Mission to honour city's first department store

Staff and shoppers with stories of a city's first department store are being asked to share them for a new exhibition.

Work is under way to transform Gloucester's former Debenhams into a university campus. To honour the building's legacy, the University of Gloucestershire is collecting photographs and memories, which it will share at an event in autumn.

The shop started in 1889 as a drapery store, called the Bon Marché, before expanding into a large department store, when it homed everything from clothes to a small zoo.

Former manager John Forward said: "It was a huge community. You had plumbers, carpenters, you had a nurse in the store, you had a doctor, we even had a store chaplain."

People will be able to view the Memories of Debenhams collection at an exhibition on 13 September.

Clair Greenaway, who is leading the project, said: "I'd like to invite people to share their memories and stories, to get in touch with us and perhaps share a photo or a little fragment of something that means something important to them."

"I understand how important this building is to the people of Gloucester and city campus is a new incarnation for the building, but it's a moment to reflect on an amazing history and to put that in the context of where we're going next."

As part of the project, history graduates from the university are sifting through the collections at Gloucestershire Archives looking at ledgers, notebooks, blueprints and hundreds of photographs.

The site became a huge destination for the city after World War Two, when bosses aimed to sell everything under one roof. It was later sold to Debenhams in 1971 before closing in 2021.

A university spokesperson said: "Minute books show how the employees and management were committed to the idea that the building should serve as more than just a department store.

"It was also a communal space that hosted events, participated in parades, and did so by engaging the entire staff."

Layla Harrison, one of the student researchers, found minutes of a meeting from 1949 where management were discussing how much they could ask staff to contribute towards the city's new war memorial.

"I think it shows how involved they wanted to be with stuff going on in the city and how important [the contribution] was to the war memorial which is obviously still something that's so important now," she said.

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