Family-run department store in small North Yorkshire town celebrates 140th anniversary

Mrs Garrard, who still runs the store with her husband Keith, said that she had initially never planned on taking a role with the company until her father decided to sell the business.

She said: “It’s a family run business in that its been in the family for many years and i've grown up with it. But it was something that as a young person, I didn't want to be involved with really, because as children do, they want to do their own thing, and find their own path.

“Thats what I had done, I had moved away, gone to university, then I met my husband and we settled down South and had children and live there for ten years.

“But then this opportunity came up. My dad had been trying to sell the business for a while and just came to us and said ‘is this something you would fancy having a go at?’, so we did.”

Milners of Layburn Founder Christoper Milner first began his career in the fabrics industry through an apprenticeship in Northallerton when he was 14 years old. After founding the business as a travelling sales person in 1883, at the age of 30, Christopher Milner would go on to set up a store in Hawes.

Further stores were then opened by his sons in Kirkby Stephen, Bentham, Appleby and Leyburn, until the outbreak of the second world war, when all stores except the original Hawes branch closed.

In 1966, Mrs Garrard’s father David Milner, and grandfather Raymond Milner moved into the businesses current premises in Leyburn, which they would go on to renovate and expand up until the 1990s.

Speaking on how she believes her great great grandad would feel knowing the store is still family run, Mrs Garrard said: “I’m sure he must be really proud that he started something. It's his legacy isnt it - he started this legacy in 1883, never knowing what would come.”

When Mrs Garrard and her husband took over in the 2000s, they implemented a number of changes.

“When we took over in 2006 it was a very different business,” said MS Garrard

“My dad had run the business for around 40 years, and he had run it the way it had always been run, selling a little bit of everything.

“When we came along we could see how times were changing in the industry. We cleared out departments that didn't do so well, and we narrowed it down and streamlined the business to departments that we knew we could do well at.

“We also tailor the business to suit our customers. Because we’re such a small business, it feels like we do know our customers personally, so we can actually go and buy products that our customers want”

Speaking on the likelihood of the business staying within the family in future generations, Ms Garrard said: “We have two daughters who are 22 and 19, and at the moment they have no interest, but then I didn't have interest in it when I was their age, so who knows.

“I think when you’re a teeneager, and you're born and brought up in the dales, all you want to do is get out of the dales. But I think once you've done that, you appreciate what you’ve got back home. And thats what happened to me.”