MOST people who were around this part of the world in the second half of the 20th century will be familiar with the name of Warwick House, the department store in Malvern often likened to the setting of  “Are You Being Served”, one of the most popular BBC sitcoms of the 1970s and 80s.

The comparison had its merit, but there was at least one flaw. For while the TV version was run by a doddering old gentleman called Mr Grace, Warwick House was headed by a human dynamo by the name of Gertrude Mitchell, who for many years also had her own business on Worcester High Street, which cornered the fashionable lady market in the decades either side of the Second World War.

Unfortunately Gertrude’s force of nature character rather got in the way when it came to accepting well meaning business and financial advice – she usually ignored it – and meant she ended her days in a Malvern nursing home somewhat strapped for cash.

Now the Gertrude Mitchell story, pimples and all, has been told in a new book by her granddaughter Sally Trepte. Called Warwick House of Malvern and Gertrude Mitchell, the woman who created it, the £12.50 paperback returns the reader not only to another century, but to another social society.

As Sally explains: “Gertrude was a woman before her time. Her life story presents an interesting piece of social history and for that reason alone is worthy of telling. But it also has the ability to take one back to an age long gone, of service to  others, of incredibly high standards and of a lifestyle which no longer exists.

“It is story I have wanted to tell for quite a while, but the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 gave me the impetus to do it.”

Warwick House was the place to shop for clothes in the West Midlands during the 1940s, ’50s, ’60s and ‘70s.

A fashion department store like no other, its mission statement (if they had such a thing in those days) was that service was paramount.

Set high up near the end of Belle Vue Terrace, many of its showrooms had panoramic views across the Severn Valley towards the Cotswold Hills.

Gertrude’s motto for her store was “shopping in tranquillity”, which meant there was an unhurried and leisurely atmosphere which made the shopping experience pleasurable.

According to Country Quest magazine in 1964 – about the time Mary Quant began to revolutionise the fashion world – the store stood “firm and foremost in its county’s history of fashion and, in addition, all over Britain is known to the society shopper”.

The journal reported that one customer regularly travelled more than 200 miles, twice a year, just to shop at Warwick House because of the high standard of service she received.

The lady behind all this, Gertrude Mitchell, had been born Gertrude Barribal in Oswestry in  1881. Two years later the family moved to a small terraced house in London Road, Worcester when her father Samuel took a job in charge of printing at Berrow’s Newspapers works in High Street.

Gertrude’s first job was as a millinery apprentice at CW Palmer, also in High Street, and as she made her way up the trade, she gained a reputation for her vision.

“She had a strong idea of how something should look and the courage to carry out her  ideas, “ said Sally.

Gertrude’s most fortuitous move was to join Ayris, a prestige business in Cheltenham, as a millinery buyer in 1907. It was a high class shop in the poshest street in town, but better than that, the proprietor Walter Ayris recognised the young woman’s talent and aspirations.

In fact, when the by now Gertrude Mitchell set about opening her own business, Ayris not only invested £500 (about £40,000 today) but also allowed her to  use his name. In return he wanted 50 per cent of the profits. 

When Ayris Ltd opened in August 1914 at 43, High Street, Worcester (now part of Marks and Spencer) it was Gertrude Mitchell’s first shop and she was on her way.

The Worcester property later expanded in her own name and in the early 1920s, Gertrude began a wholesale millinery business in Barbourne called Madame Barribal. The family moved to Malvern in 1921 and in the 1930s she opened Gertrude Mitchell Ltd in Belle Vue Terrace.

By the late Thirties, Gertrude had a nationwide clientele, a showroom in Great Marlborough Street, London, and a staff of 250. But then came the war. Almost all her staff were taken for defence work and the Barbourne business was shut down.

In 1941, Gertrude Mitchell Ltd joined forces with Cox and Painter to become Mitchell, Cox and Williams, and, later, Warwick House of Malvern. With Gertrude up front, its reputation flourished and in 1955 Woman and Home magazine said: “Malvern is definitely a top fashion town. The reason for this is Malvern’s unique fashion house, Warwick House. Unique in both its huge range of clothes and accessories and its leisurely and unhurried atmosphere that makes shopping a pleasure.”

For a while Gertrude also ran another well known Malvern business, the Mount Pleasant Hotel, again to her exacting standards.But as the years rolled on her daughter Margaret and husband Geoffrey Lampard took over at Warwick House until it was bought by Gieves and Hawkes of London in the late 1970s.

It has now, appropriately, been converted into upmarket apartments.

Gertrude Mitchell died in August 1981 at the age of 100 years and seven months, her final five and a half years in a Graham Road nursing home emptying her coffers.

Granddaughter Sally added: “There is an irony in Gertrude dying with no money, as somehow even in death, she maintained that ethos of having just enough and no more that mirrors the Christian ethos of the Muller orphanage in which her father spent so many years.”

* Warwick House of Malvern and Gertrude Mitchell, the woman who created it by Sally Trepte is available from Aspect Design of Newtown Road,  Malvern, the Tourist Information Centres in Malvern and Worcester and several other book shops in Malvern and Ledbury.