Half of Brits want Woolworths to return to the high street, survey finds

Half of Britons wish they could bring Woolworths back from the dead, a YouGov survey has revealed this week.

The retailer, lovingly nicknamed Woolies, championed the high street for decades before its demise in 2009 – so it is unsurprisingly one of the most missed out of all the lost shops from the noughties.

And a recent YouGov survey quizzing Brits on which shops they’d most like to see back on the high street found that, out of all the lost high street icons, Woolies is the most requested.

The shop made an impact across all generations, too, with those aged between fifty and sixty-four the most likely to want to see it back, at 60%.

Gordon Griffiths / Geograph

Even a third of eighteen to twenty-four year olds – who were aged between four and ten years old when the chain closed in 2009 – want to see the store open its doors once again.

In second place is the recently closed department store Debenhams, with one in eight Britons (13%) saying they would like to see its grand return the most.

Read More: Toys R Us is reopening in the UK four years after it went bust

Rival chain British Home Store, which closed its stores in 2016, is also a popular choice for resurrection, with 10% of Brits wanting to see its return.

And clothing retailer C&A – which exited the UK market in 2001 but still operates internationally – came in fourth place, with 7% of shoppers wanting it to make a comeback on the high street.

Albert Bridge / Geograph

There were a few other defunct brands that were listed among those surveyed, though they didn’t managed to get more than a couple of percentage points.

These included stragglers such as Toys R Us, Blockbuster, Comet, Littlewoods and Maplin.

And 1% of Brits said they wanted to see the return of department store chain House of Fraser which, insultingly enough, is still alive and (kind of) well, with thirty-three branches still operating in the UK, as well as five further stores converted to the ‘Frasers’ format.

YouGov

And funnily enough, a massive one in four Britons (23%) said there weren’t any stores they’d like to bring back from the dead at all – a true pointer to the eventual death of the high street.

See the survey’s full results here.