The Streatham Society
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Talks
  • Newsletters
  • Publications
  • Events
  • Guided Walks
  • Photo Gallery
  • Research and Queries
  • Planning and Regeneration
  • Heritage and Conservation
  • WW1 Roll Of Honour
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact
  • Instagram posts
  • Facebook
  • counter
  • Archive News

Anthony Harding- Inventor of the department store

1/1/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture

On This Day 1 January 1762 Anthony Harding was born. A resident of Oakfield House in Streatham

Anthony Harding (1762-1851) was a silk mercer and a resident in Streatham before moving to the Bell House in Dulwich. He was married to Frances Harding nee Ashby and they had 2 daughters Elizabeth and Frances

Anthony Harding can lay claim to having invented the department store in the 1790s.

He recognised that middle-class women were beginning to shop for themselves so he set up Harding, Howell & Co.’s Grand Fashionable Magazine on Pall Mall, selling silks, gloves, jewellery, clocks and ornaments. Opened in 1796, Harding’s can be considered the 1st department store and is almost certainly a shop Jane Austen would have known and Colonel Brandon hears of Willoughby’s engagement outside a Pall Mall shop in Sense and Sensibility.

In the Education of Lady Frances by Evelyn Richardson: ....Lady Frances was finding London progressively exciting. Lady Streatham had most graciously taken her around with Kitty and introduced her to a variety of fashionable and intellectual delights she had not before encountered in the capital. If someone had told her that she would spend an entire morning at Harding, Howell and Companies Grand Fashioable Magazine she would have laughed at the absurdity of it.......

Anthony Harding died on 5 August 1851. His coffin is in the crypt of St Leonard's Church.
​

(Extracts Bell House and Caroline Price and map Dulwich Local History)

Picture
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Mark Bery, Secretary Streatham Society

    Archives

    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020

Next Meeting

"The Telford Park Estate, Then and Now" by Chris Sluman Feb.15th 2021 07:30pm
​


Our Newsletter, issue 242 has been posted to members and issue 241, Summer 2020 is now available on this site

​

Social media & email

Picture