00:00well for many in birmingham the building behind me is still rackham's a long-standing city center
00:06name that later became house of fraser now the store is preparing to close in june with discount
00:11signs already up bringing another well-known retail chapter in corporation street closer
00:18to an end rackham's is a store which i remember growing up uh with um you know we came into
00:24birmingham on a very regular basis like most people and we'd shop in most shops but it always
00:30seemed that a trip to birmingham was never complete if you didn't go to rackham's not necessarily to
00:35buy anything because the thing about rackham's is it was deliberately aspirational and a place where
00:40you bought luxury goods so it's a place that you went to sort of to look in or other things
00:45that
00:45you might buy if ever you could you came into money or won the pools for instance which is what
00:49people
00:49used to do um in order to sort of to get rich now of course it would be a lottery
00:53well the store has
00:54been shrinking for some time in 2023 it was turned into an outlet store with upper floors closed and an
01:02emphasis on discounted stock staff have now been told the branch should close late june although a
01:08final date has not been widely confirmed the store is only one of a small number of house of fraser
01:14sites
01:14still trading after years of closures following the company's rescue by sports direct now fraser's
01:21group in 2018. so it was very much the sort of store where as i say particularly at christmas it
01:27was particularly special because of course they always had wonderful window displays like lots of
01:32other stores but because rackham's had that sort of that aura of being the sort of the place where
01:37people wanted to be and be seen um it was extra special i've seen it referred to as the sort
01:42of the
01:42harrods of the north and indeed you know uh people probably didn't realize it was part of the same
01:47group as harrods and it had been built up previously or brought up previously by the the harrods group
01:52and it went through sort of various changes in ownership and of course in the sort of the early
01:57sort of uh 2000s it became the house of fraser because part of that group but of course for most
02:02brummies it was always known as rackhams um and always will be and you know the fact is the sort
02:08of
02:08building behind me is here and eventually will close down and we let's believe it will sort of
02:13be refurbished into apartments and of course whenever i will come past it i'll always think
02:18about it as the sort of the store but of course that will sort of fade and i guess for
02:22a sort of
02:22a generation who've been born perhaps in the last um certainly 15 years um they will never know the sort
02:28of the store that it once was of course we've had it in um recent years as a sort of
02:33um sports direct
02:34store if it's an outlet as it were um and it had none of the sort of the luxurious and
02:39grandeur
02:39that once used to sort of typify uh rackhams which was sort of that it was an iconic store
02:45indeed a lot of money went into sort of building it its disappearance will be felt not just as another
02:49shot closure but as the loss of a name woven into birmingham's retail history what happens to the
02:56site next will be watched closely
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