Are you missing the shops?

Physically going out, looking in the shop windows at the various displays, seeing what's on offer, what takes your fancy, just browsing...

Lockdown has made all that impossible. So many people are shopping virtually, online, and for those who do go out, it is no longer a pleasurable linger. It is mask up, in, out and home in a hurry.

So let's step back in time in Dorset to when shopfronts really were shopfronts, each individually laid out and decorated, usually by independent shopkeepers who wanted to make their windows as memorable as possible.

We also have some pictures of shop staff from the much-missed Woolworths and M&S stores.

H.T. Wells baker and grocer at Castletown, Portland

Dorset Echo:

Clarkes Handicrafts, Bridge Street, Sturminster Newton, 1970s

Dorset Echo:

Clothes shop Twinflair, in Weymouth in the early 1960s Picture: Graham Herbert

Dorset Echo:

Howe’s corner shop junction of Cornhill and High West Street, Dorchester

Dorset Echo:

M&S staff in Dorchester, pictured in 1933

Dorset Echo:

Parsons, High East Street, Dorchester

Dorset Echo:

Shop at Fortuneswell

Dorset Echo:

Staff from Weymouth’s Woolworths on a staff outing in 1937 to Lynton & Lynmouth in Devon

Dorset Echo:

The Dorset Bookshop, Blandford, 1960s

Dorset Echo:

Village store at Winterborne Whitechurch 1980s

Dorset Echo:

The short-lived Woolworths in Shaftesbury, which only lasted for three years. It opened in 2007 and was closed by 2009 - then became M&Co

Dorset Echo: