The Joy of Cranleigh – Celebrating Cranleigh Shops – Large stores that were once here (and the King who Abdicated)
by Joy Horn // Main Photo – Walter Briggs store (courtesy of Michael Miller)
This month’s article is a nostalgic one. It could be called ‘The Demise of the Department Store’, which would be true but depressing. We need to remember that department stores have closed not just in Cranleigh, but nationally. A visit to Guildford will confirm this, with Debenham’s and House of Fraser closed. Even Oxford Street in London has seen Bourne & Hollingsworth, Marshall & Snelgrove and Debenham’s disappear.
Of course, the largest and the longest-lived of the department stores in Cranleigh was David Mann & Sons, here 1877-2021, a shop that was for many years almost synonymous with Cranleigh. There was an article on Mann’s in this publication in 2021, reprinted in Cranleigh Days to Remember (2022). Every Christmas we remember regretfully the orchestra of large performing model animals that appeared in the principal shop window and regaled us with seasonal music.
There used to be other large or department stores too. Around 1890-1920, there was a large store called Walter Briggs in London House, High Street (where numbers 104-110A are now). The pictures show the wide range of drapery, clothing and footwear that it sold.
Gammon’s was the next on this site and took over the premises of Walter Briggs. It is fondly remembered for its overhead payment system. This was known as a ‘Lamson Tube’, an American invention, introduced into Britain in 1899. Payment for goods was sent in a container that whizzed along a kind of overhead railway from the shop assistant to the cashier. She would send back a receipt with any change due – or, if was only a penny, she might send a packet of pins instead. Gammon’s had branches in Woking, Cobham and Guildford, and was still advertising in the Cranleigh Guide of 1956.
The Guildford Industrial Co-operative Society also had a department store in the High Street, from around 1915. This was at first in North Lodge, at the corner with Knowle Lane, then in a new building on the former Warren’s (builders) site, from the late 1950s.
Tyler’s: Henry Rowland’s grocery store (and agency for W B Gilbey’s wines) existed near the Fountain from the 1890s. It was built partly
in and partly in front of Ivy Hall Farm. By 1922 it had become Tyler’s, an exceedingly smart grocer’s shop.
Apart from Tyler’s magnificent vehicles with their uniformed drivers, the significant feature of the photo from the mid-1930s is the group of three feathers proudly displayed above the awning. This indicates that Tyler’s were suppliers to none other than Edward, Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII, the king who abdicated). This came about while the prince was renting Summerfold House (on Pitch Hill) from its owner, the Duke of Sutherland, between 1927 and 1936, and bought his provisions, and especially his wines and spirits, from Tyler’s.
Tyler’s was still advertising in 1981, but despite giving itself the grandiose title of ‘Tyler’s of Cranleigh’, next year its wine department had become Victoria Wine, and soon afterwards the rest of the store became individual shops.
One Forty: This also had an article to itself in January 2025. It was known as Jack Graham’s from 1959, then was transformed around 2005 into One Forty. It outlived David Mann & Sons, but closed in 2024, the last of Cranleigh’s big stores.
Now the supermarkets reign supreme.
The Cranleigh History Society meets on the second Thursday of each month at 8pm in the Band Room. The next meeting is on Thursday April 10th, when Moira MacQuaid will speak on ‘William Heath Robinson’.
CORRECTION: in the article on the Shoe Shop in the March issue, the delivery boy’s weekly wages in the 1910s should have been given as 2s 7d, rather than £2 7s.
