Opening of Denton Burn Co-op

Self-service is still a novelty to the curious crowd at the opening of a re-vamped Co-operative store in Newcastle.

There’s still a sense of wonder for the 60s suburban Denton Burn crowd ogling shelves a-plenty at the opening of a self-service store for the Co-operative Wholesale Society in Newcastle. No doubt the film cameras added to the excitement, but this was after all a post-war British shopping revolution in the making.

The Co-op was in the vanguard of the self-service and supermarket trend in Britain (actually the brainchild of Clarence Saunders, founder of the American Piggly Wiggly grocery chain). The Newcastle Society lagged behind London branches: Romford got one in 1942 as a response to wartime staff shortages. But it was one of the first traders in Newcastle to convert stores into self-service. The re-fit of this grand 1930s West Road shop in Denton Burn was announced at a members meeting in 1955. Once rationing ended in 1954 self-service supermarkets slowly caught on, but for a while ‘the hostess’ guided customers around these bewildering new environments and cajoled them into using wire baskets.