When John Lewis announced it would not reopen its Sheffield store after the pandemic, Margaret Dakin was devastated. “The shock was literally like being hit,” she says.
Dakin, 62, has marked life’s big occasions in the city’s John Lewis store. “I bought every significant item from that shop: material for my wedding dress, outfits for grand occasions … my oven,” she says of the department store known until 2002 as Cole Brothers. “When I bought my first house as a skint local government officer in the 1980s, I saved up enough money to buy my living room carpet from there.”
