So long then, WH Smith, a firm which has graced our high streets for more than a century – even though it never intended to. Founded as a small newspaper kiosk in Mayfair in 1792, the business grew massively in the mid-19th century, spurred by the rapid expansion of the railways, which allowed consumers up and down the country access to London newspapers within hours of them rolling off the Fleet Street presses.
At one point, nearly every major railway station in Britain had a Smith’s stall selling the Times, the Telegraph and the Illustrated London News, among others, alongside a coterie of the latest books and magazines. And it was a lucrative business. When boss William Henry Smith, who later became MP for Westminster, died in 1891, he left behind a fortune of £1.8m – about £200m in today’s money.
But by the turn of the twentieth century, storm clouds were gathering. The railway companies, eager to squeeze more cash out of their operations amid pressure from shareholders to up dividends, hiked rents on station stalls at an alarming pace. The WH Smith management, who had steadfastly swallowed steeper station rents for decades, had had enough.
Managing partner Charles Hornby wrote a terse letter to the Great Western Railway. It would be a “bitter blow”, to lose all the stalls, Hornby said, “but it will be easier to bear than years of unprofitable trading with no hope for the future.” GWR shrugged, and gave Hornby just 10 weeks to prepare the firm for the loss of almost a third of its national newsagent network.
Undeterred, he concocted a plan and deployed it stat: shift the station business to the nearest High Street shop, and bring the staff there with them. The plan pulled off and soon the firm had a chain of dozens – later hundreds – of High Street stores up and down the country.
Fast-forward 120 years and WH Smith is returning to its roots. In June the company signed a deal with private equity firm Modella to sell off its high street arm and refocus on its “travel outlets” – those in train stations and airports. The high street shops are being rebranded TJ Jones, a made-up name with no affiliation to the newsagent’s history – designed, presumably, to make it sound more like a family business and less like another private equity-run monstrosity.
A changing high street
It will mean the departure from the high street of Britain’s oldest major retail brand. Should this be a cause for sadness? Many will say the stores were shabby, pointless places filled with Post-it notes, cheap felt-tip pens and old Jeremy Clarkson books.
But for most Brits – certainly those outside big cities – the high street is the single-biggest barometer for their feelings about the state of the country, something MPs regularly discover when returning to their constituencies.
Even if they don’t shop there much, people conjure an ideal of how their local parade should look: a butcher’s here, a bookstore there, a bakery with artisanal pastries, a Post Office, a Waitrose. Few parts of the country actually resemble this rosy vignette, besides the odd posh spot like Hampstead, Holland Park or Henley.
The reality many now face is a hodge-podge of vape stores, betting shops, Poundlands, dodgy fast-food kiosks and the ghosts of old Debenhams signage, still awaiting new occupants. A Yougov survey found just 13 per cent of Brits believed high streets had successfully recovered from the pandemic, while a mere three per cent strongly agreed that high streets are “generally vibrant and busy.”
Bustling, aesthetically pleasing public spaces are the most straightforward way to make people feel good about their communities – much more than any statistic on GDP or employment. But just as Smith’s was ousted by GWR, high business rates and employment taxes are pushing retailers away.
Maybe we should call time on the high street and prostrate ourselves before the mercy of the e-commerce gods. But many are not quite ready to submit, preferring to cling to our pound-shop-filled purgatory in the hope a revival is around the corner.
WH Smith’s exit from towns and villages will not be mourned on the scale of Woolworth’s, which many held dear for its twee pic-n-mix stands; nor that of Wilko, from which you could buy dirt-cheap washing powder. But the loss of yet another retail stalwart – with a name beginning with W – will make town centres feel that little bit more dreary.
