Looking Back: City centre street scenes show how much times have changed

It was outside Boots, when it was in Bridge Street, before moving to Long Causeway when Queensgate opened in 1982.

In the window I spotted the 1980 Beatles Rock and Roll music volume 2 and a poster advertising film developing!

Since the Evening Telegraph first gave me this weekly column in 2009 I have appealed several times to put some names to faces but no joy.

However, in my 1985 Bridge Street image outside Marks & Spencer I can tell you that the two boys out shopping with their parents were brothers Richard and Andrew Williams as I met them again in 2016 for another picture which featured in Reunions.

Their dad Brian (with cap) died in 1988 and their mum (in checked coat) died in 2012.

Richard, who had seven children, said: “We often used to go to Woolworths to buy the pick- and-mix sweets.”

Andrew has four children and two step-children.

In the background I see tiny saplings, now mighty English plane trees, and Lower Bridge Street before Rivergate which was built in 1989.

Woolworths closed in 2008 and M&S in 2016, which then moved to Queensgate but closed in April 2024.

I wonder who the ladies in the blue and green coats are?

My photography books, including the latest, Streets of America and Barking 2!, are available in the fantastic Up the Garden Bath Unity crafts and gifts shop in Queensgate, or my website, www.chrisporsz.com.