71 High Street, Sutton, Surrey SM1 1DT
After Woolworths closed at 148/150 High Street, they moved down the road to 71 High Street.
71 High Street was quite a historical building in Sutton. It was where Sutton’s first department store was located, called Shinner’s Department store, built in 1935.
Source: K Park Prints and Collectables
Source: Old UK Photos
In 1979 Shinner’s was taken over by Allders, and they stayed in this building until 1991 when they moved into the new St Nicholas Shopping Centre (and then became Debenhams). Woolworths moved here in 1994, with a new store number 1192. It looks as though the building was rebuilt from the new-looking red brickwork, so perhaps this is why there was a 3-year gap. Woolworths traded here for 14 years until it closed in early January 2009.
Source: Featherstone, P.
Waterstones moved in, and it was the first Waterstones to trial their Cafe W concept. Meanwhile, the former Sutton Woolworths store manager teamed up with another store manager to open the toy shop Toy Barnhaus, which is still successfully trading today with 7 branches.
Source: Sutton Film Office
Woolies Buildings - Then and Now 
I grew up in nearby Epsom and got to know Sutton quite well, especially as it had a number of shops that Epsom lacked. The opening of the St Nicholas Centre and the demolition of the old Allders building was my first experience of a high street being radically transformed.
Woolworth’s was actually at the other end of the building from Waterstones (which was previously Dillons) – the two end units have the same distinctive corner design and Sutton High Street is incredibly hilly so the photos look similar. The unit was later taken over by QS and is now Peacock.
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Oh yes I see the windows of Waterstones are slightly different! So Peacocks is the old Woolworth, thank you for that information, I will update the blog post 🙂
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Interesting blog! Yes Woolies was originally where Peacocks is, not Waterstones.
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thank you 🙂
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