Pratts Department Store. Summer 1978

Image: © Brian Whittle Taken: Unknown

This was taken one afternoon in the summer of 1978. The closure of Pratts in July 1990 was a blow to the High Road from which it never recovered. It was demolished in the early '90s and replaced by a bland new building containing a Lidl supermarket and Peacocks clothing store, a sign of social change in Streatham? Ironically, the new building has a rear car-park, something the John Lewis Partnership pushed for without success thus using it as a pretext for closure. The lights seen through the second floor windows are those of the highly popular restaurant where, on Saturdays, the queue would snake down the staircase to the first floor. Before refurbishment in the 1980s an art deco wood panelled lift complete with setting sun stained glass and an operator would creak its way up.

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