Scarborough

Founder William Boyes was born in 1859 and started his career as an apprentice draper with a firm called George and Collings. At the end of his apprenticeship, saving £10 from his wages he opened his first store at the corner of Eastborough and Globe Street in Scarborough, selling remnants from merchants. The area was full of poverty, and the store was therefore popular with housewives.

Trade increased and William needed bigger premises to operate. Two corner units on Market Street and Queen Street were purchased in 1886. Further buildings were acquired and within ten years almost all of one side of Market Street was owned by Boyes. The store was named "The Remnant Warehouse" and is still known as the Rem by older residents of Scarborough.^[5] In 1900 Boyes became a limited company when William and three friends, James Pirie, Henry Merrie Cross and JH Harrison invested in the business.^[6]

Over the years William added more products to the range and the store went from a warehouse to a department store.^[7] The company began to expand to York, Hull and Grimsby in the following years. Stores in Newcastle upon Tyne and North Shields were also opened, but closed in the Great Depression.

On 26 February 1915, the store was destroyed by a huge fire, which is believed to be the biggest in Scarborough's history. It caused around £70,000 of damage. The store was insured and it was rebuilt.^[8]

The Scarborough store was home to a number of animals in the past, including monkeys, chipmunks and budgies.^[9] The animals were used as way of encouraging customers to visit the store and purchase something whilst they visited. Two of the monkeys, Jacko and Dinah, are famous to a generation of Scarborough shoppers.

The Scarborough store served as Boyes head office until the site at Eastfield opened in 1971.^[10]

Boyes ran a twice yearly sale for many years across their stores. Particularly in Scarborough, the store was famous for long queues of customers waiting for the doors to open on the first day.^[11][12]

Hull

Boyes history in Kingston upon Hull dates back to the nineteenth century. In 1898 they began trading with a shop in Prospect Street, but it was closed in 1901 when the lease was sold to Taylor's Drug Store, a business owned by another Boyes director, William Taylor Mason.

Hessle Road

In 1920 they returned to Hull, this time on Hessle Road. The company leased a building owned by Johnny Wardell, later buying the lease.^[13] In 1927 Boyes bought a neighbouring property to extend the store and further extended the store in the 1950s.^[14]

Holderness Road

The next store in Hull opened on Holderness Road in 1965. The store was built on the site of the former Savoy cinema. The cinema was bombed in the last Luftwaffe attack of World War II to cause civilian casualties in the UK. Thirteen people were killed and 22 injured and they are commemorated on a plaque on the outside of the store.^[15][16]

Bransholme

A store in the Bransholme (now North Point) centre followed in 1973. Boyes were the first company to sign up to open a store in the centre.^[17] The Bransholme store was under threat of closure in 2014 when terms on a new lease could not be agreed and the company began looking for new premises in Hull. After negotiations, a new lease was agreed, but Boyes still pushed on with plans for a new store.^[18]

Whitefriargate

The company's fourth store in Hull, on Whitefriargate opened on 19 September 2014. The unit was previously occupied by Peacocks, and before this it was one of the first Woolworths stores in the UK.^[19][20]

York

Boyes opened in York in 1906, on Bridge Street near the River Ouse in a former paint warehouse. The store was destroyed by fire on 8 December 1910. The fire was thought to have begun in the toy department when gas lamps came into contact with Christmas decorations. The fire took six hours to put out, but all staff and customers were safely evacuated. Boyes moved temporarily to Clifford Street whilst their premises were being rebuilt. The fire is estimated to have caused £20,000 of damage.

There was a delay to the rebuilding of the store in a tragic accident in February 1912. A workman was killed and seven others injured when a clock tower being built collapsed. The store reopened without a clock tower in December 1912.^[21]

The building was extended in 1966, and plans were made for it to be modernised in 1978. However, these plans were not viable and the store closed on 26 February 1983. Boyes returned to York on 15 May 1987 with a smaller store on Goodramgate.^[22]

The company opened another store within the York city area in Acomb, in April 2015.^[23] Three retail units in Front Street, which were previously Superdrug, Bonmarché and Jonathan James, were purchased and combined to form one new store.^[24]

Grimsby

The firm established a presence in Grimsby in 1926 when the Hewlands store on Freeman Street was purchased by Boyes after the owner, Ernest Hewland got into financial difficulties. The store continued to trade under the Hewlands name until August 1956 when Mr Hewland retired. The building was replaced with a new property on the same site and went by the Boyes name.^[25]

The store traded well and 1958 Boyes purchased five old properties further down Freeman Street and built a second store in their place. This store opened in May 1961. Boyes traded from both sites until the newer site was extended and reopened in October 1974 and the original Hewlands site was sold.^[26] A store in neighbouring Cleethorpes was opened in June 2010 in a former Woolworths branch.^[27]

Further expansion

Boyes opened stores in Billingham in 1967, Darlington in 1970^[28] and Louth in 1976.^[29] The tenth store in Northallerton opened in 1977.^[30]

The company then developed a chain of stores throughout Northern England in the following decades.

In March 1998 Boyes opened a store in a large four-storey building in Bridlington. This building had previously been the home of Carltons department store until 1969, until Hammonds of Hull purchased the store and demolished and rebuilt the store, opening as Hammonds in 1970. Hammonds were purchased by House of Fraser in 1972 and the store traded under the Binns name until it was closed in 1995.^[31]

The Bridlington store's top floor also has a museum of the firm's history. It consists of a reconstruction of a store front from the early twentieth century, a recreation of a till point from the era and automation of a life sized draper, complete with desk and bolts of fabric. There are also numerous artefacts in the way of photographs, objects and advertisements.^[32][33]

The company's first store in West Yorkshire, in Bradford, opened in 2003. Boyes took over the former Christopher Pratts store in North Parade after Pratts relocated to Leeds. At the time the company invested more than £500,000 to refurbish the store before opening and the store was one of the biggest in the chain. The company opened a small section of the store earlier in 2003 before a full opening in September.^[34] In May 2019 the store relocated from North Parade to the Kirkgate Centre. The North Parade site had become unviable with the company citing factors including the closure of the city centre Morrisons store and the planned relocation of the market in the area. Boyes took over the former Argos unit in the centre.^[35]

Boyes has expanded its reach further by opening several stores in the East Midlands and as far south as Cambridgeshire. The company reached its landmark 50th store with the opening of the Coalville store in July 2014.^[36]

The company has increased store numbers in many cases by moving into units vacated by other retailers. They have taken over ex-Woolworths stores in Cleethorpes, Bishop Auckland and Coalville. Former Co-op department stores in Arnold, Brighouse, Eastwood, Ilkley, March and Ripley have been taken over, and a couple of vacated Marks and Spencer stores in Grantham and South Shields.^[37]

There are examples of the company converting various non-retail premises into stores. In June 1984, a store was opened in what was previously the Empire Cinema in Whitby.^[38] In the same year, the former Bower's restaurant in Malton was converted to a Boyes store.^[39] A store in Brigg opened in what was the Brown & Co auction rooms in October 2012.^[40] In July 2014, a building in Chesterfield was converted to retail use by Boyes.^[41] It was built as the Regal Cinema in 1936 before becoming a nightclub called Zanzibar in the 1990s.^[42]

In recent years the company has relocated some of its branches to new locations in the same town. As well as the Bradford relocation, in 2017 the Gainsborough store was relocated due to the original one being demolished for the building of a new Lidl supermarket. Boyes now trade from a newly built unit on the site of the former Crown House.^[43] In 2018 the Middlesbrough store moved from the Dundas Centre to the Hill Street Centre, moving into a former Argos outlet.^[44]

Store numbers reached 67 in September 2019 with the opening of a store in Barton-upon-Humber, the first to be adorned with the new company logo.^[45]

Boyes opened a concession in a newly refurbished Co-op store in Mablethorpe in December 2021 as part of a new partnership between the two companies. Boyes operates a 3,600 square foot concession within the supermarket.^[46] Further Co-op concessions were opened in 2023 in Thornton-Cleveleys, Blackpool^[47] and Swindon.^[48]