Family-run Halesowen clothing shop prepares to serve last customers after 144 years

Dancers in Peckingham Street will mark its final day of trading on Wednesday (December 11).

In a post on Facebook today, the shop invited customers to bid employees farewell.

The post read: "Tomorrow on 11th is our last day of opening and we will be open until 2.30pm, so we can enjoy our last couple of hours with just the family and the staff.  

"Please feel free to come join us for a mince pie and to wish our team farewell. Many thanks." 

Speaking in October about the closure of the store, assistant manager Dave Dancer said he had hoped to take over the reins from his father Mike Dancer and aunt Janet Duerden, but tough retail conditions meant this would not be possible.

He said: "We wanted to make sure it would be done on our own terms in an orderly fashion, so my aunt and my dad can retire properly.

"It is very difficult for us, it is very sentimental. Some of our staff have been here for 27 years, so we wanted to make sure it was done properly, so that they would all be all right."

The business has passed through five generations of the Dancer family since it was founded as John Dancer's shoe and bootmaker in 1880, part of a row of shops in Lye High Street owned by the Dancer family.

Four years later, John and his wife Sarah moved to a lock-up shop in High Street, Halesowen, and business did so well that they were able to purchase a plot of land on the corner of Peckingham Street and Hagley Road, Halesowen, and build a three-storey shop on the site.

Branches in Ludlow, Kidderminster, Cradley Heath, Bromsgrove and Tenbury Wells then followed. 

The business passed first to John's son Wilfred, and then through his son Wesley who was born above the shop in 1913. 

As the years progressed, the shop began to transition away from boots and towards the sale of both men's and women's clothing. 

In the 1950s, Wesley spotted a gap in the market for men's suit hire, and Dancer's became one of the first shops in the country to offer what would become a major growth area over the decades that followed.

During the late 1960s, Halesowen was undergoing major redevelopment, and Wesley decided that rather than be left behind, it was time for Dancers to get new premises too. 

He moved to a temporary shop at the top of Peckingham Street, while the old shop was demolished and a new one built in its place, opening on May 1, 1968.