Lewis's
Encyclopedia
Department store
A department store is a retail establishment which satisfies a wide range of the consumer's personal and residential durable goods product needs; and at the same time offering the consumer a choice of multiple merchandise lines, at variable price points, in all product categories...
in Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
city centre. It was formerly the flagship of a chain of department stores under the Lewis's name, that operated from 1856 to 1991, when the company went into administration. Several stores in the chain were bought by the company Owen Owen
Owen Owen
Owen Owen was a Liverpool-based operator of department stores in the United Kingdom.- The man :Owen Owen was born in October 1847 and died on Easter Sunday in 1910 at the age of 62....
and continued to operate under the Lewis's brand name for several years. After the closure of the Manchester store in 2001, only the original Liverpool store continued to trade under the Lewis's name. It was then sold in 2007 to the Vergo Retail Ltd
Vergo Retail
Vergo Retail Ltd was a department store business based in Liverpool, England, founded in 2007 and currently in administration. Vergo Retail ran 20 shops, consisting of nine department stores, including Lewis's of Liverpool, Robbs of Hexham, Joplings of Sunderland and Derrys of Plymouth and four...
, but the store closed in 2010. For Christmas 2010 and beyond, the Lewis's grotto manager, Display Team and staff have moved the Famous Lewis's Christmas Grotto to the 4th Floor of Rapid Hardware (also in Liverpool). Lewis's is set to be reborn with a home store in Bury
Bury
Bury is a town in Greater Manchester, England. It lies on the River Irwell, east of Bolton, west-southwest of Rochdale, and north-northwest of the city of Manchester...
which is set to open later this year.
Lewis's is not affiliated in any way with the John Lewis
John Lewis Partnership
The John Lewis Partnership is an employee-owned UK partnership which operates John Lewis department stores, Waitrose supermarkets and a number of other services...
chainstores, who are a completely separate company.
History
The first Lewis's was opened in 1856 in Liverpool by entrepreneur David LewisDavid Lewis (English merchant)
David Lewis , was an English merchant and philanthropist of Jewish origin.He was born in London. Settling in Liverpool in 1840, he had by 1856 accumulated enough capital to start his own business as a boys' clothier in Bold street...
, as a men's and boys' clothing store, mostly manufacturing his own stock. In 1864 Lewis's branched out into women's clothing. In the 1870s the store expanded and added departments, including shoes in 1874 and tobacco in 1879. Also in 1879, Lewis's opened one of the world's first "Christmas grottoes" in Lewis's Bon Marché, Church Street, Liverpool. It was named "Christmas Fairyland".
The first Lewis's outside Liverpool opened in nearby Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
in 1877, and another, by personal suggestion from Joseph Chamberlain
Joseph Chamberlain
Joseph Chamberlain was an influential British politician and statesman. Unlike most major politicians of the time, he was a self-made businessman and had not attended Oxford or Cambridge University....
on his new Corporation Street
Corporation Street, Birmingham
Corporation Street is a main shopping street in Birmingham city centre, England.It runs from the law courts at its northern end to the centre of New Street at its southern.- Planning :...
in Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
in 1885. The Manchester store included a full scale ballroom on the fifth floor, which was also used for exhibitions. Buying offices were also located on the fifth floor until a takeover by Liverpool-based competitor Owen Owen
Owen Owen
Owen Owen was a Liverpool-based operator of department stores in the United Kingdom.- The man :Owen Owen was born in October 1847 and died on Easter Sunday in 1910 at the age of 62....
(see below). A fourth store opened in Sheffield
Sheffield
Sheffield is a city and metropolitan borough of South Yorkshire, England. Its name derives from the River Sheaf, which runs through the city. Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and with some of its southern suburbs annexed from Derbyshire, the city has grown from its largely...
in 1884 but proved unprofitable and closed in 1888.
Louis Cohen took over the business after Lewis's death, and oversaw a period of consolidation.
After Louis Cohen's death, control passed to Harold and Rex Cohen, who took the company public in 1924. New stores were once again opened, in Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
(1929), Leeds
Leeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...
(1932), Hanley in Stoke-on-Trent
Stoke-on-Trent
Stoke-on-Trent , also called The Potteries is a city in Staffordshire, England, which forms a linear conurbation almost 12 miles long, with an area of . Together with the Borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme Stoke forms The Potteries Urban Area...
(1934) and Leicester
Leicester
Leicester is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England, and the county town of Leicestershire. The city lies on the River Soar and at the edge of the National Forest...
(1936). Lewis's were generally among the largest department stores in their respective localities.
In 1951 the Lewis's group purchased the famous London department store Selfridges
Selfridges
Selfridges, AKA Selfridges & Co, is a chain of high end department stores in the United Kingdom. It was founded by Harry Gordon Selfridge. The flagship store in London's Oxford Street is the second largest shop in the UK and was opened on 15 March 1909.More recently, three other stores have been...
and later became part of the Sears
Sears plc
Sears plc was a large British-based conglomerate. The Company was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index but it was acquired by Sir Philip Green in 1999.-History:...
Group headed by Charles Clore
Charles Clore
Sir Charles Clore was a British financier, retail and property magnate and philanthropist.-Career:Charles Clore owned, through Sears Holdings, the British Shoe Corporation and Selfridges department store, as well as investing heavily in property.He owned Jowett Cars Ltd from 1945-1947 where he was...
.
A branch was opened on Blackpool
Blackpool
Blackpool is a borough, seaside town, and unitary authority area of Lancashire, in North West England. It is situated along England's west coast by the Irish Sea, between the Ribble and Wyre estuaries, northwest of Preston, north of Liverpool, and northwest of Manchester...
promenade, next to Blackpool Tower
Blackpool Tower
Blackpool Tower Eye is a tourist attraction in Blackpool, Lancashire in England which was opened to the public on 14 May 1894. . Inspired by the Eiffel Tower in Paris, it rises to 518 feet & 9 inches . The tower is a member of the World Federation of Great Towers...
, in 1964. The building had a distinctive 1960s design, with a turquoise tiled exterior. After it closed in 1993, building work was undertaken to remove some of the upper floors and the redeveloped site houses a Mecca bingo hall, with the ground floor space being subsequently occupied by Woolworths Group
Woolworths Group
Woolworths Group plc was a listed British company that owned the high-street retail chain, Woolworths, as well as other brands such as the entertainment distributor Entertainment UK and book and resource distributor Bertram Books...
and a variety of small unit retailers.
The company is now defunct. It went into administration
Administration (insolvency)
As a legal concept, administration is a procedure under the insolvency laws of a number of common law jurisdictions. It functions as a rescue mechanism for insolvent entities and allows them to carry on running their business. The process – an alternative to liquidation – is often known as going...
in 1991 as a result of problems such as the then recession and failing to compete effectively. This resulted in Liverpool competitor Owen Owen
Owen Owen
Owen Owen was a Liverpool-based operator of department stores in the United Kingdom.- The man :Owen Owen was born in October 1847 and died on Easter Sunday in 1910 at the age of 62....
buying up several branches of Lewis's (but retaining the Lewis's brand name on those purchased stores); Sir Philip Green revived the selling of toys on a large scale, by launching the brand Kids HQ in four Lewis's Owen Owen Stores, including those in Liverpool and Manchester. The Leicester branch traded independently for a short while, following a management buyout, as "Lewis's of Leicester", before eventually closing. Other branches including the Birmingham store closed down.
After the 1996 Manchester bombing
1996 Manchester bombing
The 1996 Manchester bombing was an attack carried out by the Provisional Irish Republican Army on 15 June 1996 in Manchester, England. The bomb, placed in a van on Corporation Street in city centre, targeted the city's infrastructure and economy and caused widespread damage, estimated by...
by the Provisional Irish Republican Army
Provisional Irish Republican Army
The Provisional Irish Republican Army is an Irish republican paramilitary organisation whose aim was to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and bring about a socialist republic within a united Ireland by force of arms and political persuasion...
in Manchester, trading space in Lewis's was rented to Marks & Spencer
Marks & Spencer
Marks and Spencer plc is a British retailer headquartered in the City of Westminster, London, with over 700 stores in the United Kingdom and over 300 stores spread across more than 40 countries. It specialises in the selling of clothing and luxury food products...
and other smaller retailers displaced following heavy damage to the Corn Exchange. Both Marks & Spencer and the small retailers moved into new accommodation in 1999. The store suffered from a smaller footfall thereafter, and attempted to fight back by reinventing itself as partially a "discount retailer". In a final attempt to arrest the decline, the remainder-clothing retailer TK Maxx was invited to trade from the basement floor. The Manchester branch closed in 2001; it is now occupied by a branch of Primark
Primark
Primark is a clothing retailer, operating over 223 stores in Ireland , the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Portugal and Belgium...
.
The last store to trade as Lewis's was the Liverpool original. This followed the sale of other branches of Lewis's from Owen Owen to other operators such as Debenhams
Debenhams
Debenhams plc is a British retailer operating under a department store format in the UK, Ireland and Denmark, and franchise stores in other countries. The Company was founded in the eighteenth century as a single store in London and has now grown to around 160 shops...
and Allders
Allders
Allders is an independent department store in Croydon, established by Joshua Allder in 1862. It is the fourth-largest department store in the United Kingdom.The Croydon store was the flagship of a large chain of department stores in the UK...
during the 1990s.
On 28 February 2007 the Liverpool store went into liquidation. On 23 March 2007 it was sold as a going concern to Vergo Retail Ltd, enabling the store to continue to trade as Lewis's. In February 2010 it was announced that the store would close permanently in June 2010 as the lease could not be renewed. The final day of trading was 29 May 2010.
The Liverpool Lewis's building retains original lifts which have no controls for shoppers, instead everything is controlled by a lift operator who works from a fold-down seating platform next to a lever they use to control the lift. They will be taken out when the store closes.
Rebirth
After Vergo RetailVergo Retail
Vergo Retail Ltd was a department store business based in Liverpool, England, founded in 2007 and currently in administration. Vergo Retail ran 20 shops, consisting of nine department stores, including Lewis's of Liverpool, Robbs of Hexham, Joplings of Sunderland and Derrys of Plymouth and four...
went into administration, the rights to the Lewis's name were bought by Lewis's Home Retail Ltd. They intend to open a home store in Bury later this year and have since bought out 6 branches of TJ Hughes. Including the Liverpool branch, which was ironically also the first branch of Owen Owen
Owen Owen
Owen Owen was a Liverpool-based operator of department stores in the United Kingdom.- The man :Owen Owen was born in October 1847 and died on Easter Sunday in 1910 at the age of 62....
. They have also set up a website.
Sculpture
- Above the main entrance to the Liverpool flagship store is a statue of a nude man by Sir Jacob EpsteinJacob EpsteinSir Jacob Epstein KBE was an American-born British sculptor who helped pioneer modern sculpture. He was born in the United States, and moved to Europe in 1902, becoming a British citizen in 1911. He often produced controversial works which challenged taboos on what was appropriate subject matter...
. Its official title is Liverpool Resurgent but is nicknamed locally "Dickie Lewis". It is a well-known local meeting place and was immortalised in the 1962 anthemic song "In My Liverpool Home" by Peter McGovernPeter McGovernPeter McGovern was an English songwriter and activist.He was born in north Liverpool, near the docks, and attended St. Edwards School, West Derby and Queen Elizabeth's School, Anfield...
:
- "We speak with an accent exceedingly rare,
- Meet under a statue exceedingly bare"
The statue was unveiled for Lewis's Centenary celebrations which came as the blitzed store had completed rebuilding.
Lewis's Bank
From 1928 Lewis's included a banking department in each store. It was incorporated as a subsidiary limited company in 1934 and was owned by Martins BankMartins Bank
Martins Bank Limited was a Liverpool-based British finanical services company that was taken over by Barclays Bank in 1969. The company has its origins in the 16th century and was said to have been founded by Sir Thomas Gresham, who began trading in Lombard Street under the sign of a grasshopper...
from 1958 to 1967 when it was bought by Lloyds Bank
Lloyds Bank
Lloyds Bank Plc was a British retail bank which operated in England and Wales from 1765 until its merger into Lloyds TSB in 1995; it remains a registered company but is currently dormant. It expanded during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and took over a number of smaller banking companies...
. It continued to operate into the 1980s.
Popular culture
- Paul McCartneyPaul McCartneySir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of The Beatles and Wings , McCartney is listed in Guinness World Records as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history", with 60 gold discs and sales of 100...
once worked as a temp at the LiverpoolLiverpoolLiverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
branch - British educational technologist Professor Stephen MolyneuxStephen MolyneuxSteve Molyneux, is a British educational technologist, Apple Distinguished Educator and Apple Education Mentor. His recent fame results from him resigning as a Justice of the Peace on 25 April 2009 due to an issue over his use of Twitter in reporting the outcome of public case hearings...
had his first job on leaving school selling washing machines and TVs in the basement of Lewis's - In an episode of the sitcom Red DwarfRed DwarfRed Dwarf is a British comedy franchise which primarily comprises eight series of a television science fiction sitcom that aired on BBC Two between 1988 and 1999 and Dave from 2009–present. It gained cult following. It was created by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, who also wrote the first six series...
, Lister, played by Liverpool actor Craig CharlesCraig CharlesCraig Joseph Charles is an English actor, stand-up comedian, author, poet, radio and television presenter, best known for playing Dave Lister in the British cult-favourite science fiction sitcom Red Dwarf...
, refers to a girl who was "pretty enough to work on the perfume counter in Lewis's." - Lewis's Manchester branch, features in a piece of artwork of Piccadilly Gardens, by L. S. LowryL. S. LowryLaurence Stephen Lowry was an English artist born in Barrett Street, Stretford, Lancashire. Many of his drawings and paintings depict nearby Salford and surrounding areas, including Pendlebury, where he lived and worked for over 40 years at 117 Station Road , opposite St...
. - In an episode of Open All HoursOpen All HoursOpen All Hours is a BBC sitcom written by Roy Clarke which ran for four series a first run in 1976, a second run in 1981, third in 1982 and finally with a fourth run in 1985, with a pilot episode from the Seven of One series in 1973...
, Arkwright (Ronnie Barker) has a visit from the VAT man, to check over the books. As Arkwright attempts to distract the VAT man, the VAT man asks if there is anywhere quieter to study the books, Arkwright replies "where do you want, the carpet department at Lewis's?" - The 2009 Lewis's Liverpool Christmas Grotto features in the video for Ricky TomlinsonRicky TomlinsonEric Tomlinson , known by his stage name Ricky Tomlinson, is an English actor and comedian, best known for his roles as Bobby Grant in Brookside, DCI Charlie Wise in Cracker and James "Jim" Royle in The Royle Family....
's Christmas single, "Calm Down". - In a sketch on Victoria WoodVictoria WoodVictoria Wood CBE is a British comedienne, actress, singer-songwriter, screenwriter and director. Wood has written and starred in sketches, plays, films and sitcoms, and her live stand-up comedy act is interspersed with her own compositions, which she accompanies on piano...
's As Seen on TVVictoria Wood As Seen On TVVictoria Wood As Seen On TV was a British comedy sketch series starring comedienne Victoria Wood, with Julie Walters, Celia Imrie, Duncan Preston, Susie Blake and Patricia Routledge...
, Jean and Barbara refer to the "women on the pastry counter in Lewis's" as part of the manifesto. - As a result of the store, it brought on the famous phrase 'Standing there like one of the Lewis's' referring to the wax mannequins placed in windows in the 1920s, some of the first in the north-west of England. It has been thought it comes about due to idle staff, the statue at the Liverpool branch or the Arcade at the Manchester store.
- A 1990s episode of Coronation StreetCoronation StreetCoronation Street is a British soap opera set in Weatherfield, a fictional town in Greater Manchester based on Salford. Created by Tony Warren, Coronation Street was first broadcast on 9 December 1960...
featured the 3rd Floor (Kids HQ) of the Manchester Lewis's store.
See also
- Bill Smith (fell runner)Bill Smith (fell runner)Bill Smith was a notable fell runner and well-known author on the sport. He was considered a "legend" in the fell-running community."The word legend is all too often rolled out in sporting circles...
- Blacklers (another Liverpudian Department Store)
- David Lewis CentreDavid Lewis CentreDavid Lewis David Lewis David Lewis (also known as the 'David Lewis National Epilepsy Centre' and 'The David Lewis Centre' is a health foundation based in Little Warford, Cheshire...
Further reading
- Briggs, Asa (1956). The Friends of the People: the centenary history of Lewis's.
- Lewis's Directory for the Towns of Manchester and Salford for the Year 1788. Manchester: Lewis's, [188-?] (Text of Edmond Holme's original directory republished with map of Old Manchester and Salford. pp. 47–65 contain "A description of Manchester" (written for this edition). pp. 66–72 contain "Lewis's": extract from a letter from Mr. Ike Halky to Mr. Hugh Bett, and the back wrapper advt. for Lewis's and view of the store (at 106-122 Market Street). The map reproduces one showing the two towns ca. 1794. British Library catalogue dates as [1880?] which is perhaps too early: Lewis's Manchester store was established in 1877, having been founded in Liverpool in 1856.)