Debenhams

Times have been hard for Debenhams, not least for the one on The Moor which is beginning to look extremely shabby alongside modern new developments nearby.

However, it hasn’t always been this way.

This shop was once considered to be a flagship store, until eclipsed by a brand new Debenhams at Meadowhall in 1990.

It seems like the store has been here forever – fifty-four years to be precise. For a new generation, this branch wasn’t always called Debenhams, and can trace its origins to the other side of the Pennines.

In 1865, William Paulden, aged 24, opened a carpet and soft furnishings store in Stretford Road, Manchester. He was the son of a Cheshire farmer, educated at Knutsford Grammar School, and died at Green Hall, Wilmslow, Cheshire, in 1930.

The business expanded to become a department store and in 1928 was taken over by the Drapery Trust, a conglomerate of retailers, owned by London-based Debenhams.

The store continued to trade as Pauldens and added a second store at Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, in 1946. A third store opened in Sheffield in 1965, a modern multi-level steel frame and concrete structure, bordering The Moor and Charter Row.

It traded as Pauldens of Sheffield, but in 1973, all the Drapery Trust businesses were either closed or rebranded as Debenhams, including the Sheffield store.

We now wait to see what will happen to this landmark as a result of the company’s turbulent restructuring.