WHEN Marks & Spencer Ltd opened a Keighley ‘super store’ in Low Street in 1935, it replaced an 18th-century Fleece Hotel, a former starting point for coaches to Leeds, Bradford and Halifax, one of whose interior doors had boasted at different times no less than eight keyholes!
Keighley could be said thereby to have lost one of its “most picturesque survivals”, but this view of Marks & Spencer’s stores, when new, shows that we had also gained a stylish ‘art deco’ building, with original features reminiscent of the ground-breaking Midland Hotel at Morecambe. Later decades have not been so kind.
The shop partially seen on the right was The Modern Circulating Library, one of several between-the-wars local private enterprises lending fiction books for twopence a week. Choice was mainly limited to romances, thrillers and Westerns.
All three photographs have been supplied by Kevin Seaton, of Bradford Road, Riddlesden.
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