Harrods, where the first English escalator came with a brandy for nervous riders
On 16 November 1898 Harrods unveiled England's first moving staircase, a woven leather belt flanked by mahogany. Shoppers who survived the ride were handed brandy at the top. The Knightsbridge store that began as one rented room now holds over 330 departments and is the largest shop in Europe.
Charles Henry Harrod started out in 1824, aged 25, as a draper in Southwark, later moving into groceries and a Stepney tea wholesale business on Cable Street. In 1849, hoping to catch trade from the Great Exhibition planned for nearby Hyde Park, he took a small shop in Brompton, on the ground the store still occupies. It began as a single room with two assistants and a messenger boy. His son Charles Digby Harrod widened the stock to medicines, perfume, stationery and fresh produce, bought up neighbouring buildings and had a hundred staff by 1881.
Fire destroyed the shop in early December 1883, yet every promised Christmas delivery still went out. The present building, designed by C. W. Stephens, opened in 1905. By then Harrod had sold his stake for £120,000 through an 1889 flotation. Credit accounts went to Oscar Wilde, Charlie Chaplin, Sigmund Freud and A. A. Milne, and Beatrix Potter shopped there from 17.
The pet department once sold exotic animals. A lemur called Mah-Jongg went to Stephen and Virginia Courtauld in 1923 and lived with them for fifteen years, including at Eltham Palace. In 1969 two young Australians bought a lion cub, Christian, who was later released in Kenya. A 1989 dress code turned away Kylie Minogue, a Scout troop and the whole Shakhtar Donetsk first team in tracksuits; by 2023 sportswear was allowed everywhere.
Ownership passed to House of Fraser in 1959, to the Fayed brothers in 1985 and to the Qatar Investment Authority in 2010. Mohamed Al-Fayed took down the royal warrants in 2000 and later admitted burning them. Today the 5-acre site houses 23 restaurants and more than five thousand staff from over fifty countries, and peak days bring up to 300,000 customers. Its Latin motto promises all things for all people, everywhere.
Source: Harrods
