The day Swansea’s M&S burned

On a Saturday morning in October 1939, a crowd gathered in Oxford Street and watched one of Swansea's newest and most celebrated stores burn to the ground - families evacuated from their homes, firemen carried to hospital, and flames so fierce they threatened to destroy surrounding buildings.

It was not the last time Marks and Spencer's Oxford Street store would face destruction. But it survived, was rebuilt, and for the best part of a century became one of the most familiar sights in the city centre. On May 30th 2026, it closes for the last time.

This week, we tell its remarkable story.

I'll catch you on Sunday! Andrew

P.S. Know someone else who’d enjoy the Scoop? Please forward this email to them and ask them to subscribe here 🙂

Marks and Spencer began in 1884 as a market stall in Leeds, when Michael Marks, a Jewish refugee from Poland, set up what he called his Penny Bazaar with a sign that read "Don't ask the price - it's a penny." Customers were encouraged to browse without any obligation to buy - and by trading directly with manufacturers and placing large orders for cash, Marks was able to offer goods at the lowest possible prices.

A decade later he invited Thomas Spencer, a cashier from a wholesale company, to become his partner, and the business that would become one of Britain's most recognisable retailers began to take shape.

By 1902, a Penny Bazaar stall had opened in Swansea. The town's first proper M&S store occupied premises in the Jubilee Arcade - a covered shopping passage known at various times by several names in the town centre - before, in September 1932, the company opened what it called a New Super Store at 272-273 Oxford Street.

The evening before it opened, the South Wales Evening Post reported that “seventy girls” were already at their posts in 27 departments, finishing the window displays and putting the final touches to what one reporter described as "the wonder cave of Aladdin." When the doors opened at ten o'clock the following morning, Swansea got its first proper look at what M&S had built - approximately 5,300 square feet of shop floor, with nothing priced over five shillings and ninety-five percent of it British goods.

Three years later, in June 1935, the store was extended further, taking in the neighbouring unit and expanding its range to include a cooked foods department, canned goods, fresh fruits and fresh supplies daily. It was one of the most modern retail buildings in the town centre when, in the early hours of a late October morning in 1939, it caught fire.

In the early hours of the morning of that fateful day, the caretaker of Marks and Spencer on Oxford Street had been on his rounds and noticed nothing wrong, yet within hours, the store had caught fire and the building was destroyed.

By the time the full force of the Swansea Fire Brigade and the town's Auxiliary Fire Service arrived on the scene, the blaze (for which there was no reported cause) had already taken a serious hold, with men from the Swansea Electricity Department digging up the street to cut off the electric supply, the gas being shut off, and a huge turntable ladder brought into operation to reach flames on the rooftop. The pumps drew water from the flooded cellars below as the fire raged - visible from, it was reported, as far away as Gowerton. Only the day before, workmen had been outside placing new letters on the facade.

Families living in Park Street, at the rear of the building, were woken and told to leave their homes, while crowds gathered at every vantage point and stayed through the night watching by the light of the flames as firefighters fought a fire that seemed, again and again, to come back under control only to break out afresh.

At one point it appeared that everything between Waterloo Street (near Whitewalls today) and Portland Street would be lost, and the efforts of the brigades were turned less towards saving M&S, and more towards preventing the fire from spreading to the adjoining premises of Jenkins and Co., ironmongers, and Thomas Lewis and Co., drapers.

As Oxford Street filled with dense black smoke in the early morning hours, the women who made up the majority of the store's staff began arriving to find their workplace completely gutted. For many of them, it was the first knowledge they had that anything had gone wrong.

The fire did not pass without cost. Acting-Inspector G. Hey and Police-constable Idwal Davies were overcome by fumes and taken to hospital, while one firefighter suffered fractured ribs. Most seriously of all, an auxiliary fireman, Thomas Llewelyn Ashley from Townhill, lost a leg when the trailer pump he was helping to rush to the outbreak tipped over, severing his limb.

Within days, a representative of the directors of Marks & Spencer, Mr. W. Jacobson, called the staff together at the Park Hall on Park Street to deliver a clear message - every permanent member of staff would be retained, and would suffer no financial loss whatsoever: "The position is they are our staff and will continue to be our staff," he told the Evening Post. "We are looking after them, and they were assured this morning there was no need to worry about anything."

The following day, large crowds were still gathering around the barriers in Oxford Street and Park Street to see the destruction for themselves. The Chief Constable, Mr F. J. May, used the occasion to praise the Auxiliary Fire Service, saying the fire had proved conclusively the usefulness of the organisation in the light of large scale fires - and how vital that would be in a time of a war that, by October 1939, had already begun.

Within weeks of the fire, temporary premises M&S for opened nearby - but before a new store could be built, Swansea faced a far greater catastrophe.

In February 1941, German bombers reduced much of the town centre to rubble in three nights of sustained attack that became known as the Three Nights' Blitz. Oxford Street was among the streets devastated, and whatever remained of the M&S site was lost along with much of the city around it.

When peace finally came, M&S was raring to return. The Oxford Street site was cleared and rebuilt from scratch, and in April 1953 - almost fourteen years after the fire, the new store opened its doors in the building we see today.

It covered 25,000 square feet, with one of the largest single store floors among M&S's 235 branches nationwide. The counters were finished in veneered walnut, the floors laid with terrazzo tiles of an attractive pattern, and the lighting was diffused fluorescent, described at the time as closely resembling natural light.

The Mayor of Swansea, Mr. W. T. Mainwaring Hughes, said that he regarded the company's decision to return as an expression of their confidence in Swansea's future. The vice-chairman of the company, Mr. I. M. Sieff, said it spoke much for the constructive ability of this country that “such a splendid store” should have arisen on the ashes of the old premises.

The M&S that reopened in 1953 would go on to serve Swansea for decades, reinventing itself along the way. For example, in April 1986, advertisements in the South Wales Evening Post announced a whole new look - bright and modern, with co-ordinated fashion ranges and a freshened food department. Nine years later, in June 1995, the store reopened again, promising wider ranges and what the ads simply called a whole new look.

On Saturday May 30th 2026, the doors of Marks and Spencer on Oxford Street will close for the final time.

The company has cited a sustained decline in sales over the past ten years as the reason for its closure - and while both M&S and Swansea Council have expressed commitment to finding a new city centre location, no replacement site has yet been secured.

The Oxford Street Marks & Spencer that survived fire, bombing, and rebuilding - is about to disappear for good - ending a presence for the company in Swansea city centre that stretches back nearly 125 years.

I’ll catch you on Sunday.

Andrew.

✅ Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up

📧 Want to advertise your business to our audience of over 10,000 newsletter subscribers and 70,000+ on social media? Reply to this e-mail and we’ll be in touch!