WHEN the furniture salesman assured his housewife customer that the table she'd chosen would last a lifetime, he certainly wasn't exaggerating.

For 88 years on, that table, which cost the princely sum of one pound two shillings and sixpence (about £1.12p in new money) is still giving sterling service.

It's now owned by Mary Knox of Canberra Avenue, Thatto Heath, whose mother bought the table, with an assortment of other furniture from the once-famous Griffins store in St Helens. The site is now occupied by the Midland Bank.

Mary was prompted to dig out her mother's receipts from 1911 after seeing a picture on this page featuring Griffins, on the corner of Westfield Street.

She sent samples to me, and I was surprised to find that the billheads refer to that family business not just as a furniture store, for which they were famed, but as 'artists and photographers.'

Mary's mum certainly enjoyed her shopping spree, buying, in addition to that famous table, eight chairs (two of them rockers) a sofa, rug, fire fender, two tidies (whatever they were!) a length of oilcloth, two pans and a kettle.

Total outlay for that van-load was well under a tenner.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.