Have you tried Cape's?

Most of us remember the closing down of dear old Woolies in 2008 with misty eyes. And some of us may also remember its moving out of its large store at 52-53 Cornmarket Street in 1983.

But the arrival of Woolworth’s on the Oxford shopping scene in the first place was itself something of a revolution.

It represented a challenge to those long-established emporiums of old-fashioned decorum — department stores including such famous names as Cape’s, Webbers, and Elliston and Cavell.

Stepping into one of these was like entering a sort of dream world in which, as in the TV sitcom Are You Being Served?, smartly dressed people in lifts shouted out archaic words like ‘drapery, haberdashery, millinery, hosiery and ladies’ powder room’.

At Elliston and Cavell I am reliably informed the powder room came complete with basins in the shape of pink marble swans, gold taps, and a lady dressed in black — who was there to make sure the towels were fresh, and so forth.

Elliston’s, as Elliston and Cavell was usually called, occupied the site of the present-day Debenhams on Magdalen Street — which still incorporates much of its original facade.

It was founded there in 1823 by Jesse Elliston — who went into partnership with James Cavell in 1835. Their firm prospered and became the largest department store in Oxford.

It was taken over by Debenham's in 1953, but continued to trade under its old name for another 20 years. Whatever happened, I wonder, to its sweeping staircase with its wide shallow steps and its bakerlite mural depicting deer in a sort of forest glade?

It belonged to another world, as did the knickerbocker glories served by waitresses in white pinnies who worked in the café.

These stores were for decades more than mere businesses; they were an entire way of life for generations of staff — many of whom not only worked in them, but lived in them too. Until the late 1930s for instance, staff at Cape’s — who were looked after by a housekeeper and maids — needed written permission to sleep out.

Cape’s stood in the old St Ebbe’s until it was demolished in 1971 as part of a comprehensive redevelopment scheme. Its upper floors contained bedrooms for trained married staff and there were also day rooms and a dining room.

The advice ‘try Cape’s’ was often heard in Oxford, as the store was well-known for selling almost everything you might need. Indeed its sales (and ingenious advertisements for them) were particularly famous.

And If you did buy something, you were rewarded by seeing your money placed in a pneumatic copper tube that whooshed it away to the counting house.

Cape’s was founded in about 1877 by someone called Faithful Cape. In 1893 it was bought by Henry Lewis and it remained in that family's ownership until it was pulled down. Then everything was destroyed or dispersed except for one of its mahogany counters, a bentwood chair, and a cabinet with brass-handled drawers, which were given to the Museum of Oxford.

Talking to The Oxford Times in 2008, Hilda Bulpitt recalled starting work, aged 15, at another of these paternalistic institutions — Webbers in Oxford High Street.

She started work there in 1928 and, after a three-year training period during which she earned two shillings and sixpence a week, achieved her ambition of becoming a shop assistant in the millinery department.

She said: “Millinery is fascinating. I wouldn't have worked anywhere else.”

At first Hilda was only allowed to sell cheaper hats at four shillings and eleven pence. By the time she became what was known as ‘First Sales’ her salary went up to £5 a week — and there it stayed, even in the 1940s when some women were willing to spend £30 or even £40 on a hat.

The money arrangements at Webbers were less spectacular than Cape’s overhead tube. Here it travelled on a sort of cash railway down to the cellar where cashiers took it out and sent back the change. But in many department stores, customers never bothered with mere money. They simply said: “Put it on my account” as they were bowed out and their purchases were handed to an underling to pack in tissue paper and an elegant box.

As for Woolworth’s, with its giant pick ‘n’ mix sweet counter, its mezzanine cafeteria, and its tea at six old pence a quarter pound, it made its first appearance in Oxford way back in 1922. In that year it bought up and demolished the old Roebuck Hotel, an 18th century coaching inn in Cornmarket. Not until 1957 did it move across the street to the premises it occupied until 1983, when its site was remodelled to make way for the Clarendon Centre.

And when Woolworth’s moved it repeated its hotel-destroying caper — it bought up and then pulled down the old Clarendon Hotel after winning one of Oxford’s most bitter planning battles ever in order to obtain permission to do so.