The last BHS stores are set to close their doors for the final time, ending an 88-year presence on the High Street.
The closure of the final 22 shops dotted around the UK comes after the retailer was placed into administration in March but failed to find a buyer.
Previous owners Dominic Chappell and Sir Philip Green have been criticised for mismanaging the chain and failing to protect the company pension scheme.
Administrators have already made 141 store closures over recent weeks.
These included its flagship store on Oxford Street in London's West End.
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British Homes Stores, a name that was a fixture on most UK High Streets, will then disappear nearly a century after first opening in Brixton, south London.
A history of a High Street stalwart
- 1928: A group of American entrepreneurs set up British Home Stores. The first store is in Brixton and nothing in the store costs more than a shilling (5p) - double that of rival Woolworth's maximum price of sixpence
- 1929: BHS raises its maximum price to five shillings (25p) allowing it to sell home furnishings, including drapery
- 1970: The firm expands steadily in the postwar era - by the beginning of the year it employs some 12,000 workers in 94 stores across the UK
- 1985: BHS begins to franchise its brand to stores around the world, to which it supplies products and support
- 1986: The store merges with designer Sir Terence Conran's Habitat and Mothercare to form Storehouse Plc, and the British Home Stores name is replaced with BhS, then Bhs and eventually BHS
- 2000: Retail billionaire Sir Philip Green buys BHS from Storehouse Plc for £200m
- 2002: BHS becomes part of the Arcadia empire, controlled by Sir Philip, when he buys the clothing group and its Topshop, Dorothy Perkins and Burton brands
- 2005: The store resurrects its British Home Stores branding, but it is losing ground to cheaper rivals such as Primark
- 2015: Sir Philip sells the loss-making BHS for £1 to Retail Acquisitions led by Dominic Chappell, writing off £215m of debts in the process
- 2016: BHS begins an insolvency procedure to reduce its rents and transfer its pensions liabilities into the Pension Protection Fund, the government-supported rescue agency
Years of under-investment and failing to react effectively to intense competition led to the slow demise of BHS over the past two decades.
Its most recent owners have also been blamed following an investigation by a joint committee of MPs last month.
They described billionaire retailer Sir Philip Green, who owned BHS from 2000 to 2015, as the "unacceptable face of capitalism".
Sir Philip, who has promised to sort out a £600m pensions blackhole at BHS, could also be stripped of his knighthood.
If talks between Sir Philip and the pensions regulator fail, then the 11,000 BHS staff who have lost their jobs will get a smaller pension than expected.
Analysis
By Simon Jack, business editor
In one way the story of BHS is not unique. It is an everyday tale of commerce - healthy businesses thrive, sickly ones perish, the High Street evolves - that's life.
In many others it is not. It is also the story of two controversial owners.
Sir Philip Green bought BHS for £200m in 2000 and in the early years it made profits. All of these profits were taken out, quite legally, in dividends in the years up to 2004.
BHS then limped along for another decade through a recession, being kept alive by loans from the rest of Sir Philip Green's empire until it was sold last year for just £1.
The troubled world of BHS
The last 22 stores to close are:
- Exeter
- Surrey Quays, London
- St Enoch Centre, Glasgow
- Metrocentre, Tyne and Wear
- York
- Merryhill, West Midlands
- Romford, Essex
- Harrow, north west London
- Doncaster
- Walthamstow, east London
- Uxbridge, west London
- Bexleyheath, Kent
- Leicester
- Norwich
- Belfast
- Kingston, Surrey
- Hanley, Staffordshire
- St James, Northampton
- Swansea
- Wood Green, north London
- Cribbs Causeway, Bristol
- St Albans, Hertfordshire