When I was a teenager I had a Saturday job at the Lewis’s department store in Birmingham (not to be confused with John Lewis). I got to know and love the rambling store with its arcane cast of shop assistants, floor walkers, sub-managers, store detectives and backroom staff.

Reading the report Departing Stores: Emporia at Risk by Harriet Lloyd for Save Britain’s Heritage took me back to those happy days. There have been 237 department store closures in recent years. Like Victorian warehouses or stately homes, the report says, an entire class of buildings has become redundant and risks being lost for ever.

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