Marks & Spencer Newcastle upon Tyne. M&S has opened a number of stores at out of town locations since the trend to build shopping centres away from town centres became popular in the 1980s. The first was at the MetroCentre, Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, which opened in 1986. Another notable example is the store at the Merry Hill Shopping Centre at Brierley Hill, West Midlands. This store opened on 23 October 1990 shortly after the closure of stores in the nearby town centres of Dudley and West Bromwich; the Merry Hill store was not originally intended to replace these two town centre stores,
Merry Hill Shopping Centre hotel at its base, a restaurant halfway up and a nightclub plus observatory at the top. However, plans to build it were scrapped in 1992. Having already purchased a 50% share from Westfield in March 2014, Intu Properties acquired the remaining 50% from the Queensland Investment Corporation in June 2016. When the Merry Hill Centre first opened, a number of large retail chains decided to move their stores from surrounding towns into the new shopping centre. These included: Marks & Spencer, C&A (C&A closed in early-2001 and the store is now occupied by H&M) and formerly Littlewoods, until they closed