They were more commonly known at the end as BHS (unless you happened to live in the center of Edinburgh where the large British Home Stores shown in the article dominates Princes Street). They were a very mid-tier department store, better than say Woolworths but a lot worse than John Lewis. It's not especially surprising that they went bust, but it was not helped when the last owner infamously flogged off the assets, loaded the stores with debt, then awarded his wife an enormous one-off dividend.

Edit: The Philip Green dividend debacle. I forgot that the cheque was not only enormous, but was tax free because his wife resides in Monaco. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2005/oct/21/executivesa... Many of the statements in that article haven't aged well.

I've lived in the UK 21 years, and only been in one once. It's decline was long and slow.