The Jewel of Knightsbridge

The Origins of the Harrods Empire

Robin Harrod

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780750968133
• eBook ISBN: 9780750981941
• Subtopic: Wirtschaftsgeschichte

In 1836, Charles Henry Harrod found himself in a prison hulk awaiting transportation to Tasmania for seven years' hard labour. He had been convicted at the Old Bailey of receiving stolen goods, and this should have been the beginning of the end for his fledgling business and his family. And yet, in miraculously escaping his fate and vowing to turn his back on crime, he would become the much esteemed founder of the now legendary Harrods in London's fashionable Knightsbridge district. Some years later Charles was succeeded by his son, who brought with him the necessary energy and drive to take the shop from a successful local grocer's to a remarkable and complex department store, patronised by the wealthy and famous.

Robin Harrod's fascinating family story reveals the previously unknown origins of the store, and follows its remarkable fortunes through family scandal, the devastating fire of 1883 and its subsequent rise from the ashes, to the end of the nineteenth century when its shares were floated on the stock exchange, thus completing one of the most extraordinary comeback stories in the history of commerce.

In 1824 Charles Henry Harrod, later to become a giant of the grocery business, was a single man of 25 and of no great consequence. He was living in Southwark. Though referred to here as Charles Henry, to differentiate him from his son, Charles Digby, certainly at times he was known as Henry or Henry Charles.

Contrary to what has previously been documented in various descriptions of Harrods, his first shop was not a grocery shop. In his books about Harrods, Tim Dale points out that there are many articles about Harrods which state that it was the only large London store not to have started life as a draper’s, but as a grocer’s shop. British History Online, for instance, states, ‘Harrods is untypical of the great London department stores in having risen not from a drapery or general goods business but from a grocer’s shop.’ These statements have proved to be incorrect and Harrods was not especially thrilled to hear the news when this was discovered.

Charles Henry started renting premises at 228 Borough High Street, Southwark, in the April of 1824. The rate records and the Surrey land tax records for the parish of St George the Martyr, Southwark, list him there in every quarter until 1831 but give no indication of his occupation.

Southwark, the district south of London Bridge, has been populated since the Roman era. For most of that time the only crossing of the Thames had been London Bridge and its precursors. The area of London south of the Thames grew much more slowly than the rest of the city. The growth was limited by a lack of additional bridges across the river and the relatively marshy ground. Following the opening of Westminster Bridge in 1750 and then Blackfriars Bridge in 1769, the area blossomed. In 1800 the population of Southwark was about 66,000, only about 7 per cent of the city as a whole, and then between 1801 and 1851 the population nearly doubled.

Southwark and its high street, known as Borough High Street, were full of craftsmen and shopkeepers. There were a disproportionately large number of inns, partly due to the proximity of the riverside and its trade, but more particularly because of the presence of a thriving local brewing industry. Several prisons were also located here, including the King’s Bench Prison and the Marshalsea Debtors’ Prison. The Marshalsea, featured in Dickens’ novels, had been founded in the 1300s and had been rebuilt in the early 1800s. Best known as a debtors’ prison, it also housed those convicted of subversion, sailors who had mutinied and those accused of piracy. It closed in 1842.

The brewing connection with the district came about because until 1750 the High Street and London Bridge was the sole route for all the hop trade traffic from Kent, Surrey and Sussex. The proprietors of the coaching inns thrived on the trade and became very affluent. The medieval pilgrimage route to and from Canterbury and the route from the hop fields of Kent lay through Borough High Street. Warehouses for the hops, managed by brokers called hop factors, were built together with showrooms for the goods. Breweries followed in the same area. The two main breweries in Southwark were, rather oddly, both called the Anchor Brewery. One eventually became the Courage Brewery, and the other, much older, eventually merged with Courage in 1955.

Many of the warehouses and breweries were destroyed by bombing in the Second World War and the industry then moved to Paddocks Wood, near Tunbridge Wells in Kent. (Coincidentally, one of my uncles managed a hop farm in Paddock Wood for about ten years in the 1950s.)

Charles Harrod may have frequented the inns, though this is doubtful as he is known in later life to have been teetotal. He certainly did not get involved in the brewing industry. The first records listing Charles’s occupation are in the London street directories held at Southwark Local Studies Library and now available partially online. In the Pigot & Co. Directory for 1826 and 1827, the entry for 228 High Street, Borough, lists ‘Harrod & Wicking, Linen Drapers, retail’. The next listing is in the 1829 Post Office Directory, which shows Charles Harrod working on his own at the same address as ‘Harrod C.H., Mercer & Haberdasher’.

The Wicking connection in 1826 and 1827 was obviously a transient one, as there is no mention of him at the same address again. In Pigot’s 1839 Directory, there is a Matthew Wicking who was a ‘Linen Draper and Silk Mercer’ at 9 Ludgate Hill, just west of St Paul’s Cathedral. To muddy the water further, the 1846 Post Office Directory lists a James Wicking at the Half Moon Public House, 132 Borough High Street – that would be real diversification!

Contact with a living descendant of the Wicking family who was doing his own family research confirmed the presence of his family in Southwark, but no further details were available and no obvious connection was known to the Harrod family. Further confirmation of the transient relationship between Harrod and Wicking was found when an online version of the London Gazette was searched. Issue 18210, published on 10 January 1826, page 57, contained the following announcement:

Notice is hereby given, that the Partnership which subsisted between the undersigned, William Wicking and Charles Henry Harrod, in the business of Linen-Drapers, at No. 228, High Street, Southwark, was dissolved by mutual consent on 31 December last; and that the business will in future be carried on by the said Charles Henry Harrod only, by whom all debts due to and from the late firm are to be received and paid – Witness their hands this 3rd day of January 1826.

Charles Henry Harrod

William Wicking

What a relief; ‘Harrod and Wicking’s of Knightsbridge’ just does not sound as good as ‘Harrods’!

The records reveal that Charles Harrod continued as the ratepayer and tenant at 228 High Street from 1824 until 1831. He was listed in Robson’s 1832 Directory at the same address, and in other directories prior to that variously as ‘Harrod, Draper’, ‘Harrod. C.H., Mercer & Haberdasher’, and ‘C.H. Harrod, Haberdasher’.

My conclusion at the time of that research was that Charles Harrod had started in business in 1824 and then taken Wicking into partnership for a couple of years. When things did not work out, for whatever reason, he had continued once again on his own until 1831. Further research, however, revealed different information. Sometimes in retrospect, it is perhaps a bad idea to continue researching the same subject repeatedly.

William Wicking was almost certainly born in Surrey. The Wicking family were based in Crowhurst in Surrey which, although just south of the M25 near Oxted, was still in the diocese of Southwark. There are two likely ‘William’ candidates in the records, one baptised in 1801 and the other in 1802. The two may have been cousins.

Prior to the 1826 partnership with Charles Harrod, a different combination was listed in the 1822 Pigot’s Street Directory at 228 High Street. ‘Gainsford & Wicking, Linen Drapers, Retail’ were the residents that year and also in 1825–26. They had another business at 119 King Street in 1821, and at Mermaid Court in 1831, both called ‘Gainsford & Wicking, Linen Drapers’. King Street and Mermaid Court were almost opposite 228 High Street. An entry in British History Online mentions the partnership:

The old Marshalsea site was sold to Samuel Davis, cooper, in 1802, but the prisoners were not removed until 1811. No. 119 [now 163] Borough High Street, and the building over the entrance to Mermaid Court were acquired about 1824 by a firm of wholesale drapers, Gainsford and Wicking, who erected a five-storey building with a double-fronted shop there.

So it looks as though the Harrod story in Southwark was a little more complicated than I had originally thought. William Wicking, or at least someone in his family, was already running a business at the same premises before Charles Harrod became the rate payer. Harrod took over the rent in 1824 despite not being involved in the partnership until 1826. ‘Gainsford & Wicking’ appear to have built their own premises across the road so were obviously not short of funds.

There is no obvious way to explain these confusing facts. Perhaps ‘Gainsford & Wicking’ involved one member of the Wicking family and a different member of the family set up with Harrod for those two years. That Harrod was responsible for the rent from 1824 onwards suggests that he must have had some money to invest in the existing business, which cannot be confirmed. It is possible the dates are blurred by the delay inevitable in reporting changes of ownership and then a new printing of a directory.

It is also possible that Harrod and Wicking just fell out. However, outside events may also have influenced the changes in partnerships. The competition between mercers could have forced closures of shops and realignments in their ownership. Checking the listed shops in Borough High Street for 1838 shows that there were no fewer than eleven silk or linen mercers in the same road, so competition was strong. Further evidence for this is another entry in Pigot’s 1839 London Directory for ‘Gainsford & Gaude’ at 119 High Street – yet another combination.

Another factor which might be of some importance is that in 1825 there was a financial crash, something which may sound very familiar to present-day readers. After the austerity years of the Napoleonic Wars, which ended in 1815, a few months after the Battle of Waterloo Britain was ready to change direction but was left with large debts. The National Debt was 200 per cent, twice the country’s GDP. Compared this with today’s, which is just above 80 per cent.

The state of industrialisation and low cost of the workforce meant that the country was in a good position to reverse the problem, and in a wave of overenthusiasm there had been a huge investment by British individuals and banks in overseas ventures and trade. The almost inevitable result was called ‘the Panic of 1825’.

The stock market crash started in the Bank of England following the collapse of speculative investments in Latin America. The crisis was felt most in England, where it resulted in the closing of six London banks and sixty country banks – about 10 per cent of the total. Inaction by the Bank of England led to delay and backlogs, and was followed by widespread bankruptcies, recession and unemployment. Documents about Charles Harrod written several years later report that he ‘was ruined by the mercantile Panic of 1825’, having been a ‘respectable and responsible tradesman’.

Although the financial crash might have been a problem in his life, Harrod was obviously not completely ruined. He continued the business on his own at 228 High Street and, between 1827 and 1831 or 1832, both there and at another premises in the area at Maidstone Buildings, a cul-de-sac next door to No. 228.

Despite that report, Charles Henry must have turned things around or been rescued, as he was confident enough about his future to get married. On 18 February 1830, a year before he moved away from the Southwark area, Charles Henry Harrod married Elizabeth Digby in the parish church of Birch in Essex. A special licence was required from Lambeth Palace as Elizabeth was under 21 years old. There is some confusion about her birthdate but Elizabeth was born around 1810 and so she was probably 19 years old.

The licence was dated 15 February in the same year, and stated, ‘Appeared Personally, Charles Henry Harrod of the Parish of St George Southwark in the County of Surrey a Bachelor aged twenty one years and upwards.’ Charles Henry swore an oath that the consent of Elizabeth’s father, James Digby, had been obtained. The witnesses at the wedding were William Digby and James Digby Junior, who were the eldest two of Elizabeth’s brothers; Eliza Mason, probably a relation from Charles’s mother’s family; and Mary Bateman, who is not known.

Elizabeth Digby was the eldest daughter of James Digby Senior, a successful Essex pork butcher and miller. The Digby connection may have been the source of some financial support for Charles. The Digby family were for many generations butchers, millers, farmers or agricultural workers in and around Birch, a couple of miles south of Colchester, and certainly, for a while, were quite an affluent lot, owning mills and land locally. We shall hear more about the Digbys later.

Maidstone Buildings, Harrod’s second property in the area, was also found in the rate records, but proved to be in the parish of St Saviour’s, Southwark, whereas 228 High Street was in the parish of St George the Martyr. Tallis’s brilliant drawings and maps of early nineteenth-century London (1838–40), and Horwood’s map of Southwark, updated in 1813, show that although Maidstone Buildings and 228 High Street are in different parishes, Maidstone Buildings is a mews street off the west side of Borough High Street, the entrance being under an archway on the building listed as No. 231, next door to No. 228. The boundary between St George and St Saviour’s falls, remarkably, exactly between the two buildings.

The Tallis drawings are well worth a look for anyone interested in the London of the early nineteenth century. They show in some detail the facades of the buildings, their relationship with other buildings and the side streets, and list the ownership. The Tallis drawings also show the ‘Gainsford & Wicking’ premises at 119 High Street, almost opposite 228 and next to King Street and Mermaid Court.

The numbering of High Street, Southwark, has changed completely since the 1830s. The site of Harrod’s premises can be found on the west side of the present High Street, just north of Union Street; 228 Borough High Street is now numbered 76 High Street and is a cafe, with a gated and locked archway leading to Maidstone Buildings between Nos 72 and 76 High Street. Though the High Street itself now has a variable standard of retail premises and is a bustling road with heavy traffic, Maidstone Buildings is, in contrast, a rather quiet and more fashionable mews area behind security gates, with a variety of offices and living accommodation.

The rate records show that after Harrod left the area in 1831, Maidstone Buildings was rented by James Pike, a hop factor. The buildings still boast the old winches on the outside of the upper floors for hoisting goods up and down. A 2006 planning application described Maidstone Buildings as follows:

… comprises former hop stores that have been converted into residential flats and they consist of two parallel, three and four-storey buildings that lie on either side of a central access road. The main entrance is via an archway between Nos 72 and 76 Borough High Street.

Other documents show that Charles Henry had interests in other premises south of the river. In his 1885 will, he leaves to one of his sons ‘4 leasehold messuages, Nos 11, 12, 13 and 14 New Church Street, Bermondsey’. New Church Street no longer exists but is in the same place that is now occupied by Llewellyn Street. This is about a mile as the crow flies from Borough High Street and backs onto the wharves of the river.

In an attempt to find out more about Charles Henry’s presence in Southwark, contact was made with Duncan Field, the latest in a long line of Fields who own Field & Sons, an estate agency in the area, which was founded around 1804. He had already retired from the business, but was happy to meet and let me look at their archives. The Southwark branch of his firm is still run from their original building at what is now 54 Borough High Street and was previously No. 240. Quite probably a Field ancestor would have dealt with the letting of the property at No. 228 to Harrod.

My contact with Duncan Field came about by a rather devious route. His wife, Shirley Harrison, is a writer who had researched a book about Southwark. She had spent some time in 2008 in the Harrods archives looking for material for her book about Winnie the Pooh. Because of her interest in Southwark, the Harrods archivist Sebastian Wormell by chance mentioned my recent research there, and the connection was made. At Duncan’s invitation, the cellar of their ancient premises was inspected to see if records of the properties at Nos 228 or 231 were still in existence. Sadly, no documents before 1850 had survived the many years of fl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 In the Beginning, there was a Draper
• 2 Out of Essex – The Origin of the Harrod Family
• 3 The First Grocery
• 4 The Move to Kensington
• 5 Charles Digby Takes Over
• 6 Out of the Ashes
• 7 Harrods Goes Public
• 8 Retirement
• 9 Charles Digby’s Family
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgements
• Picture Section