Peter Jones & Partners is a large
department store
A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store made a dramatic appe ...
in
central London
Central London is the innermost part of London, in England, spanning several boroughs. Over time, a number of definitions have been used to define the scope of Central London for statistics, urban planning and local government. Its characteris ...
. It is owned by
John Lewis Partnership
The John Lewis Partnership plc (JLP) is a British company which operates John Lewis & Partners department stores, Waitrose & Partners supermarkets, its banking and financial services, and other retail-related activities. The privately-held pub ...
and located in
Sloane Square
Sloane Square is a small hard-landscaped square on the boundaries of the central London districts of Belgravia and Chelsea, located southwest of Charing Cross, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The area forms a boundary betwee ...
,
Chelsea
Chelsea or Chelsey may refer to:
Places Australia
* Chelsea, Victoria
Canada
* Chelsea, Nova Scotia
* Chelsea, Quebec
United Kingdom
* Chelsea, London, an area of London, bounded to the south by the River Thames
** Chelsea (UK Parliament consti ...
.
History
The shop is named after
Peter Rees Jones (1842–1905), the son of a
Carmarthenshire
Carmarthenshire ( cy, Sir Gaerfyrddin; or informally ') is a county in the south-west of Wales. The three largest towns are Llanelli, Carmarthen and Ammanford. Carmarthen is the county town and administrative centre. The county is known as ...
hat manufacturer. After serving an apprenticeship with a
draper
Draper was originally a term for a retailer or wholesaler of cloth that was mainly for clothing. A draper may additionally operate as a cloth merchant or a haberdasher.
History
Drapers were an important trade guild during the medieval period, ...
in
Cardigan, Jones moved to London and established a small shop in
Marylebone Lane
Marylebone Lane is one of the original streets of the Marylebone district of the City of Westminster, London. It runs from Oxford Street in the south to Marylebone High Street in the north, its winding shape following the course of the River Tybu ...
. He then moved to central London, and in 1877, he moved to 4–6
King's Road
King's Road or Kings Road (or sometimes the King's Road, especially when it was the king's private road until 1830, or as a colloquialism by middle/upper class London residents), is a major street stretching through Chelsea and Fulham, both ...
, the current site of the store. The business flourished, soon expanding to cover most of the block, occupied on a 999-year lease from the Cadogan estate at £6,000 per year, the terms of which have never been increased.
After a period of troubled trading and Jones' death, the store was purchased by
John Lewis
John Robert Lewis (February 21, 1940 – July 17, 2020) was an American politician and civil rights activist who served in the United States House of Representatives for from 1987 until his death in 2020. He participated in the 1960 Nashville ...
of the eponymous
Oxford Street
Oxford Street is a major road in the City of Westminster in the West End of London, running from Tottenham Court Road to Marble Arch via Oxford Circus. It is Europe's busiest shopping street, with around half a million daily visitors, and ...
store, who handed it over to his son
John Spedan Lewis
John Spedan Lewis (22 September 1885 – 21 February 1963) was an English businessman and the founder of the John Lewis Partnership.
Elder son of John Lewis, who owned the John Lewis department store, London, Spedan joined the business at 19 and ...
in 1914. Soon after, it became part of the John Lewis profit sharing partnership.
The present building, which occupies an entire island site on the west side of
Sloane Square
Sloane Square is a small hard-landscaped square on the boundaries of the central London districts of Belgravia and Chelsea, located southwest of Charing Cross, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The area forms a boundary betwee ...
, was built between 1932 and 1936 to designs by
William Crabtree
William Crabtree (1610–1644) was an astronomer, mathematician, and merchant from Broughton, then in the Hundred of Salford, Lancashire, England. He was one of only two people to observe and record the first predicted transit of Venus in 16 ...
of the firm of Slater, Crabtree and Moberly. The building is the first modern-movement use of the glass
curtain wall in Britain (not, as is often claimed, the first per se, as late-Victorian examples in the
Gothic Revival style
Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...
exist) and is now a Grade II*
listed building
In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern I ...
.
The store completed a lengthy refurbishment by
John McAslan and Partners
John Renwick McAslan (born 16 February 1954) is a British architect.
Education and career
John McAslan was educated at Dunoon Grammar School, Dollar Academy and University of Edinburgh, Scotland, obtaining an MA in Architecture in 1977 and a ...
in 2004. In 2009, Simon Fowler was appointed Managing Director, overseeing a two-year period of growth where sales and profits reached record levels. This period also spanned Peter Jones' 100th anniversary of its membership at the John Lewis Partnership, where it is widely recognised to be the birthplace of the democratic employee ownership structure still found in the retailer today. Tony Wheeler was appointed Managing Director of the store in 2011.
Peter Jones website shop information, accessed 29 June 2011
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References
External links
Official website of Peter Jones
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picture in V&A collectionbr>Architects John McAslan + Partners
1877 establishments in England
Buildings and structures completed in 1936
Department stores of the United Kingdom, Jones Peter
John Lewis Partnership, Jones Peter
Grade II* listed buildings in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea
Grade II* listed retail buildings
Shops in London
British Royal Warrant holders
Tourist attractions in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea
Art Deco architecture in London
Retail companies established in 1877
British companies established in 1877
Department store buildings in the United Kingdom
History of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea
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