British High Street Shops
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40 free British High Street Shops trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Every British town once had the same familiar row of shop fronts: a variety store for sweets and school supplies, a record shop, a place to rent a film on a Friday night. Many of those names have gone, some after a century or more of trading, and their closing-down sales became national news. This quiz looks back at the shops no longer on the high street and the stories behind them: where they began, who ran them, what they were famous for and how they came to an end. Woolworths, BHS, Debenhams and Toys R Us all feature, along with electrical chains, fashion names, bookshops and off-licences that older shoppers will remember well. A few survivors appear too, for the surprising history behind them. It is written for anyone who enjoys a bit of retail nostalgia. Some questions are easy, some will test a devoted shopper, and every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which American video rental chain opened its first British store in 1989 and shut the last of them in December 2013?
Blockbuster
Blockbuster ran more than 800 British stores at its 2002 peak, yet went into administration twice in 2013 when no buyer could be found.
Q 02Toys R Us, which closed every one of its British stores in 2018, had a mascot named Geoffrey who was which animal?
A giraffe
A giraffe first appeared in 1950s adverts for the founder's earlier toy shop, and he grew into Geoffrey as the chain took its famous name.
Q 03Which retail tycoon sold the department store chain BHS for just £1 in 2015, a year before it collapsed?
Philip Green
Philip Green had bought BHS for £200 million in 2000, and after its collapse he agreed to pay £363 million into the pension scheme of its staff.
Q 04Which Dutch-founded clothing chain, in Britain since 1922, announced in 2000 that all its UK stores would close?
C&A
C&A takes its name from the initials of founding brothers Clemens and August Brenninkmeijer, and it carried on trading across mainland Europe.
Q 05Which jewellery chain nearly collapsed after its boss joked in a 1991 speech that its cheap products were rubbish?
Ratners
Ratners lost its chief Gerald Ratner within two years, and "doing a Ratner" became business shorthand for ruining a company with a careless remark.
Q 06Woolworths, which shut all 807 British shops in the winter of 2008–09, opened its first one in 1909 in which city?
Liverpool
Liverpool was where founder Frank Woolworth had first landed on a buying trip in 1890, and his Church Street store opened there 19 years later.
Q 07Which online fashion retailer bought the Debenhams name in 2021, leaving the chain founded in 1778 without any shops?
Boohoo
Boohoo paid £55 million for the brand and website but took none of the remaining 118 stores, at a cost of up to 12,000 jobs.
Q 08Which travel firm, begun in 1841 to carry temperance supporters by train, collapsed in September 2019?
Thomas Cook
Thomas Cook's failure left 150,000 British holidaymakers abroad and triggered the country's largest peacetime repatriation, codenamed Operation Matterhorn.
Q 09Which English composer took part in the opening of the first HMV shop on London's Oxford Street in 1921?
Edward Elgar
Edward Elgar helped launch the shop at 363 Oxford Street for the Gramophone Company, whose His Master's Voice trademark gave the chain its initials.
Q 10Britain's Virgin Megastores were renamed in 2007 under which name, only for the new chain to collapse 15 months later?
Zavvi
Zavvi lost its supply of stock when the wholesale arm of Woolworths failed, and it went into administration on Christmas Eve 2008.
Q 11Marks & Spencer sold nearly all its goods under which brand name, honouring a co-founder, until it was dropped in 2000?
St Michael
St Michael was introduced in 1928 by Simon Marks in honour of his father, and it spread from clothing to food in 1941.
Q 12Marks & Spencer began in 1884 as a penny bazaar stall in the market of which Yorkshire city?
Leeds
Leeds and its Kirkgate Market hosted the first stall, which was set up with a £5 loan from a local wholesaler.
Q 13Which furniture chain, founded in 1964 by two dealers in war surplus goods, closed all 111 of its stores in late 2008?
MFI
MFI stood for Mullard Furniture Industries, and its managers bought the chain in September 2008, two months before recession pushed it into administration.
Q 21Which designer opened the first Habitat furniture shop on London's Fulham Road in 1964?
Terence Conran
Terence Conran opened the shop to market his own Summa furniture range, and all but three Habitat stores closed when the chain failed in 2011.
Q 22The 1960s boutique chain Chelsea Girl, a driver of the mini dress trend, was rebranded in 1988 under which name?
River Island
River Island was first tried on a single menswear shop in Exeter, and it did so well that the whole Chelsea Girl chain took the name within months.
Q 23Jenners, a grand department store founded in 1838 and closed in 2020, was a landmark of which Scottish city?
Edinburgh
Q 14Which homeware chain, begun in Leicester in 1930 as a hardware shop, saw all its original stores close in late 2023?
Wilko
Wilko was the name the family firm Wilkinson adopted from 2012, and after the collapse a rival bought the brand and began opening new shops under it.
Q 15Which baby goods chain, founded in 1961 by Selim Zilkha, announced in 2019 that all of its British shops would close?
Mothercare
Mothercare had already sold its Early Learning Centre toy shops that year, and its name later returned to Britain on goods stocked by Boots.
Q 16Which fashion chain, with a flagship at London's Oxford Circus, was sold to ASOS in 2021 after Arcadia collapsed?
Topshop
Topshop drew about 28,000 shoppers a day to its five-floor flagship, but the buyer wanted only the brand and kept none of the shops.
Q 17Which electrical chain, founded in Hull in 1933 to charge radio batteries, closed its last stores in December 2012?
Comet
Comet began with founder George Hollingbery charging wireless batteries in a workshop and delivering them for a small weekly fee, and it ended with more than 6,000 jobs lost.
Q 18Which poster and print chain sold more than two million copies of its Tennis Girl image before going bust in 1995?
Athena
Athena began in 1964 as a single Hampstead shop selling fine art prints, and it also published the famous picture of a muscular man cradling a baby.
Q 19The menswear chain Hepworths bought the Kendalls shops in 1981 and relaunched them a year later as which fashion chain?
Next
Next so outgrew its parent that by 1986 the whole Hepworths company, a tailoring firm dating from 1864, had taken the new chain's name.
Q 20Which store chain, begun by Sir John Moores as a football pools business, sold off all its high street shops in 2005?
Littlewoods
Littlewoods grew from the pools into mail order and then shops, and about 40 of its stores became branches of Primark when the chain closed.
Edinburgh shoppers knew Jenners on Princes Street, a site it never left even after fire destroyed the original building in 1892.
Q 24Which record shop chain, begun on London's Finchley Road in 1971, opened 300 stores before its closure in 2004?
Our Price
Our Price trailed only Woolworths in record and tape sales in the early 1980s, and in 1984 it became the first specialist music shop to float on the London Stock Exchange.
Q 25Which electrical chain sponsored English football's League Cup from 1990 to 1992, three years before all its shops shut?
Rumbelows
Rumbelows began with one Hertfordshire shop opened by Sydney Rumbelow in 1949, and it was losing money by the time its owner Thorn closed the lot.
Q 26Which accessories chain, a fixture of airports and railway stations, began closing its last 44 shops in 2013?
Tie Rack
Tie Rack began when founder Roy Bishko tried selling ties from his heel bar on Oxford Street, and the bar was converted into the first shop.
Q 27Which mobile retailer, built up by tycoon John Caudwell, went under in 2014 when the networks ended their contracts?
Phones 4u
Phones 4u had no network of its own, so once O2, then EE and Vodafone stopped supplying it, there was nothing left to sell.
Q 28Which retailer, built up by former footballer Dave Whelan from a single shop in Wigan, called in administrators in 2012?
JJB Sports
JJB Sports took its initials from John Jarvis Broughton, who opened the original shop in the early 1900s, and two later owners kept the name.
Q 29Which menswear chain, a supplier of demob suits after the Second World War, lost its last shops in 2021?
Burton
Burton was founded by Montague Burton, and his complete demob outfit, from jacket to underwear, is one suggested origin of the phrase "the full monty".
Q 30Which chocolate maker, founded in Sheffield in 1911 and bought by Ferrero in 2015, shut all of its own shops in 2021?
Thorntons
Thorntons was an established toffee and fudge maker before chocolate took over, and it announced in March 2021 that its last 61 shops would close for good.