Last chance to shop in three M&S stores in Yorkshire as the shutters come down for the final time

NEWS of its closure has sparked panic buying of knickers and bras.
Marks & Spencer which has been in Hull since 1899 closes on Saturday.
Stores in Huddersfield and Rotherham shut on the same day.Marks & Spencer which has been in Hull since 1899 closes on Saturday.
Stores in Huddersfield and Rotherham shut on the same day.
Marks & Spencer which has been in Hull since 1899 closes on Saturday. Stores in Huddersfield and Rotherham shut on the same day.

Many are mourning the closure of Hull’s Marks & Spencer on Saturday after being a staple of the city’s Old Town since it first opened as a penny bazaar in 1899 in Hepworth Arcade.

The shutters are also coming down on stores in Huddersfield and Rotherham the same day.

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Outside its home on Whitefriargate since 1931 – which is thought to have inspired Philip Larkin’s The Large Cool Store – Diana Beal, from Willerby, remembered the street in its heyday, the shoe and dress shops, and “packed out with people, shoulder to shoulder”.

Patricia Moulds, from East Hull, added: “I have always shopped at M&S, and I will miss it. What shops are there left in Hull? We need better shops.”

Of the 93 staff, 30 have been relocated to other stores.

One staff member said it was like “breaking up a family”, adding: “We are closer than any other store I know.

“We were always profitable. They just wanted to sell the building because they didn’t want to pay for the repairs.”

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The key thoroughfare, which links the Old Town to Queen Victoria Square, is also losing Boots in a fortnight, when it relocates to a new flagship unit in the St Stephen’s mall. The only two new arrivals are pound shops.

Hull Council has formed a partnership with developers to try and revive the street’s fortunes, by acquiring properties and finding new uses, including as apartments, offices and retail.

Director of regeneration Mark Jones said they were talking to a number of potential investors, and waiting to hear on their first stage bid for £12m of the Government’s Future High Streets Fund in June.

He said: “It’s a challenge and it won’t be turned round overnight – it took a long time to get into this position.

“We are trying to make it a recognised destination as we have done with Humber Street and the Old Town Trinity Market.”

M&S said it was marketing the building to find a new tenant.

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