LUCKS closed in January 1966. About 70 people were made redundant. Then Dressers took over Lucks' building on High Row. It closes this month, and about 70 people will be made redundant.

For Sandra Patterson, it is an unenviable double: she was made redundant by Lucks in 1966 and will be made redundant by Dressers this month.

Sandra, 50, finished school as a 15-year-old in July 1965. All the other companies in the area only wanted 16-year-olds and suggested she waited until her birthday at the end of August.

But Richard Luck, the fourth generation of Lucks at the head of the haberdashery, did not mind, and started Sandra immediately on £3 10s 6d a week.

"He said he would take care of me if anything happened in that month," she says.

She worked on the fancy goods counter, selling silk scarves which were wrapped between white tissue paper, exotic umbrellas and costume jewellery. She learned that you do not cut fur with scissors when you sell it by the yard, otherwise it frays - you score it with a razor blade down the back.

Her boss was Hilda Coldwell, who featured in Echo Memories last week. Sandra features alongside her on the 1965 picture of the interior of the shop (see below) we published a fortnight ago.

"She was an excellent boss because she didn't shout at me!" says Sandra.

But four months after starting, she was told Lucks was at an end and she was searching for a job again.

She found one at the Co-op in Priestgate. But this, too, ended in redundancy when the Co-op was bought and demolished to make way for the Cornmill Centre.

In 1988, Sandra returned to the shop on High Row where Lucks had been, but this time she was working for Dressers. In fact, she had moved to the other side of the floor from the old fancy goods counter, and was now working on the stationery and pen counter.

But then, last month, redundancy - for the third time, and twice from the same building.

"I have come right around again," she says.

"I started off at Lucks and ended up at Dressers."

ANOTHER Lucks' love story: Ivy Raine, 86, of Darlington, started at Lucks in 1936 when her previous employer, Cobourn's on Blackwellgate, closed.

Cobourn's was a high-class dressmaker, and most of its clients, like Ivy, transferred to Lucks.

"We made for people, mostly titled people, people who could afford it," she says.

And by the time she left Lucks in 1939 to assist the war effort, she had met her husband, Bob.

THE upper classes were good customers of Lucks. "My brother, Alec Busby, was trained as a carpet-fitter and went out to big houses to lay carpets and advise on curtains," says Mrs AI Robinson of Gainford.

When Lucks closed, Alec, who died three years ago, went to work for Bainbridge Barkers, in Blackwellgate.

PROBABLY the only aspect of Lucks that Echo Memories has not discussed in recent weeks is the delivery department.

Keith Brown, of Darlington, would like to know more because his father, William, was a van driver there in the early 1960s.

"I was only about five but he used to take me into work on a Sunday when the shop was closed," remembers Keith.

"We went up the side passageway and in through a side door."

William also took Keith on deliveries in his Morris JU van. But this is a sad story. One day in 1963, William was walking down the passageway and stood on a plank and a nail went into his foot. It turned gangrenous and badly affected his diabetes. He died shortly afterwards, aged 39.

l If anyone has a photograph of a Lucks van or the delivery department, please get in touch with Echo Memories.

l If you have any information or memories about any of the items in this week's column, please write to: Echo Memories, The Northern Echo, Priestgate, Darlington DL1 1NF. Or call (01325) 505062 or e-mail clloydco.u