The failure of the Arcadia group has been no innocent rural idyll.
Sir Philip Green is a great poster boy for both capitalism and the Honours System having received his knighthood in 2006 for services to the retail industry. It’s a pity that these things don’t have to be renewed every few years (and it’s a pity that we have them at all)…
And so we say farewell to Burton menswear which was the sort of place that people like I was, bought slightly shiny suits so that we could be identified at university.
At the end of my first university year, in which I spent a small proportion of my time doing a geology module (mainly because there was a field trip to Arran in the Easter vacation), my geology supervisor (tutor) took three of us for a roam around Cambridge to look at the building materials of colleges and shops such as the Burton shop on the north side of Petty Cury (which I think is now part of the SuperDry shop, but my memory may have let me down there). We looked at the shop front because, we were told, Burton shops used a particular mineral (black with flecks in it, is as good a recall I have now) for all their shops. This, we were told, after being given its real name (can’t remember) was given the nickname Burtonite by geologists. That is the extent of my memory of that treat of a stroll around Cambridge with an expert geologist at the year’s end. It is a clear, brief memory, although I woudn’t claim that it is an accurate one at the distance of c44 years.
And that represents quite a high proportion of what I remember of geology from my first year at university. I remember high jinks on Arran on that field trip, sleeping in the cab of a dumper truck on the Edinburgh bypass as I hitchhiked to Ardrossan from Cambridge, the view from the top of Goat Fell, not going to geology practicals when I discovered there was no practical exam and not much more. But I expect that my mind was trained in some way and at least it didn’t get cluttered up with things that stopped some biology getting in. Isn’t a university education wonderful? (It is actually, yes).
I have sometimes thought that if we had had that stroll around Cambridge as our first tutorial of the year rather than the last, I might have paid more attention…
Your description of Burton’s particular facade is reminiscent of a type of granite with large feldspars. A quick search using this faint recollection of geology (and I did a whole A Level and undergraduate degree on the subject! – though I preferred sedimentary geology and palaeoecology for obvious reasons) on Google suggests that it is perhaps Larvikite (=Labradorite) that escapes your recall.
Richard – thank you very much. Larvikite – yes, that looks like the stuff!
Graduated in geology in 1966 – I well recall Burtons and other high street shops as being the most accessible outcrops of Larvikite without going to Norway
Carla – thank you for your first comment here; a geologist speaks! And seems like my memory was accurate then.
My black two piece suit , 49 quid in 1995, does me.
Trapit – excellent. You have recently passed 500 comments here- thanks very much for them.
I had a Saturday job at Burtons whilst I was still at school from 1965 till 1968 when I went Uni. Was paid 12/6 when I started. First job was taking down the measurements for customers buying made to measure suits, but I soon bcame a Saturday salesman and was able to work full time during the summer holidays. It was a much better shop in those days.
“Gone for a burton”. A colloquialism coming home to roost? (the etymology of the phrase is interesting, and the original meaning lost).
Mark, All this is quite fascinating. I realised that the architecture of Burtons buildings was similar and distinctive but I didn’t realise that they were built of the same stone. When I next pass a former Burtons I shall have a good look at the stone.
Did you spot any Hen Harriers on Arran?
Everybody seems to remember the facia, am I alone in remembering the snooker halls above them?
Each to their own.