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Paulden's Department
Store
 William Paulden began trading on Stretford Road in the 1860's and continued to do business in the area until 1957. The red arrow on the aerial photograph above shows the store in 1953. The building that you see above was first built in 1879 according to the date which used to stand above the name W. Paulden on the front of the building. A document on the National Archive website from the Greater Manchester County Records Office describes Paulden as an innovator and points to the fact that he was, "the first to introduce electric lighting, lifts, escalators, plate glass windows and motorised vehicles (in 1937) to his shop. He also had a moving picture show in the window presumably advertising goods and services." Apparently, the store also had its own three-piece band. Prior to the introduction of motorized vehicles the store had stables at the rear that housed their horses and carts. The purple star on
the map below shows the block that the store
occupied.
 According to the
document referred to above, "The
hours of work for staff (after 1930's) were
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday 9 am - 6 pm.
Wednesday 9 am - 7 pm. Friday 9 am - 7 pm.
Saturday 9 am - 8 pm and the wages at 14 years
were 5 shillings a week. At age of 16 this
went up to 17.6d plus ½d in the £ commission.
At the same time buyers got between £2-£3 a
week. The uniform was navy and yellow or
navy and silver and in the afternoons the
staff would change into evening dress."
The Greater
Manchester County Records Office also has a
document that recounts the experiences of
Blanche Baxter who worked at the store from
the age of 14, starting in 1936. She also
said that Paulden's was an innovative store and
added that it was, "the first to bring
Danish pastries to England. They were the
specialist shop for carpets, lino and soft
furnishing. They ran a lot of competitions -
Shirley Temple look-a-likes, Mannequin
parades. (they had duplicate set of the crown
jewels on display in the shop). At Easter they
built a farm in the basement and children had
to guess the number of Easter eggs in order to
win a puppy. At Christmas staff used to visit
hospitals in the area in a carriage and four
dressed as snow white and the seven dwarfs."
Paulden's
1925
Three years after that
photograph was taken the store was taken over by
Debenham's although it continued to trade as
Paulden's. The building was rebuilt in 1930 and
it apparently escaped disaster in 1941 when it
received a direct hit from a bomb that went straight
though the lift shaft doing little damage.
In 1957 the store had a major refurbishment and on the Sunday before it was due to re-open a fire broke out that completely gutted the building. The links below show the scene as firemen were fighting the blaze and the front of the building collapsed. Initially Pauldens
moved next door and set up business in the
neighbouring Drill Hall. Another incident
occured at the site after the fire when a
double-decker bus was involved in a crash and ended up
falling into the exposed basement of the store.
In 1959 Paulden's reopened in Market Street in the
former Rylands Warehouse that today is home to
Debenhams. You can see their name on the side of
the building.
 Today the site of the
original Paulden's Department Store, that burned to
the ground, is occupied by the Manchester Metropolitan
University's Cambridge Hall of Residence, see below.
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