This exhibition explores the story of M&S in Leeds. From our very first market stall in the 1880s, through rapid expansion in the early twentieth century, to the current location of one of the largest M&S stores in the country. We’ll take a look at how M&S has evolved and grown in its home city, using images from our archive collection.
Our founder Michael Marks, newly arrived in the UK from Eastern Europe, came to Leeds in the early 1880s to look for work. He had heard there was demand for unskilled tailors in Leeds, including at a firm called Barran’s.
Leeds was then a growing industrial town with a population of about 310,000 people, including a Jewish community of about 6,500 people.
Michael arrived in Leeds with little money and speaking only a few words of English.
Michael approached two men standing outside a warehouse on Kirkgate in Leeds and, unable to speak much English, tried to get directions by saying the single word ‘Barran’s’.
By luck, one of the men was warehouse manager Charles Backhouse, who could speak a little Yiddish and was able to establish that Michael was hoping to find work at Barran’s tailoring factory.
By even greater luck, the second man was Charles Backhouse’s employer, Isaac Dewhirst. Dewhirst had established his haberdashery and drapery business in 1880, based in what is now known as the Dewhirst Building at 33 Kirkgate.
Dewhirst took Michael into his warehouse and offered to lend him five pounds, equivalent to about £520 at today’s values. Michael used the money to buy goods from the Dewhirst warehouse, creating his first batch of stock to sell as a pedlar.
From 1882 to 1884, ‘Michael the Pedlar’, as he became known to his customers, tramped from house to house or stood on the street corners of towns and villages around Leeds and beyond.
With the small profit he set aside in savings each time he sold a basket of goods, Michael opened the first Marks’ Penny Bazaar in 1884 in the outdoor section of Leeds Kirkgate Market.
Michael organised his goods according to price, with one section costing a penny and marked with the slogan ‘Don’t ask the Price, It’s a Penny’. This was so popular that he quickly stopped selling anything that cost more than a penny. The goods he sold included good quality, small items like nails, screws, pins, soap, wooden spoons, wool, and small toys.
Unlike other retailers at the time, Michael allowed customers to see and handle goods before deciding to buy. The stall was very successful, and Michael was soon visiting different markets held on different days in other nearby towns. By 1886 he was able to afford the higher rent for an indoor pitch and moved into the permanent covered market at Kirkgate.
Michael only lived in Leeds for six years, from 1884 to 1890, but during this time, he not only founded a successful business, but also married and started his family.
He married his wife Hannah at the Belgrave Street Synagogue in Leeds in 1886. Having initially lived in rented rooms, in 1888 Michael and Hannah moved to a small terraced house at 50 Trafalgar Street in the Leylands district of Leeds, where a large proportion of the city’s Jewish community was centred.
Shortly after moving to Trafalgar Street, Michael and Hannah’s son Simon was born at home.
The Marks’ Penny Bazaar continued to expand, and by the 1890s Michael was looking for a business partner.
He first approached Isaac Dewhirst, but he was already very busy with his own business. Dewhirst therefore recommended one of his cashiers, Thomas Spencer, who was from Skipton in North Yorkshire.
In 1894 Tom Spencer invested his life savings in the partnership, and Marks & Spencer was born.
In 1904 M&S rented eight shop units in the newly opened Cross Arcade – this became the first M&S Penny Bazaar store in Leeds. Each of the shop units contained a different department; hardware, china ornaments, tinware, toys, fancy goods, stationery, crockery and haberdashery.
On opening day, Michael’s aim was for the shop to stay open until they’d taken £100 in sales. Takings had reached £75 by lunchtime, then hit the £100 target by 4pm. By the time the store closed at 8pm, takings totalled £175.
The store opened Monday-Friday until 8pm, and until 10pm on Saturdays. Full-time pay was 7s 6d a week, a good wage at the time.
The staff of the Cross Arcade M&S Penny Bazaar were photographed in about 1906. The manager was Mr Ratner (centre back). Fifth from right on the front row is Mrs Gertie Swidenbank (nee Nicholson) who worked in the tinware section. Gertie is about 16 in this picture.
Gertie remembered tea being provided at lunchtime; the sales assistants took turns going up to the staff room 15 minutes early to boil the kettle and prepare the tea. They would bring their own food for lunch and had two cookers to warm it up.
The Cross Arcade Penny Bazaar closed in 1910.
By 1907, there were more than 60 M&S Penny Bazaars around the UK. In 1909, a new Penny Bazaar store opened at 76 Briggate; it was rebuilt in 1925, extended the following year and extended again eight years later.
Simon Marks (Michael’s son, who became M&S Chairman in 1916) travelled to America to find out more about how successful department stores were being managed in the United States. He came back with lots of new ideas and set about making M&S stores larger, lighter and brighter, with a wider range of goods displayed in elaborate arrangements.
The 1920s and 1930s were a time of great expansion for the business, as Simon transformed M&S from a chain of small Penny Bazaar shops to large department stores. These new ‘superstores’ were a whole new concept in shopping. Some of the household goods were cut out and replaced by clothing and foods, a gradual changeover which continued through the 1930s. Prices now ranged from a penny up to five shillings and clothing and food became the largest departments.
On 15 March 1951,47-49 Briggate opened as a new M&S superstore.
The plot of land had been purchased by M&S in 1939, with the Rialto cinema at 46 Briggate being demolished to make way for the new store. But at the start of the Second World War, the new building was taken over by the Ministry of Works for storage, and the sub-basement was used as an air-raid shelter, so the store development programme was delayed.
Finally, in 1951 the store was ready to open – the older store at 76 Briggate closed and a couple of weeks later the new, larger store opened.
Most new M&S stores at this time had a similar appearance. They were designed by architect Robert Lutyens; he created a design that was modern and distinctive and could also be easily adapted to fit stores of different sizes.
The M&S Pantheon store frontage on Oxford Street is strikingly similar to the Leeds store.
In 1935, the Leeds store was one of the very first M&S stores to open a Café Bar. With the start of the Second World War in 1939, the Café Bars became even more popular because customers could pay for a meal without using their ration coupons. After the war, there was less demand for in-store catering and the Leeds Café Bar, which had been one of the longest running in the country, closed in 1961. Leeds was at the forefront again when a Coffee Bar was reintroduced in 1997.
“One of my childhood memories of Marks & Spencer was a visit to their Cafeteria in the basement of their store in Briggate, Leeds. I remember the assistants serving from behind a counter with lots of glass display cabinets all decorated.” Margaret Gibbins, 61, Leeds.
In 1984, M&S’s centenary celebrations were commemorated with a specially designed clock at Kirkgate Market, where our business had begun. Mounted on a cast iron pillar, the clock stands under the central dome in the 1904 hall, 200 yards from where Michael Marks set up his first market stall.
In July 1988, M&S celebrated the centenary of Simon Marks’ birth – a clock was unveiled on the front of the Briggate store as a tribute.
On 12 October 1989 a new satellite store opened at 129-132 Briggate, on the corner of Kirkgate. Known as the Kirkgate store and selling mainly menswear, it closed in September 1994.
In 2013 the Briggate store was extended again, this time into the newly opened Trinity shopping centre. A second café was also added and in March 2013 the M&S Heritage Stall at Kirkgate Market was opened. Visitors to the stall can learn about the remarkable story of M&S while enjoying a coffee and picking up gifts and souvenirs.
On 25 May 2023, a new flagship M&S store opened at the White Rose Shopping Centre, just outside Leeds city centre. At the time it was the largest M&S store in the UK, offering a fresh market-style Foodhall with a disco-ball pizza oven, a 164-seat M&S Café and new features like the option for customers to pay straight away in the store fitting rooms.
Percy Pig welcomed shoppers as M&S colleagues handed out 200 golden tickets to the first customers. Every golden ticket holder was guaranteed a win – whether it was a free bag of Percy Pigs or freshly baked cookies from the in-store bakery, and to mark the occasion one lucky customer won a £200 M&S voucher.
Store Manager Justine Brook, who has worked at M&S for over 30 years, said:
“M&S has been part of the local community ever since we opened our very first stall in Kirkgate Market in 1884, so it’s really exciting to be making this investment in the future of M&S in Leeds and I can’t wait for our customers to explore all the new features that the store has to offer. We’re proud to introduce over 230 new recruits to M&S Leeds White Rose, who can’t wait to meet everyone… we really do have the best of M&S here for everyone to enjoy!”
Visit our Digital Archive to explore Leeds store images Leeds | M&S Heritage
You can use our M&S Heritage Trail to discover key locations in Leeds M&S Heritage Trail – M&S Archive
Find out more about Michael Marks Meet Michael Marks: Introducing the man who founded M&S – M&S Archive
