 | |
| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Retail |
| Genre | Department Store |
| Founded | 1863 |
| Founder | William Whiteley |
| Defunct | 1981 |
| Headquarters | Bayswater, United Kingdom |
Number of locations | 4 |
Key people | William Whiteley |
| Parent | United Drapery Stores |
William Whiteley Limited was a large British retail company founded by William Whiteley in 1863. The business grew to include a warehouse removals business.
London was expanding rapidly in the 1860s and after considering Islington he turned his attention to Bayswater; the area was rapidly being developed into a high class residential district. He observed the number of fashionable people using Westbourne Grove and decided to open his shop there. He started his business in 1863 by opening a Fancy Goods shop at 31 Westbourne Grove, employing two girls to serve and a boy to run errands. Later one of the girls, Harriet Sarah Hill, became his wife.
The original Whiteley's department store was created by William Whiteley, who started a drapery shop at 31 Westbourne Grove in 1863. By 1867 it had expanded to a row of shops containing 17 separate departments.
Dressmaking was started in 1868, and a house agency and refreshment room, the first ventures outside drapery, opened in 1872. By then 622 people were employed on the premises and a further 1,000 outside. Whiteley's started selling food in 1875, and a building and decorating department was added in 1876. This proved to be particularly profitable, as the large stuccoed houses in the area needed regular repainting.
Whiteley's met strong opposition from smaller tradesmen, and also from the local authorities over its grand building plans, and several bad fires in the 1880s may have been caused by opponents. Business nonetheless prospered, aided by a delivery service extending up to 25 miles (40 km), and in 1887 the store was described as 'an immense symposium of the arts and industries of the nation and of the world'.
By 1890 over 6,000 staff were employed in the business, most of them living in company-owned male and female dormitories, having to obey 176 rules and working 7 am to 11 pm, six days a week. Whiteley's also bought massive farmlands and erected food-processing factories to provide produce for the store and for staff catering. In 1896 it earned an unsolicited Royal Warrant from Queen Victoria – an unprecedented achievement.
The first store –described as "an immense symposium of the arts and industries of the nation and of the world" –was devastated in an enormous fire in 1887, [1] one of the largest fires in London's history. [2] This was the last of four fires that had devastated the business from 1882. [3] In 1887 disaster struck and the store in Westbourne Grove burnt down. In his autobiography, Drawn From Memory, E. H. Shepard said the fire could be seen from Highgate Hill, and some days later when he and his brother Cyril were allowed to visit Westbourne Grove, that, "The long front of the shop was a sorry sight with part of the wall fallen and the rest blackened."
Whiteley's was to rise again like the Phoenix from the fire and was soon rebuilt, but later moved from Westbourne Grove to Queensway. When the Lord Mayor of London in the presence of thousands opened the new store in Queensway on 21 November 1911, it was claimed to be the largest shop in the world.
In 1907, William Whiteley was murdered by Horace George Rayner, who claimed to be his illegitimate son, "Cecil Whiteley". After his death, the board including two of Whiteley's sons allowed the leases on the various Westbourne Grove properties to lapse and moved into a new purpose built store on Queens Road (now called Queensway). [3]
In the 1950s the chairman Sir Sydney Harold Gillet announced that the store was too big for its turnover and converted the upper floors of the store into office space. These were used by Leo computers Ltd. in the 1950s and later by International Computers Limited (ICL) for offices and training facilities in the 1970s. The offices were named "Hartree House" after Douglas Rayner Hartree in recognition of his part in the LEO Computers story. Esso Petroleum also rented some of the office space. [4]
In 1961 United Drapery Stores purchased Whiteleys for a fee of £1,750,000. [4] In the late 1970s UDS held a market survey to find out if the losses of the business were down to customer satisfaction. The survey came back positive: it proved that Whiteleys did not have enough customers. [4]
The department store closed down in 1981 remaining empty until the building was purchased by a firm called the Whiteleys Partnership in 1986.
The store operated an association football club in the 1870s and 1880s, Kildare, which entered the FA Cup on a number of occasions.
William Whiteley Limited also operated a warehouse removals business in Kensington.
Bayswater is an area within the City of Westminster in West London. It is a built-up district with a population density of 17,500 per square kilometre. It is located 2.5 miles (4.0 km) west-northwest of Charing Cross, between Kensington Gardens to the south, Paddington to the north-east, and Notting Hill to the west.
Notting Hill is a district of West London, England, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Notting Hill is known for being a cosmopolitan and multicultural neighbourhood, hosting the annual Notting Hill Carnival and Portobello Road Market. From around 1870, Notting Hill had an association with artists.
Bayswater is a London Underground station in the Bayswater area of the City of Westminster. The station is on the Circle and District lines, between Notting Hill Gate and Paddington stations and is in Travelcard Zone 1. It is less than 100 metres (330 ft) away from the Central line's Queensway station.
Westbourne Grove is a retail road running across Notting Hill, an area of west London. Its western end is in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and its eastern end is in the City of Westminster; it runs from Kensington Park Road in the west to Queensway in the east, crossing over Portobello Road. It contains a mixture of independent and chain retailers, and has been termed both "fashionable" and "up-and-coming".
Queensway is a shopping street in Bayswater, an area of west London. It is home to Whiteleys, many restaurants, cafés, pubs, souvenir shops and a few high-street retail chains. Queensway and Westbourne Grove are identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London. The street is numbered the B411 in the British road numbering scheme. Queensway is currently undergoing a major redevelopment on all sides, with a building on the top of the road being developed for £500m, Whiteleys for £1.2BN and a series of other redevelopments happening at the same time.
Douglas Rayner Hartree was an English mathematician and physicist most famous for the development of numerical analysis and its application to the Hartree–Fock equations of atomic physics and the construction of a differential analyser using Meccano.
Whiteleys was a shopping centre in Bayswater, London. It was built in the retail space of the former William Whiteley Limited department store, which opened in 1911 as one of London's first department stores, and was one of the main department stores, alongside Selfridge's, Liberty's and Harrods. The centre's main entrance was located on Queensway.
William Whiteley was an English entrepreneur of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was the founder of the William Whiteley Limited retail company whose eponymous department store became the Whiteleys shopping centre.
Cavendish House is Cheltenham's oldest and leading department store, located on The Promenade. Its establishment was of great significance for Cheltenham's future reputation as a leading shopping centre. Known as 'Cavendish House' from its early days, its name was officially adopted with the registration of a limited liability company in 1883. The store became part of the House of Fraser group in 1970.
Sir John Barker, 1st Baronet was a British entrepreneur of the late 19th and early 20th century. He was the founder of the Barkers department store in Kensington, London, United Kingdom.
John Lewis was an English philosopher and town councillor, known for being the founder of the John Lewis department store on Oxford Street, London and the national John Lewis department store chain.
United Drapery Stores, or UDS, was a British retail group that dominated the British high street from the 1950s to the early 1980s.
Sir Richard Burbidge, 1st Baronet was an English merchant.
H. Binns, Son & Co. was a chain of department stores based in Sunderland, later purchased and absorbed by House of Fraser.
Bourne & Hollingsworth was a large department store on the corner of Oxford Street and Berners Street. It was named after its founders, Walter William Bourne and Howard E Hollingsworth, brothers in law, who started the store in Westbourne Grove as a drapery store in 1894. The store then moved to the Oxford Street site (pictured) in 1902 due to competition with Whiteleys, and by 1928 the store had been remodelled in the Art Deco style.
Barkers of Kensington was a department store in Kensington High Street, Kensington, London. It began as a small drapery business, John Barker & Company, founded by John Barker and James Whitehead in 1870. Barkers grew rapidly to become one of London's largest and most well-known department stores. The company played a significant role in establishing Kensington High Street as one of London's principal shopping destinations for most of the twentieth century. The business was purchased by House of Fraser in 1957. Barkers closed permanently in 2006. Part of the former flagship building now contains a branch of Whole Foods Market (2019).
Pontings was a department store based in Kensington High Street, London and operated from 1863 to 1970.
Bobby & Co. was a provincial department store group based mainly in seaside towns on the south coast of England. The business operated from 1887 until 1972.
Benzie & Miller was a small department store chain based in Scotland and became part of House of Fraser in 1958.
