Farewell to Wilko

Wilko has gone. Its last day of trading anywhere in the country was yesterday. I made a point of driving to Horsham, where one of the remaining shops still open could be visited. Not to buy anything, of course, although it did cross my mind to purchase a souvenir article, if there was something left that I wanted. No, my purpose was to take pictures as a salute to the passing of yet another High Street stalwart that had seemed to be a permanent fixture.

After the first news broke back in early August that Wilko was in dire trouble, I'd rushed over to Burgess Hill for a couple of shots:

But the store seemed to be trading normally. It had a great central position in the middle of Burgess Hill shopping centre, with W H Smith, Boots and Waitrose very close by, and Greggs and Costa adjacent. The impression was that each of these stores drew in a variety of local people who would find it very convenient indeed to pop into Wilko. At one time the shopping centre included Iceland and Lidl, but they had both relocated to new premises - not that they had ever been direct competition. Nor was there a Poundland or B&M or Range lurking around the corner, ready to take custom away. 

So back in August you would have discounted the news that Wilko's business had become unviable. Maybe, as some town-centre stores had already done - Marks & Spencer and John Lewis being prominent big-name examples - Wilko would rescue itself by closing its more marginally-profitable shops, leaving the best (Burgess Hill being an example) open and serving the locality as they had done for a generation past.

But it was not to be. I was in Cornwall in mid-September, and found the Wilko in Truro, Cornwall's busiest and best shopping town, on the verge of shutting with only two trading days left. It started to hit me that Wilko really was going to vanish.

There wasn't much left on the shelves now. But I was struck how welcoming the store still seemed. It was clean and tidy and brightly lit, not sombre and half-derelict. Quite a contrast from - say - the closing of Debenhams in Taunton back in April 2021, when empty shelves and display furniture were untidily crammed together and roped off, and the restaurant, where I had once had a pleasant lunch, looking forlorn. It was depressing.

The only part of Debenhams still partying was the space where naked dummies had been stashed. They were having one final tipsy blast before finding new careers.

Back to Wilko's better-managed and more cheerful swansong. The store had been a presence in most towns of any size, catering for those looking for nice household goods at very reasonable prices. So there was certainly one in Canterbury in Kent, where I had an opportunity of taking end-of-an-era pictures only last week. This visit was a touch more poignant, as there was a board on which customers had been able to write farewell messages and remarks. Wilko had been a grassroots local institution, with a definite ethos. I for one felt that its demise would hit many people much harder than losing (say) an M&S. 

Canterbury was very much a student city. I could well imagine that the local Wilko was a welcome if not essential one-stop source of inexpensive domestic essentials for the university population. But also for anyone struggling on a low income.

And so to Horsham yesterday, and the final death-throe of a once-mighty nationwide chain of stores. I remember when the Horsham Wilko was opened. Like many, it was on two levels, but it was built around a feature lift, as well as having escalators and stairs. If it had a problem, it was that it was situated at one end of the sprawling Swan Walk shopping centre, and not at its hub. But a popular store, nevertheless.

Gosh, Pick & Mix. Horribly reminiscent of long-gone Woolworths! And now it was Wilko's turn.

Once again, everything left well-lit and clean, as if prepared for restocking. It was one of the reasons why a cheerful air prevailed, instead of despair and gloom. (Although no doubt the staff were apprehensive for their future, and inwardly sad and perplexed that Wilko had stumbled and fallen)

Wilko had proper modern self-service checkouts, as well as traditional ones. It was hard to see exactly why failure had come, considering that the stores were airy and attractive places, with goods you'd want to buy. I felt it was such a shame.

I thought of many past visits to Wilko stores for one reason or another, in towns as dissimilar as Port Talbot and Colchester. M--- had liked Wilko (or Wilkinson, as it was then) and I wondered how she felt about all this. I was thoughtful as I took my pictures. Nobody stopped me, by the way. Perhaps they felt it was fitting that someone made a record of what a Wilko store had looked like, even one with near-empty shelves. 

Leaving through the upper-level entrance, there were people with their phones out, taking souvenir selfies in a celebratory way. So I didn't look odd, getting my own shots, smiling as I did so - although generally speaking it does look strange when anyone includes a shop in their picture. (Perhaps people think commercial premises are 'un-photographic' and anyone taking pictures must have a dark motive)

I need to confess that I never bought much from Wilko. My purchases over the years were confined to kitchen items, plastic storage boxes, extension cables and odd things like ant-killer. I suppose I went into the Burgess Hill Wilko once every two months for something. Certainly not daily, or even weekly. If there had been a lot of people like me, then Wilko would never have generated much turnover! I wasn't the typical customer. 

Wilko had been around long enough to become part of the ordinary scene, and perhaps for that reason taken for granted. Rather like Woolworths had been. It was always a bright and pleasant place to shop, and there was never any sense that it was cheap and downmarket, as many cut-price shops can be. It offered value for money, not shoddiness. The choice was adequate, the quality was fine, and the prices were always very competitive. Wilko had a clear identity, was handy, and it stocked a wide range of things. But it wasn't a loud and aggressive retailer. And on today's High Street, extra effort is needed. You have to keep reinventing, or at least re-branding, yourself, regularly refreshing your public face. Newer and brasher retailers focussed solely on low prices, rather than serving a community, had no problem taking trade away. 

None of this explains why nowadays I seem so interested in photographing the last days of this or that well-known shop. I didn't do it much before 2000, even though a long list of shops had bit the dust by then. By 2010, with online shopping taking off, even more had died, and yet I hadn't started shooting the passing of well-known stores as I do now. 

In 2023 the average large town centre can boast only a Marks & Spencer as its anchor store - if lucky. Most chains of department stores have shut. Worthing, for instance, once had a Debenhams and a Beales: both gone. Bournemouth now has no department store - I don't rate the revived Bobby's (the original Bobby's became Debenhams, which died roughly when Beales did) as a proper department store. Soon only John Lewis will be left, but only in locations here and there. 

Smaller towns are often more fortunate than cities, supporting a well-loved locally-owned department store such as Goulds in Dorchester, Fields in Sidmouth, Banbury's in Barnstaple, and Wroes in Bude. (Is this solely a West Country thing?) But the impact of business rates and other costs could do for them too. I would be very sad at that. Wroes and Fields especially.

I think I can look back to different High Streets, full of shops like the British Home Stores, C&A, Littlewoods, Dolcis, Country Casuals and Timothy Whites. The shake-out has been long and relentless, and is not over yet. I am not stuck in the past, but having experienced the past I can take a longer view than many. Are town centres going to die? Yes. It's no good supposing that a host of coffee shops, pizza outlets, gyms and hairdressers will draw people in like a wide range of decent retail shops used to do. In particular, difficult and outrageously expensive parking will kill off trade - I'm looking at you, Brighton.