Who doesn’t just love the delights of a traditional department store? There’s something for everyone. These shops dominated town centres across the UK from as early as 1796, when it is reputed the world’s very first ‘one-stop-shop’ was opened in London, selling haberdashery, millinery, jewellery and clocks. Many of these stores were established by drapers and cloth merchants. In the mid-18th century, traders specialised in a single product or service but during the 20th century these stores became the showcase for many more consumer goods, including household ironmongery, hardware, china and glassware – a real plethora of contemporary design and technology that stemmed from the 1851 Great Exhibition and the industrial revolution.
Many of our country’s fine architectural buildings resulted from the establishment of these stores. In Elgin, it was the Ramsey family of drapers, founded in 1845, which took the enormous step in building a town centre shop which would become known to us under several guises down the ages. It was built in 1904 and you can see from this early photograph that the splendid window frontages afforded plenty of prime space to showcase their wares to the rising new generation of middle-class women. Window displays were often illuminated to attract attention of those passing by – giving rise to the term ‘window shopper’. Window dressing was a major talent and an important role in the sales team hierarchy. Displays became more and more opulent to entice customers into the shop. The store was later run by another North-East firm, Benzie & Miller, and latterly – many of you will recall – it was a branch of Arnotts, part of House of Fraser.
When Arnotts finally closed the doors on the High Street, it would change the fate of the building forever. Major construction started on the Giles Shopping Centre which reflected the ‘shopping mall’ era of the times. These late 1980s photographs show how the frontage was firmly secured by scaffolding while much of the rear area was demolished to make way for the new shopping mall and multi-story car park.
It is a great triumph that the planners took the decision to maintain the impressive façade of the building, which will forever have a colourful retail history to share. Whether it was the classy glass counters forever being polished by the staff, the endless rows of small wooden drawers containing buttons, ribbons, thread and elastic, or the much-awaited January sale (when it really was only one sale a year and everyone saved up for it!), when people would queue overnight to get that real bargain … the trend of department stores changed the world forever! My thanks, again, to Jenny Main and Elgin Museum for their ongoing support in this local research https://elginmuseum.org.uk/
