How we used to shop – check out these rare pictures

It was only in the 1960s that the self-service store that we now take for granted supplanted the traditional grocer’s shop on the corner. The ability of the chain stores to “stack ’em high and sell ’em cheap” created a sales model with which smaller shops could not compete.

But housewives had initially needed some persuading. When Sainsbury’s opened its first self-service branch in Croydon, in November 1950, it felt it necessary to print a comic strip with captions to convince customers how “easy and quick” its new arrangement really was.

“The prices and weights of all goods are clearly marked,” it reassured shoppers. “You just take what you want.”

Exactly how much was to be paid was what marked out one supermarket from another. Tesco, whose first self-service shop opened in St Albans in 1956, distinguished itself from the competition by giving shoppers Green Shield stamps with every purchase, while others plastered special offers in the window.

In Yorkshire, Morrisons introduced its first, small self-serve shop in 1958, in Bradford. It was said to be the first of its kind in the city and also the first to have three checkouts.

Five years later, the doors of what would become Asda were thrown open in Castleford – its owners having taken inspiration from supermarkets in the US, where the first had appeared even before the First World War.

But all the stores initially had one thing in common – they were in town centres amongst all the other shops. It was not until the 1980s that out-of-town French-style “hypermarkets” with their own large car parks became the norm in Britain.

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