Throwback Thursday: Boswell's
Nov. 28th, 2019 08:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
purplecatVia sir_guinglain and Facebook I learn that Boswell's is closing. As a child, Boswell's was the best toy shop in Oxford. My memories are of buying Lego, marbles and gaf viewmaster reels there.
My delight in Lego has never really abandoned me. I've always thought that Lego Mindstorms robots are a great way to interest kids in robotics, so I was mildly non-plussed, on a recent school visit with my robots, to overhear one girl say to a friend "Who knew Lego could be this cool?"
The marbles were peculiar to my secondary school. Every autumn convoluted marble games were played. These involved stalls in which the stall-keeper set out a pattern of marble and challengers who pitched marbles at the stores. The stall-keeper got to name a price for the marble being pitched (which equated to how many pitching attempts you got and how many attempts had to succeed before you could claim a marble). The money (or at least the marbles) was in running a stall unless your aim was particularly good and Boswell's with its extensive selection of marbles was the foundation of the whole phenomenon.
The GAF viewmaster was the 1970s/1980s answer to 3D dvds - a plastic binocular like device which allowed you to relive up to 18 images from your favourite film or TV show in glorious 3D. I think I still have mine somewhere, I certainly did up until a few years ago. Boswell's had a rack of reels for the viewmaster and I purchased many sets from it (including Doctor Who Full Circle).
I suspect I also purchased Star Wars figures there, but you could also get them at Risings in Summertown so they seem less unique to Boswell's.
But Boswell's wasn't just a toy shop. It was a department store. It wasn't quite Grace Brothers of Are you Being Served (it didn't sell clothes for a start), but it was a single non-chain store with department names that evoke a particular moment in time "Fancy Goods"... "Cameras"... "Chemist"... When I was fifteen or sixteen, while bemoaning my lack of funds, a friend directed me towards an advert in the shop window for a new Saturday Girl in the Chemist department. I inquired within and half an hour later I had a job.
The Chemist department had two Saturday girls. The main distinction between us was our role in stock-taking. As junior Saturday girl, I was in charge of food colouring and flavourings which did not sell fast (though nor did new orders arrive all that quickly), when I in due course became the senior Saturday girl, I was in charge of the stocks of plasters and bandages. Being the Chemist department we sold a mix of beauty products, health care products and actual medicines. Many of these were in the P-cabinet behind the counter since the Pharmacist had to oversee their sale (in practice this meant that theoretically he could observe us removing them from the P-cabinet). We also took in prescriptions and handed them over to the pharmicist for dispensation.
I'm not sure how much I learned from the experience, beyond the every day lessons of working 9-to-5, even when tired and that one's neighbours while behaving perfectly politely towards people who were middle-class and lived next door could actually be very rude to a shop assistant and not recognise that they were also one of the nice middle-class girls who lived next door. The subtleties of the department store hierarchies I suspect mostly passed me by. There were two staff common rooms, one for smokers and one for non-smokers. I used to take my lunch in the non-smoking common room, but generally didn't talk to people much preferring to read a book while drinking powdered tea from the machine. One assumes the smoking common-room is long since gone. The full-time shop assistants in the Chemists preferred the smoking common-room even though they didn't smoke. My memory of the few times I went there was that it was smokey (obv.) and dominated by the two men who ran the Cameras and Lenses section which was right by the Chemists - but where the Chemists was entirely female (apart from the Pharmacist himself) all of us in a uniform of white vaguely medical looking coats, Cameras was run by two old men in suits (were they really old? or merely middle-aged seeming old to my teenage eyes?).
Boswell's was not far from The New Theatre (later The Apollo). I never met anyone famous in Boswell's, but the full-time assistants kept autograph books under the counter so that they could collect famous autographs if the opportunity arose.
After I had been working in Boswell's a year or so, my younger sister ran into similar financial troubles to those that had caused me to take the job. Having always had, I suspect, rather more business acumen than I, her response was to draw up a budget and present it to our parents, who bowed to the reasonable demands and upped her pocket money (and also mine) in order to meet what were clearly our necessities. I nevertheless kept the job until about my sixth week in Oxford when I decided I had better things to do with my Saturdays.
I have fond, if somewhat patchy, memories of the place. It turns out I am distantly related to the Bentall family and I recently read Rowan Bentall's My Store of Memories about Bentalls in Kingston-on-Thames. Bentalls was an altogether grander proposition than Boswell's with elaborate events and displays and ever expansionist ambitions, but that feel of a family run business with a benevolent, if paternalistic, attitude to its staff felt very reminiscent.
Not many years later, I met the full-time assistant I had known best in Boots. She looked far more glamorous - though since she was working the make-up counter that may have been a requirement of the job - and explained she had moved because Boots treated its staff better. I was mildly put out - it felt strange to have left the somewhat quirky individual atmosphere of Boswell's for the chain homogeneity of Boots but Boswell's was never a particularly serious proposition for me. I never believed it was anything other than a way to top up my pocket money.
Bentalls also makes those of us of a certain age think instantly of Grace Brothers. Bentalls, after over a hundred years in family hands, become a part of the Fenwick chain in 2001. The age of these quirky, family-owned department stores, has ended. These were places that explicitly believed that their role was wider than simply delivering share-holder value but, as the shop assistant who moved to Boots would maybe attest, the very individuality didn't necessarily mean they served the interests of their staff better.
Time, as becomes ever more apparent as I get older, marches on. We may mourn what has passed (perhaps our youth as much as anything else) but I try not to assume this means that everything is getting worse.
sir_guinglain and Facebook I learn that Boswell's is closing. As a child, Boswell's was the best toy shop in Oxford. My memories are of buying Lego, marbles and gaf viewmaster reels there. My delight in Lego has never really abandoned me. I've always thought that Lego Mindstorms robots are a great way to interest kids in robotics, so I was mildly non-plussed, on a recent school visit with my robots, to overhear one girl say to a friend "Who knew Lego could be this cool?"
The marbles were peculiar to my secondary school. Every autumn convoluted marble games were played. These involved stalls in which the stall-keeper set out a pattern of marble and challengers who pitched marbles at the stores. The stall-keeper got to name a price for the marble being pitched (which equated to how many pitching attempts you got and how many attempts had to succeed before you could claim a marble). The money (or at least the marbles) was in running a stall unless your aim was particularly good and Boswell's with its extensive selection of marbles was the foundation of the whole phenomenon.
The GAF viewmaster was the 1970s/1980s answer to 3D dvds - a plastic binocular like device which allowed you to relive up to 18 images from your favourite film or TV show in glorious 3D. I think I still have mine somewhere, I certainly did up until a few years ago. Boswell's had a rack of reels for the viewmaster and I purchased many sets from it (including Doctor Who Full Circle).
I suspect I also purchased Star Wars figures there, but you could also get them at Risings in Summertown so they seem less unique to Boswell's.
But Boswell's wasn't just a toy shop. It was a department store. It wasn't quite Grace Brothers of Are you Being Served (it didn't sell clothes for a start), but it was a single non-chain store with department names that evoke a particular moment in time "Fancy Goods"... "Cameras"... "Chemist"... When I was fifteen or sixteen, while bemoaning my lack of funds, a friend directed me towards an advert in the shop window for a new Saturday Girl in the Chemist department. I inquired within and half an hour later I had a job.
The Chemist department had two Saturday girls. The main distinction between us was our role in stock-taking. As junior Saturday girl, I was in charge of food colouring and flavourings which did not sell fast (though nor did new orders arrive all that quickly), when I in due course became the senior Saturday girl, I was in charge of the stocks of plasters and bandages. Being the Chemist department we sold a mix of beauty products, health care products and actual medicines. Many of these were in the P-cabinet behind the counter since the Pharmacist had to oversee their sale (in practice this meant that theoretically he could observe us removing them from the P-cabinet). We also took in prescriptions and handed them over to the pharmicist for dispensation.
I'm not sure how much I learned from the experience, beyond the every day lessons of working 9-to-5, even when tired and that one's neighbours while behaving perfectly politely towards people who were middle-class and lived next door could actually be very rude to a shop assistant and not recognise that they were also one of the nice middle-class girls who lived next door. The subtleties of the department store hierarchies I suspect mostly passed me by. There were two staff common rooms, one for smokers and one for non-smokers. I used to take my lunch in the non-smoking common room, but generally didn't talk to people much preferring to read a book while drinking powdered tea from the machine. One assumes the smoking common-room is long since gone. The full-time shop assistants in the Chemists preferred the smoking common-room even though they didn't smoke. My memory of the few times I went there was that it was smokey (obv.) and dominated by the two men who ran the Cameras and Lenses section which was right by the Chemists - but where the Chemists was entirely female (apart from the Pharmacist himself) all of us in a uniform of white vaguely medical looking coats, Cameras was run by two old men in suits (were they really old? or merely middle-aged seeming old to my teenage eyes?).
Boswell's was not far from The New Theatre (later The Apollo). I never met anyone famous in Boswell's, but the full-time assistants kept autograph books under the counter so that they could collect famous autographs if the opportunity arose.
After I had been working in Boswell's a year or so, my younger sister ran into similar financial troubles to those that had caused me to take the job. Having always had, I suspect, rather more business acumen than I, her response was to draw up a budget and present it to our parents, who bowed to the reasonable demands and upped her pocket money (and also mine) in order to meet what were clearly our necessities. I nevertheless kept the job until about my sixth week in Oxford when I decided I had better things to do with my Saturdays.
I have fond, if somewhat patchy, memories of the place. It turns out I am distantly related to the Bentall family and I recently read Rowan Bentall's My Store of Memories about Bentalls in Kingston-on-Thames. Bentalls was an altogether grander proposition than Boswell's with elaborate events and displays and ever expansionist ambitions, but that feel of a family run business with a benevolent, if paternalistic, attitude to its staff felt very reminiscent.
Not many years later, I met the full-time assistant I had known best in Boots. She looked far more glamorous - though since she was working the make-up counter that may have been a requirement of the job - and explained she had moved because Boots treated its staff better. I was mildly put out - it felt strange to have left the somewhat quirky individual atmosphere of Boswell's for the chain homogeneity of Boots but Boswell's was never a particularly serious proposition for me. I never believed it was anything other than a way to top up my pocket money.
Bentalls also makes those of us of a certain age think instantly of Grace Brothers. Bentalls, after over a hundred years in family hands, become a part of the Fenwick chain in 2001. The age of these quirky, family-owned department stores, has ended. These were places that explicitly believed that their role was wider than simply delivering share-holder value but, as the shop assistant who moved to Boots would maybe attest, the very individuality didn't necessarily mean they served the interests of their staff better.
Time, as becomes ever more apparent as I get older, marches on. We may mourn what has passed (perhaps our youth as much as anything else) but I try not to assume this means that everything is getting worse.
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(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-28 09:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-28 11:45 pm (UTC)A north-eastern plea for Fenwick, who remain in the hands of the founding family, but they do have rather more stores than Boswell's.
Boswell's are the sort of store that Beales used to buy up, but given the conversion of what was once Robbs in Hexham into an outlet store as the only way Beales could make money from the site, I don't think they are in the mood for adventurous acquisitions at the moment.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-29 08:36 am (UTC)Well I'm not sure how much weight one should give to one opinion from one shop assistant in terms of overall strategy - but I think its worth noting that these smaller ostensibly more personal environments may not be perceived as preferable to larger ones by those who work there full time.
Fenwicks certainly feels much larger, and I don't get the impression that Bentalls has kept much of its individuality and has probably only kept the name because it has such strong brand associations locally.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-29 03:08 am (UTC)Maybe just because I'm getting old, too.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-29 08:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-30 02:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-29 09:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-30 10:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-29 01:14 pm (UTC)I never knew you worked at Boswell's (or if I knew, I had forgotten.) This was an interesting read. I think a few of these old independent department stores still survive here and there (both our nearest local towns still have something along those lines) but I suspect that they survive only as long as well-run, and as soon as the management dips a little they are gone never to return.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-30 10:56 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-28 10:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-29 08:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-29 01:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-30 11:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-29 01:45 pm (UTC)Sometimes small businesses can exploit you more, like it's charity work?, so I see why your former colleague moved. There's was one job I was glad not to get as I could tell they'd want me to come in on my days off and open up etc but I didn't live next door so I was obv a bad prospect.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-30 11:01 am (UTC)Unbelievable isn't it!