It's a Newcastle institution which predates the Tyne Bridge, the Chronicle, and even the city’s famous football club.
Fenwick - or Fenwick’s as most of us call it - on Newcastle’s Northumberland Street, has been trading since 1882, and is renowned for its quality goods and services.
From the annual Christmas window - which began in 1971 - to the recently revamped Food Hall, to the restaurants and cafes, to the top-of-the-range household goods, to the huge array of high fashion on sale, the store has been cited as Newcastle’s own version of Harrod’s.
It was on this day 140 years ago that a mantle-maker and furrier John James Fenwick opened a humble shop at 5 Northumberland Street.
At the time the street was becoming increasingly commercialised, being described as a row of old brick houses that “are rapidly becoming shops”
It’s hard to imagine today, that the retail giant started life as a single house snapped up by the young shop assistant for the sum of £181.
The fledgling business initially sold mantles, silk goods, dresses, fabrics and trimming, but expansion was rapid and Fenwick and his son, Fred, soon bought up adjoining Northumberland Street properties, numbers 37 and 38 - and later number 40.
These formed the shop frontage still used by Fenwick in 2017.
Back in Victorian England, Fenwick’s next acquisition was a store in Bond Street, London, opened in 1891, and today one of the Britain’s leading retail temples.
It was Fred’s visit to Paris, however, which led to a shopping revolution.
At Bon Marche, he witnessed a ground-breaking form of retail trading, a department store, where a variety of goods and services was sold under one roof, as opposed to in separate shops.
That principle was applied in Newcastle and London, and Fenwick has never looked back.
Today, the famous brand has stores in Leicester, Brent Cross, Bracknell, Windsor, York, Canterbury, Tunbridge Wells, Kingston, and Colchester as well as Bond Street and, of course, Newcastle.
One hundred and thirty five years on from its quiet inception, the company is reported to be valued at more than £450 million and is still owned by the Fenwick family.
Happy 135th birthday.
