There’ll be plenty of shop talk when former employees of department store Beatties in Huddersfield hold a reunion.
The store opened at the then newly-built Kingsgate Centre in March, 2002. Now people who worked at Beatties before its takeover by House of Fraser nine years ago have been invited to meet up to relive old times.
Christina Waddington, who joined the staff on day one as an assistant manager in the homeware department, is one of the organisers of the get-together, along with Lolita Perry, who was also part of the original store team and still works at House of Fraser as a visual merchandiser.
The reunion will take place from 7.30pm on Saturday, September 6, at the Junction pub, Westbourne Road, Marsh.
Christina, who lives at Marsh, went on to hold posts in several other departments at Beatties, but decided to take redundancy when House of Fraser took over. She now has a young family and works part-time at the Tesco store in Marsh.
She said: “Quite a lot of the Beatties staff have kept in touch. We are expecting about 50 people to turn up for the reunion, although about 200 people have worked at Beatties since it opened.
“Beatties and the whole Kingsgate thing was a big deal for Huddersfield. You look at the past through rose-tinted glasses, but there must have been something special for so many of us to keep in touch. That says a lot.”
She said: “Beatties referred to all colleagues as ‘members’ as opposed to staff. The company had lots of old fashioned values, rules and regulations which made many of the members say it was similar to Grace Brothers from the TV programme ‘Are you Being Served?’!
“The original team of members were responsible for turning a huge ‘shell’ of a building into a fully fledged department store. It was a fantastic experience for all involved and really helped to build a sense of team spirit.
“I was recruited prior to the store opening as a management trainee and spent several months working in the Birkenhead store learning the company’s ways. There were several other management trainees recruited for Huddersfield who all trained in either Birkenhead or Wolverhampton stores and returned to open Huddersfield as either department managers or assistant department managers.”
Former Beatties members who organisers have been unable to contact can call Christina on 07799 031414 or visit the facebook events page - The Great British Beatties Reunion.
