Beneath its distinctive golden nameboard, the leather skills of shoe and boot-making were passed down the generations from father to son, just as the customers coming in through its door followed in the footsteps – in the bootprints – of their fathers and grandfathers. The McIntyre’s building in Newgate Street is now regarded as a model of a modest, provincial retailer who, in its day, adopted the latest trends in shopkeeping, who invested in its bricks and mortar as a sign of confidence in the buoyancy of Bishop town centre, and whose shopfront – with its gleaming golden name – represented the aspirations of its customers for good, sturdy shoes at value-for-money prices. But its day – the golden age of local retailing – is long gone, and the name McIntyre’s disappeared from Newgate Street in the 1990s as national chain shops – first Etam and then Dorothy Perkins – replaced it.
READ MORE: MYSTERY OF MURDERED BANK CLERK'S LAST WORDS: "IT WAS THE TALL MAN THAT DID IT" But, by 2015, their day too was over, and the historic shop fell derelict. All thoughts of aspirations were replaced by symbols of decay. However, the vandals revealed that the McIntyre’s golden name was not gone for good.
It had only been boarded over. This month, the shop has been reborn as the “McIntyre Centre”, an educational hub connected to Bishop Auckland College, and the restored nameboard gleams golden on a new generation of users. The restored McIntyre's building in Newgate Stre.
