A FORMER manager of a Woolworths store has decided to become a plumber.

A year ago today, Martin Street heard the business and his livelihood were in the hands of the administrators.

Mr Street was one of almost 700 people employed by the High Street chain in Oxfordshire at the time of the announcement.

The father-of-two, who was manager of the Witney store, said: “I had worked for Woolworths for 20 years but when I was made redundant I took a conscious decision to quit retailing.

“But I was lucky too, because my wife, Debbie, a part-time pharmacologist at the John Radcliffe, was able to go full time. That meant that I could study to become a plumber – partly at home and partly by attending a college in Southampton.

“Now Martin Street Plumbing Services is just about to start trading.”

Mr Street said he had enjoyed playing house husband and seeing more of his children, Jamie, nine, and Ellen, seven.

He continued: “There were tell-tale signs that things weren’t good at Woolworths – lack of stock, reluctance to spend money, tumbling share price, but I am still astonished that it wasn’t saved.”

In all 805 Woolworths shops across the UK were closed this year. About 30,000 people lost their jobs.

Of the nine Oxfordshire former Woolworths stores, all but one of the premises has been picked out by businesses for re-use.

In Witney and in Cowley, Oxford, the former shops have been reborn as 99p stores; in Henley the Woolworths shop became a Sainsbury’s, and the store at Thame is set to do likewise early next year.

The former Woolworths in Didcot rose from the ashes on the centenary anniversary of Woolworths in Britain, November 5, as the first Alworths – dubbed son of Woolworths – functioning under its former manager Helen Pook.

The Abingdon store is now part of the Thame-based Cargo furniture shop chain; H&M has taken over the Banbury store, and Iceland the one in Bicester.

Only the Wantage shop remains empty.

Ms Pook, who worked for Woolworths for 23 years before becoming manager of Alworths, said: “Now we employ 35 people here – more than half of them ex-Woolworths.

“I was out of work for 12 weeks. It was like suffering a bereavement. Former employees, both in stores and across stores, were almost like an extended family. Many of us still miss it very much.

“We got statutory redundancy but we had to go to the job centre, where most of us had never been before, and it was all very worrying.

“I was lucky because I got a job fairly quickly at a supermarket. At the same time I was delighted when I got the telephone call to manage the new Alworths.”