Memories of Leak & Thorp - and 6 fantastic old photos

A FEW weeks ago, we carried in Yesterday Once More a piece appealing for memories of Coney Street. The feature mentioned Leak & Thorp, the well-known York department store.

That piece prompted Ian Collinson to get in touch. He was, he explained, the last surviving member of the Collinson family which held a controlling stake in the shop until it was taken over in the 1980s.

Mr Collinson himself worked at the firm, as company secretary and director, for almost 20 years.

Since it closed, he has become the custodian of some wonderful albums documenting the history of the store which were put together by his uncle Norman Collinson.

We bring you a selection of the old photographs from that album in Yesterday Once More this week.

Leak & Thorp was a department store, Mr Collinson says, so it stocked everything from ladies’ fashions to menswear, furniture and haberdashery. It regularly advertised itself as ‘York’s premier store’ – though WP Brown in Davygate and Rowntree’s fashion store further along Coney Street might have had something to say about that.

Leak & Thorp – sometimes referred to as the ‘Selfridges of York’ according to a history of the firm – began life on March 11, 1848, when William Leak opened premises at 35 Parliament Street. He began with just one or two assistants, and turnover at first was not large, according to company ledgers. Before long, Mr Leak was joined in the business by Mr HB Thorp, and the business took on the name by which it was to become so familiar to generations of York people.

In 1869, the shop moved to Coney Street, to a new building put up on the site of The George, which had at one time, apparently, been one of the best-known hostelries of the north.

In 1908, William Collinson – Ian Collinson's grandfather – joined the business, becoming secretary in 1922 and joining the board of directors a year later. He went on to become chairman.

The store survived the First World War, and later the Depression. But then, in 1933, it suffered a cruel blow. A devastating fire broke out which totally destroyed the shop. “All that was left of the former imposing four-storey building – a commercial pride of Coney Street – was a blackened framework and piles of smoking rubble,” says a history of the store. “Many people thought that the company would never recover.”

But it did. There was a general feeling of “we cannot let this be the end of an era”, Mr Collinson said. But after re-opening, the business was so strapped for cash it had little to invest in stock. “They had to spread the merchandise out to make the store look as though it was full.”

Though it was a general department store, one of the things Leak & Thorp prided itself on was its ladies fashions, Mr Collinson said. One photograph in his album shows a particularly racy (for the 1950s) photograph of young women modelling lingerie.

There are also photographs of a stunning window display from 1948, which formed part of an exhibition to celebrate the firm’s centenary.

The exhibition used costumes borrowed from the Castle Museum.

Press reader Margaret Tansey remembers it well. She was a young costume assistant at the museum at the time and she helped Leak & Thorp’s chief window dresser prepare the exhibition.

It meant giving up a whole weekend of her time, she said. “But I thoroughly enjoyed it. When you used to go into the store there was always a man in charge of the lifts, but that weekend we were able to go up and down in the lifts ourselves!”

What Mr Collinson chiefly remembers from his 20 years with the business was the camaraderie.

The firm employed about 140 people in his day and there was a certain formality on the shop floor.

It really was like Are You Being Served?, he said. “We all used to call ourselves Mr Ian or Mr Allen.”

But there was a sense almost of family, too. Many of the young shop assistants, most of them women, could have got better-paid jobs elsewhere. “But they didn’'t want to, he said.”

He recalls staff parties at the Rialto, and on one occasion at least, a staff outing, in which buses drew up outside the store.

He also recalls one particular van driver who was so attached to his company van he never wanted to go on holiday because he was worried someone else would drive his van and damage it.

“Before us he had worked for a farmer/market gardener, and looked after a horse and cart,” Mr Collinson said. “If the horse was ever ill or in bad shape, he would stay with it overnight to see it through.”

Now that's what you call devotion.

stunning window display from 1948, which formed part of an exhibition to celebrate the firm’s centenary.

The exhibition used costumes borrowed from the Castle Museum.

Press reader Margaret Tansey remembers it well. She was a young costume assistant at the museum at the time and she helped Leak & Thorp’s chief window dresser prepare the exhibition.

It meant giving up a whole weekend of her time, she said. “But I thoroughly enjoyed it. When you used to go into the store there was always a man in charge of the lifts, but that weekend we were able to go up and down in the lifts ourselves!”

What Mr Collinson chiefly remembers from his 20 years with the business was the camaraderie.

The firm employed about 140 people in his day and there was a certain formality on the shop floor.

It really was like Are You Being Served?, he said. “We all used to call ourselves Mr Ian or Mr Allen.”

But there was a sense almost of family, too. Many of the young shop assistants, most of them women, could have got better-paid jobs elsewhere. “But they didn’'t want to, he said.”

He recalls staff parties at the Rialto, and on one occasion at least, a staff outing, in which buses drew up outside the store.

He also recalls one particular van driver who was so attached to his company van he never wanted to go on holiday because he was worried someone else would drive his van and damage it.

“Before us he had worked for a farmer/market gardener, and looked after a horse and cart,” Mr Collinson said. “If the horse was ever ill or in bad shape, he would stay with it overnight to see it through.”

Now that's what you call devotion.