Ilford C & A Store

A Memory of Ilford.

I remember working on the C & A store in appoximately 1964 I think, from start to finish, all the electrical work, it brings back many happy memories for me. Is it still standing? It was said a cinema stood there prior to C & A being built, which was bombed during the Second World War, and it was said to have had a ghost from that time on.
Denno


Added 08 August 2010

#229189

Comments & Feedback

I lived in Ilford for 47 years, and remember C & A Store, built on the bomb site where I was told a theatre used to be. When I was a child the bomb site had many pigeons living there and an old lady used to come and feed them. She was quite a character, and I used to love to watch her surrounded by so many birds.
When the wonderful C & A store opened up I was delighted! I was a teenager and it was the first of it's kind, where you could browse around and try on clothes without sales assistants troubling you.
I thought that the Ilford C & A store opened in 1961. But I can't seem to be able to verify this.
C & A was knocked down years ago, to make way for Ilford's new "Exchange" shopping centre.
I would have liked to have had a "ghost" experience.
I still miss the demise of all the C & A stores in U.K. There are some in different parts of the world, but they are never like our good old British ones!
If any one can verify the year of the opening of Ilford C & A, I would be most grateful, as I want to mention it in a book I am writing.
Thanks for reading this, I don't usually go on blogs.........Daisy
C&A was built in 1959 on the site of the derelict Super Cinema, which had suffered irreparable damage on 8th February 1945 from a V2 that landed across the road on Wright's garage. It wasn't demolished to build the Exchange shopping centre; the shopping centre was built adjoining C&A and they were part of the Exchange from the day it opened on 2nd September 1992. The C&A building still stands, although they moved out in 2000. The building was Woolworth's for several years until January 2009 and since then it has been a Wilko's store.

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