We're having to say farewell to a very British institution

The civility and comfort food of the department store cafe was never cool, but it was ours. As M&S winds its down, Hannah Twiggs ponders the journey from treat to sad retreat

- Hannah Twiggs

When Marks & Spencer announced that it would be closing 11 of its in-store cafes this week, it didn't sound like much – until you realised it marks the quiet end of a national ritual.

For generations of shoppers, the M&S cafe was more than a place to refuel; it was a pause. A pot of tea between the hosiery and the homeware. A toasted teacake with your nan after a trip to the fitting rooms.

I grew up in the early Noughties, when no shopping trip was complete without a stop for lunch at BHS. My mum would take my brother and me to buy our school uniforms or, if I was lucky, something from Tammy Girl. Afterwards, we'd collapse into the cafe for sandwiches or carrot cake, flushed with the triumph of new pencil cases and pleated skirts.

My grandparents, who live in St Annes, did the same - retirees in neat coats, lingering over milky tea and cottage pie.

Department store cafes were as much a part of British life as Sunday roasts and the Argos catalogue: dependable, unflashy and always slightly too hot.

They were, in their own way, the “husband seat” of retail - those upholstered perches in the fitting room where bored partners waited while you tried on clothes. A liminal space, somewhere between shopping and sitting still.

But over the past two decades, as department stores have emptied out and our high streets have hollowed, these cafes have faded with them. Now, where there were once Formica trays and filter coffee, there's Pret, Leon and Starbucks - faster, slicker, more expensive and somehow less comforting.

However, the department store cafe actually began as something quite radical. When Marks & Spencer opened its first Cafe Bars in 1935, they served hot meals - chops, steak, fish and chips - to weary shoppers, offering many a taste of restaurant dining at working-class prices.