Researching the history of shops
Towns are built on trade. For centuries its
focus was markets and
fairs. The medieval housewife would buy much of what she needed at
stalls regularly set up and dismantled. Gradually stalls were
replaced by permanent shops with living space above or behind.
John Stow's Survey of London (1598)
describes the process in Old Fish Street.
Shops lined many a medieval market place or high street. They could even be built on bridges. Typically a shop would have large, arched, unglazed windows. The windows could be protected at night by a pair of horizontal shutters, the upper one of which could be hooked up to provide shelter while the lower one folded down to form a counter, or one shutter could be hinged to form a counter. Few medieval shop windows survive, but a pair of 15th-century shops are preserved at the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum, while Gladstone's Land in Edinburgh has a reconstructed 17th-century shop with shutters, and the Merchant's House, 45 Church Street, Tewkesbury is a restored medieval shop and house, all open to the public.
By the late 17th century England and Wales had about 40,000 shopkeepers, according to the estimate of pioneer statistician Gregory King.
The shopkeeper aims to draw attention to his wares. No wonder that one source for the history of shops is disputes between traders and local authorities over encroachments onto the street. A stall set up just outside a shop window, perhaps under an awning, can put a tempting array of goods under the noses of passers-by. Hanging signs often displayed an emblem of the trade. They so cluttered street fronts that they were banned in the City of London in 1764; other towns followed suit.
Glazed shop windows gradually took over from open ones during the 18th century. Small panes of glass were set in a grid of glazing bars. Bow windows were popular by the end of the century. Shopkeepers were among the first to take advantage of cheaper sheet glass, after excise duty on glass was abolished in 1845, to create large windows with the view unbroken by glazing bars.
Paris was the cradle of the shopping arcade. The narrow streets without pavements, crowded with horse-traffic, must have made shopping hazardous. An arcade - a covered pedestrian shopping alley - provided comfortable, stylish and safe shopping away from the dirt and clatter of the street, not to mention the rain. Starting with the Galeries de Bois in the 1780s, arcades gradually spread across Paris, with a burst of building in the 1820s. The arcades of this decade mainly have pitched glass roofs. The Galerie d'Orleans, which replaced the Galeries de Bois in 1828-30, was the first to be covered by the glass tunnel vault which subsequently dominated arcade design.
Arcades suited the
British climate. London has two fine early arcades. The Royal
Opera Arcade was built by Nash and Repton in 1816-28. The elegant design
with a dome over each bay was the inspiration for several others. But it was
soon outshone by the outstandingly successful Burlington Arcade built in
1818-19 to the design of Samuel Ware. Regency arcades also survive in Bath,
Bristol and Glasgow.
A second wave of arcade building from about 1870 to 1910 came in the age of
iron. The Victorian imagination ran riot
with the possibilities of wrought and cast iron: the County and Cross Arcades
in Leeds are among the most flamboyant. Cardiff
has no less than five arcades from this period, another one earlier and yet
another later. In the 20th century the concept grew into the multi-level
shopping centre or mall. See also the development of the market hall.
One remarkable retail development of the
Victorian period was the department store. It had its origins
in the warehouses and bazaars of the late
Georgian and early Victorian period. A bazaar was a huge space surrounded by
galleries and lit from above, where space was let out to traders offering a
variety of products. The first was the Soho Bazaar, opened in 1816 in Soho
Square, London. By the 1830s several other British cities could also boast a
bazaar, increasingly making use of cast iron in their construction. The Crystal Palace was described as the
greatest bazaar of all.
Warehouses and emporia arose from the expansion of
specialist shops (such as drapers) into showrooms stocking a range of goods.
From there it was a short step to the department store in the mid-1870s. Such
massive buildings offered scope for grand façades. The shop had turned into a
retail palace.
Studies and gazetteers
- Adburgham, A., Shopping in Style: London from the Restoration to Edwardian Elegance (1979).
- Clark, D., The shop within?: an analysis of the architectural evidence for medieval shops, Architectural History vol. 43 (2000). Provides a typology for medieval shops, using evidence almost entirely from England.
- Cox, N., The Complete Tradesman: A study of retailing 1550-1820 (2000).
- Dan, H. and Morgan Willmott, E.C., English Shop-Fronts Old and New (1907, reprinted 2007). Includes old photographs of over 50 shops.
- Geist, J.F., Arcades: the history of a building type (1983). A sourced gazetteer covering all Europe.
- MacKeith, M., Shopping Arcades: a gazetteer of extant British arcades (1985).
- Morrison, K.A., English Shops and Shopping: An architectural history (2003).
- Pevsner, N., A History of Building Types (1976), chap.16 gives the wider context.
Powers, A., Shop Fronts (1989).- Rothery, S., The Shops of Ireland (1978).
- Taylor, J., Retail Detail, Building Conservation Directory (1994).
Primary sources
- I. and J. Taylor, Designs for Shop Fronts (1792).
- Commercial directories and local newspapers are helpful: they are listed by West.
- Many urban shopkeepers were freemen of their borough and active in their corporation or guild. See West for types of town record.
- The diaries and accounts of wealthy citizens may mention traders from whom purchases were made or comment on the goods available.
- See houses, deeds and taxation for general sources for ownership and occupation.
- Also see general sources for maps and images.