Jane Caldow – Packs on Union Street

Simon: And that was how many floors? [at Packs on Union Street]

Jane: Well, you had the Basement Floor, I’ve got my little notes I wrote down, which was Display and also where the Father Christmas Grotto used to be, and when they were converting it into flats, you could … the side door, the back door we used to use is still the door to the flats at the back as you go down Church Lane. There’s a little door on the right and that was the back door to the main building and you went in and there was a stone staircase going downstairs. And it was still, some of it was still painted in the sort of mock stone look where the Display people had done it for the Father Christmas Grotto. He was in a Castle that year and the queues were incredible.

I have got a photo actually of Father Christmas arriving which I’ve got in the box there. And so, you went downstairs and Display was certainly downstairs there, and there was several rooms. Because one year, I was about 15, 16 I joined the Display Department for the summer. I did a summer job. And then you went through and they did still have the bars on the window and the Ground Floor was the Children’s Floor and I remember there was … and it was a very well stocked Children’s Department because they did school uniform for some of the schools. I don’t know if they did the school uniform for the Convent where I went.

Simon: I had heard that there were Convent girls sometimes went in for school uniforms.

Jane: Yes, so they would have done the school uniform I’m sure for the Convent and other sort of schools with school uniform. And that was the Children’s Department and you went in where the Cancer Shop is. If you look at their doors, you’ve still got the nice brass door handles on, and when you went in that door, you went up three steps onto the Ground Floor but they were on sort of … they’re on one level now, and if you went into their Basements of course that would still have been all the Basement of what was Packs.

The Basement in the Save the Children Shop that’s been empty for now since the pandemic hasn’t it? You went down into the Basement there that again would have been the Basement for Packs. It was all a very large area and you went up onto the Ground Floor which was the Children’s Department and that was all as far as I recall Children’s Department on that Ground Floor. And there was a big staircase.