cross. On the map is a red X which is roughly where it was. When I worked at the Ritz, one of my jobs was to go to Rushworth & Dreaper & borrow some records to play in the intervals. I think they got a free advert in exchange. The shop was next to a gents outfitters, Bibby & Perkins I think. They had a barbers in the basement. From memory, it was one of the few (maybe the only) shop which sold my school uniform.

Hymie Jacobs Chris, stolen from Grange rd shopping centre thread, bibby next door again.

Bloomin' heck! I remember Bibby & Perkins and Hyman Jacobs too! My brother got his school uniform at Bibby & Perkins, I think. He went to Birkenhead Institute and my other one went to Park High.

Have a look here
https://www.wikiwirral.co.uk/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/353753/1.html

Yep, some great pictures in that thread. I remember a lot of those places. We left the Wirral in the early 90s, such a shame so much has changed.

Thanks, Bert. What year is that directory? I've just remembered another shop on that block between Charing Cross & Vincent St. Hubbard & Martins, bread & cake shop. Not in that directory, so must be earlier than 1940

Is Stubbs the Bakers still in Grange Road West? At the top of Cole Street? I remember they used to decorate a huge Easter Egg every year and donate it to the Children's Hospital.

Chris, 1962, one of Dereks posts.

I think i can remember those eggs, don't think their there now.

Some Robb's adverts, from 'Yesterday's Wirral' books.

There's me thinking Mission Statements were quite modern and Robbs were doing them in 1919!

Ah, thanks, Bert. So Hubbard & Martins had gone by then.

Note the feeding prices! Equivalent to about 13p,18p and 25p!

Yea, and Robbs wasn't cheap either.

In 2008, £0 2s 6d from 1953 is worth

£2.61 using the retail price index.
£7.53 using average earnings.

I had a Saturday job in Woolies and had my lunch in the canteen there. If I recall correctly it was something ridiculously cheap like 2d for two courses. This was at the start of the 70s when decimalisation was coming in. The food was excellent!

I did my two weeks 'work experience' at woolies in birkenhead, during the 5th year at school, in 1988. The dinners were marvellousy cheap and very nice. I had an 'issue' with The Boss and took my revenge by smacking/ punching a hole, thus breaking the new range of Easter Eggs. Haha. I blame 'The Reynould Sisters' being played on a loop! Im better now at Conflict Resolution. The Easter Eggs are safe!

As an afterthought..,would blatent destruction of Easter Eggs or other merchandise constitute Criminal Damage?? Oh gawd. Must be! Somehow a sharp rap wiv a knuckle, to 'break' an Egg didnt seem bad? Was tho, wasnt it? *blush*

Wilful destruction of chocolate is a shocking crime.

I was on the sweet counter before everything was prewrapped and we had containers of sweeties for customers to ask for a 1/4 of this or that. We used a little silver shovel to pick up the sweeties for weighing and I have never forgotten digging my shovel in and lifting it up with a mouse sitting ontop of the sweets. The mouse scarpered and the customer just told me to carry on and serve him with what was in the shovel!

Sorry, highjacking the thread.

If anyone here is an exemployee of woolies then. I was the one with the blonde mullet, sullen and oppositional! That was me!! ( i had to miss Neighbors for a full week. Wasnt hp. It was lucys brain haemmorage story! Gutted, i was)

when I started working at Robbs my weekly wage £2 16 shilling and 2d a week and four year later it was only £4 8 shilling,and we had a big clock in the back passage were we clocked in and out.And we could only wear black or grey on the shop floor,there was a shopwalker we called them in those days that walked around looking out for for shoplifters.and christmas time the windows and shop decorations were lovely.

I thought i was going to have to go specsavers, but its ok it does say big clock in the back passage, Did you ever work with nice gentleman called Charlie Lee.

Bert,

You are thinking of Bugis Street again!

I dont rememember charlie Lee

He was a friend of my fathers, both well dead now, just wondered what his role was at Robbs. He lived in one of the properties Mr Robb owned.

I'm sure my mum used to work here in the 50s. Do any former employees remember Ellen aka Louie or Lou Lou?

My mistake. I found out today that it was a store called Nolans.

Ahhh yes those booths, what an adventure it was for those seeking a newly released album to hear the crackle and hiss of the stylus on vinyl

Vinyl??? a latecomer; the real oldies were shellac.

Those booths were totally fab

I remember Robbs as a child. My brother lived in Oliver Street behind Robbs Department Store and Mr Robb let my brother park his car in Robbs car park. Such a gentleman.

remember the big staircase and some days they would have a new product being promoted --seem to remember food blenders being promoted.
Think the shoe department was behind the staircase and can remember as a kid trying on new shoes and think i was falling downhill when looking in the tilted mirror at floor level

Long gone (early '80s?) - was replaced by Victoria Wine and later the bar - that was more recently an Indian Restaurant...

Don't know if it has been mentioned yet - does anybody remember the Frozen Food section - where you could get frozen vegetables - in a Pick-and-mix type setup.

SWMBO - thinks my family must have been really posh - as apparently it was expensive...but not as expensive as the frozen food shop in Heswall that has recenlt bitten the dust....

ChrisKay, clearly I'm a new kid on da block

YinYang they surely were

Heard this one Erainn, about the murderer who worked at Robbs? FabFiona would love it

http://www.historyofwallasey.co.uk/wallasey/Central_Park_Avenue_murders/index.html

It's probably been posted on wiki before but I can't be bothered checking.

It probably has YinYang, is it just coincidence you have the same avatar as Geekus,

The Universe works in mysterious ways, bert! I am, of course, nothing more than a piss-poor imitation.

I thought geekus had vapourised into the fantasy world.

I couldn't possibly comment on Geekus and your fantasies, Granny!

Now, let's get this thread back on topic shall we. Dear me...

YinYang..grisly reading for sure