Marks and Spencer in Hamilton's town centre has welcomed shoppers through its doors for the last time today (Tuesday).
The major British retailer, which has had an outlet in the town since 1968, will close this afternoon making way for a new M&S Food hall 10 minutes away at the Hamilton Retail Park.
Staff, some of whom had 50 years service at the town centre store, are set to gather at 3pm today at the entrance to the Regent Shopping Centre store and fondly look back on their time at the iconic Hamilton building.
Until last year, Bel Reid worked there for 40 years and will be one of the group meeting today.
She told Lanarkshire Live : "There is a group of staff who are meeting on Tuesday afternoon to celebrate the years we had at the Hamilton town centre store.
"We were like a wee family and had lots of happy times and made many a friend over the years - in both staff and customers.
"The store was the anchor of Hamilton and it will be deeply missed. It really is a sad day."
Marks and Spencer say the majority of employees, of which there was 64 permanent members of staff, have been redeployed to the new food hall, which will open tomorrow (Wednesday, March 30) with a special ribbon cutting at 9am.
It will be led by by store manager Lorraine McGurk, who has worked for M&S for almost 45 years.
She told us : “The whole team at M&S Hamilton are so excited to open the new store and show our regulars the new features.
"With a bigger foodhall, bold Scottish branding and an exciting opening day to look forward to, we feel very lucky to be part of the new development.
"The free parking and longer opening hours are sure to please the community and we hope this will allow us to get to know even more lovely locals.”
The new space will offer exciting new features, designed to turbo-charge the shopping experience for the local community.
Covering 11,500 sq ft and offering almost 500 new product lines, plus new high-tech ways to shop, the new Foodhall is substantially bigger than the previous one and will be perfect for all food shops.
The store will be located at 6 Douglas Park Lane, Hamilton, ML3 0DF and will be open Monday to Friday 8am to 8pm, Saturday from 8am to 7pm and Sunday from 9am to 7pm.
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