The decorations are put up and the shops are full of people buying presents for their loved ones.

Even though we increasingly do our shopping online, the act of going Christmas shopping is still as important to some as putting up the Christmas tree or eating the first mince pie of the season.

We decided to take a look back at some of the shops the people of Norwich used to love doing their Christmas shopping in before they were lost from the high street.

Curls department store in the 1960s (Image: Newsquest)

Curls department store in the 1960s (Image: Newsquest)

In the 1850s, three brothers from West Norfolk—Edward, Jacob, and Henley Curl—arrived in Norwich and transformed part of the city into a thriving shopping destination.

The Curl brothers purchased one of Norwich's oldest inns, the Rampant Horse, converting it into warehouses and shops on the site that eventually became the Curls department store.

Tragically, the shop was destroyed during the Blitz in April 1942.

The cleared site was repurposed for various events and parking until the spring of 1956, when a state-of-the-art department store, heralded as the most modern in East Anglia, was........

© Norwich Evening News