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About the content of the Suters website Back in 2008 I registered the domain name "philipsuter.co.uk" and set up a one page website. This mainly had a list of articles I had written, most of them accessed via a link to one of my insurance marketing or holiday home marketing websites. This remained like that until early December 2013. I was in the south of France helping my two nieces pack up the contents of their parents' home. (Dick Suter and Ginny Suter) Very sadly they had passed away within weeks of each other in March and May 2013 following long battles against cancer. Going through Dick Suter and Ginny Suter's possessions, I came across an album full of advertisements that my eldest brother Dick had produced back in the 1970s for the family department store business Suters Ltd. I found more and more information including copies of Internationals in Belgium a magazine that both Ginny and Dick wrote numerous articles for. Some of these were in the magazine, others on computer discs. There were also articles on motor racing that Dick had written and I remembered I had some original Autosport articles from the 1960s. Seeing all the old Suters Ltd material, I realised that was little mention on line of the family business that had been so much part of Slough and Uxbridge for over fifty years And some of that time in Windsor, Ruislip and Ashford and prior to that with origins in Ledbury in Herefordshire. I knew my brother in law Richard Ensor had spent months researching and writing the Suters family history in 2004 and 2005, but we had nothing on line. My initial idea was to post a brief history on the Wikipedia site. I asked my cousin Tom Suter who had been involved with the family business for most of his "retail working life" to write a history through his eyes. Tom had already provided a great quantity of material to Richard, together with other family members including Tony Suter, Su Suter, George Suter and my late father John Suter. Tom produced an excellent history that can be found here and I attempted submitting it to Wikipedia. It is not an easy process and it was too long, so in the end in December 2013 it was published on this site. Articles by Dick and Ginny were added and Autosport gave consent for the articles to be published on this site with a note stating "that are reproduced with the kind permission of Autosport January 2nd 2014" A great deal of Richard Ensor's detailled history has been added to the Suters story and additional documentation has been supplied by Charlotte at The Slough Museum and in December 2014 more information about Ledbury and the shop there from Jo at the Old Ledbury Facebook Group & Website. Under the "Suters" history a number of former staff have made contact and details can be found at Feedback and Memories of Suters Ltd. There have also been contributions from the Slough 1970s Facebook Group. In December 2014 Chris Mott from Sydney, Australia contacted me saying that "Would you like any further information on William Parker Suter and Jane Mousir who moved to Queensland, Australia during the 1880's, They were my Great-Great grandparents" Chris produced three further family tree spreadsheets that can be found here. Also in December 2014 Lynne Robinson contacted me to say her a member of her family Charles Pedlingham a grocer at 4 High Street, Ledbury was the neighbour of my Grand father G W Suter the draper. More about this here. Just before Christmas James Fielding contacted me. James works with Jamie Anderson, son of Gerry Anderson, who made Thunderbirds and all the other great puppets series in the 60's. He discovered the images of Supercar and Stingray on the site that I had taken in the 1960s when AP Films had loaned the puppets and models to the Slough branch. They used to be frequent visitors to the toy department in Slough buying model kits for the TV series. As the quality of the old slides were not too clear, in early January 2015 James very kindly scanned them. Go to images here. After being involved with internet marketing since 2001, it is a great shame that the Suters Ltd project was never produced earlier as a lot more people could have contributed their own memories. In fact had I not helped with the house sorting out exercise in December 2013, nothing would probably have been done about this website and I do hope you find the content interesting. Dick and Ginny Suter wrote some excellent articles that were published when they were living in Belgium before the retired to France, but they were published in magazine form before the Internet took off. I have also included information about my late cousin Su (Elizabeth) Suter as Ginny had some very interesting articles about her and going through the archives also found some brief information following the death of George Suter. As the names of my father John Suter came up up on numerous occasions not only with Suter, his World War 2 war service and the Rotary Club of Uxbridge he too has a page together with his brothers Arthur, Clarence and Frank.. In August 2016 Rosanne Goreham from Middlesex made contact. In fact her message nearly did not get through as changes had been made by the website hosts and the old contact page was not working. Fortunately she found me via Facebook and sent a message and sent me a 1930's copy of Party Songs - a publication that was given to children at Christmas one year. In the summer of 2018, my nephew Russ Suter discovered a bound copy of "Spotlight Magazine" at his Dad, Robert Suter's house. This was the in-house staff magazine / journal. Unfortunately it only had copies from 1969 to early 1974, but many of these articles, features have been included within the pages of the "Suters story" and a Spotlight Magazine page has been created here. They have been re-produced either by scanning and converting to a PDF or partly by being typed up again. Russ has also unconvered many historical articles and Suters advertisements in 2018. In September 2018 I found my old negatives of photos I had taken prior to the sale in 1978. Many of the ones on the site were scanned from photos I had developed back in 1978, so have been able to replace them with digitally processed ones. They are still not as good as people take these days, however a lot better. There was a theme on at Slough at the time with striped canopies over the sales areas. In March 2020 my cousin Tom Suter provided me with a selection of photos including some of Coads in Uxbridge, the Uxbridge Store Jubilee 1924 - 1949 and photos of inside Slough in 1955 and the entrance to the Slough store in 1962 including his father Clarence. As well additional photos and newspaper cuttings and letters there were also 3 Historical bookkeeping ledgers from Suters 1922 - 1934 There were further additions in June 2020 including an article from the Slough Chamber of Commerce Journal June 1959 The Store that grew Up with Slough Suters Ltd and business flyers for Suters of Marlow and Wallingford (originally Ian Suter Fashions) In August 2020, Michael Pitfield the son of Robina (Robin) Pitfield who worked at Suters in Uxbridge for twenty years and was the shoe buyer at Uxbridge contacted me and provided some very interesting information that has now been added at Robina (Robin)Pitfield - Shoe buyer at Suters in Uxbridge In October 2020, Ian Johnson who worked at Bourne and Hollingsworth till the end of Bournes under the Raybeck ownership made contact. Ian's Grandfather was General Manager all through the blitz in the Second World War and beyond it. Ian had been going to B & H reunions and it was very interesting to find out what happened to various members of the Bourne family and staff who were there when I was working at the store in the mid seventies. In January 2021 Philip received an email from Tony Bradford. Tony's father Peter Bradford was the Suters Ltd Chartered Accountant and Company Secretary for many years. Tony said "Interesting to read some of the history set out on your web page regarding Suters stores. My father, Peter Bradford, was company secretary and accountant through the 60s and 70s and then with Owen Owen. Our great family friend, Hilda Browne ran the cash office from the Lamson room. I have fond memories of the Slough store in particular the lifts, boardroom with the private annex inc bath - my fathers office had an adding machine on the desk hand cranked. The accounts eventually digitised via punch cards that went off to Management Dynamics to go onto tape via a computer that filled an entire floor of the building. Thanks again for the pages...brought back some good memories"
In March 2021 Dick Suter's daughter Pascale was going through some of her late father's belongings and came across his "scrapbook" of advertisements from the 1970s. Some of these have appeared on this site already and others had not. Visit page Here In November 2021 Harvey Powell made contact with a photo an press cutting about his mother, Jacqueline Eaton who was a 19 year old display artist at the Uxbridge Store. She won a competition to name the "Traffic Lights Boutique". See Traffic Lights Boutique at Suters In April 2022 Yvonne Butler contacted us about the Ruislip shop and sent a selection of advertisements including Wright & Parsons 1936 - Suters bought this business and Altons who would have bought the business when Ruislip was closed in the late 1950s. See Suters in Ruislip, Windsor and Ashford (Middlesex) In August 2022 Derek Haynes emailed with an image of cancelled blank 'bill of sale' that had been passed onto himwhen his Aunt Hilda had passed away. Hilda Haynes worked in the Uxbridge Suters in the 1950s and as a young boy growing up in Uxbridge - he went to Suters sometimes with one of his parents to meet her when she finished work.
____________________________________________________________________ Internal Photos of Suters in Slough and Uxbridge June 1978 and Behind the Scenes at Suters of Slough and Uxbridge If you have any hisorical pictures and other information from the era Suters were in Ledbury, Ashford (Middx), Windsor, Ruislip, Slough and Uxbridge that we can use I would be very grateful e-mail Contact here Philip Suter - Updated 2014/2016/2018/2020/2021 Acknowledgments and Contributors to Suter Family and Suters Ltd History Here ____________________________________________________________________ Please note: The General Data Protection Regulations May 25th 2018 - Please note we do not collect any personal information from visitors to this website. Links to Google Analytics were removed in March 2018 ____________________________________________________________________ Source of images, unless otherwise stated - Suter family archives |
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