Name: Francis Catcheside Comment: I worked for Weston Hart in the late 1970s, although I also remember it fondly as a customer of the record department at the Fareham store as a teenager.
In the 1970s it had been absorbed into a larger company, the Woolacott Group who were Haywards Heath-based, although the local stores continued to trade as Weston Hart.
Woolacott's folded in the mid to late 1970s and a Gosport-based businessman with varied local interests - including the Gosport Rootes dealership (later Chrysler, later Talbot - Erskin Motors (if memory serves) bought the company which is about when I joined.
Sadly the owners got into difficulties and yet again 'Weston Hart' went bust in 1979.
All the shops closed, other than Cosham, which the general manager Ian Hoper bought - it continued for a few years as a record-only shop, trading as 'Hart & Soul'. (2022)
Name: Francis Catcheside
Comment: I worked for Weston Hart in the late 1970s, although I also remember it fondly as a customer of the record department at the Fareham store as a teenager.
In the 1970s it had been absorbed into a larger company, the Woolacott Group who were Haywards Heath-based, although the local stores continued to trade as Weston Hart.
Woolacott's folded in the mid to late 1970s and a Gosport-based businessman with varied local interests - including the Gosport Rootes dealership (later Chrysler, later Talbot - Erskin Motors (if memory serves) bought the company which is about when I joined.
Sadly the owners got into difficulties and yet again 'Weston Hart' went bust in 1979.
All the shops closed, other than Cosham, which the general manager Ian Hoper bought - it continued for a few years as a record-only shop, trading as 'Hart & Soul'.
(2022)