I loved the smell in GHL's...it had a certain aroma about it.
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As you walked down Church Street, towards Paradise Street, Hendersons was on the right hand side, between Paradise Street and the alley way called Williamson Street.
I started work there in 1974/5 when I was about 18 years old. Some of the staff who I worked with had been there when the fire happened. It was quite eerie listening to them describe it, and then a few minutes later I would go back in to the building, up to one of the upper floors and carry on working with those visions in my mind.
Hendersons was always catering for the top end of the market in those days, even when I was there, and for the first year or so, of my time there, we even had a doorman who would open the car doors for customers and then usher them into the ground floor of the store and then usher them out, hold their car doors open and say goodbye when they left.
It was owned by the House of Fraser and was later renamed Binns.
I loved working there :-)
I remember that smell in Coopers, as an apprentice in the mid-sixties the foreman used to send me there once a week for some rum barbas (not sure of the correct spelling). I remember the day I had to go back without, and tell him they'd stopped doing them. He was not happy. There were no Turkish kebab places then so I don't think anywhere else did them, I'd never heard of them before that anyway.
When I knew I was going to leave Liverpool but had no date, I quit my job to give them time to replace me (manager/buyer of a department at shop in Bold St.) I have to remember how young I was when I see 21 year old fashion buyers now and say 'they are bloody KIDS'!!
Anyway, I left my job and went to work the last few months at George Henry Lee. Loved it, bought clothes, make up accessories. I remember buying a purple mohair poncho with matching floppy hat, so cool with a mini and long boots! The make up girls did my make up when I was going anywhere special. They wanted to as they said they could use me as a model for their work to show other customers!!
My only sadness was that I walked through coats and hats that my Grandmother would have loved and I then was in a position to buy them for her. She died when I was 14 and I kept looking at coats thinking 'I would buy her that one' I missed her so much.