Remembering Sheffield's High Street of the 1970s including Atkinsons, Redgates and Walsh’s

The new business, which is due to be unveiled next month, is set to remind people of an experience “before the impersonal world of barcode scanners and corporate shopping malls”.

Longlosthighstreet.com decided to focus on Sheffield because, as well as celebrating its past, it wants to help become an inspiration and encourage future investment into “bricks and mortar stores with soul”.

In the early seventies, Sheffield city centre was dominated by sprawling independent department stores that had been household names for decades.

Walsh’s, Cockaynes, Redgates, Robert Brothers and others were individual to Sheffield and offered a personal touch rarely seen by the high street of the 21st century with the same corporate brands popping in every town or city.

Only Atkinsons remain of the stores that once dominated the skyline – stores that had been flattened in the Blitz of 1940 but had been re-born with new buildings in the early 1960s.

It was the recession of the 1980s that became the bodyblow to many of the stores. But longlosthighstreet.com is all about celebrating and preserving the memory.

Sheffield’s retail experience of the 1970s has arguably more of a legacy than many of the other UK towns and cities which were also booming at an affluent time for the country.

‘City On The Move’ – the film made about Sheffield in the era which ended up fronting The Full Monty 25 years later – has a whole section on retail.

The 1971 ‘City On The Move’ exhibition – which retail was a key part of – wasn’t even launched in Sheffield – the powers that be hired out London’s Royal Exchange and did it there.

Opened by the then Lord Mayor of London, Sir Peter Studd, it was designed to bring the capital’s public up to date with Sheffield.

But the Sheffield roadshow didn’t stop in London, far from it. They decided that was only the start!

A council-sponsored 500-metre stand went to Gothenburg in Sweden for the International Swedish Trade Fair from May 5-14, 1972.

www.longlosthighstreet.com is set to be unveiled in mid-April.

*Content submitted by Neil Anderson.