John Lewis Newcastle is a major
department storeA department store is a retail establishment which specializes in satisfying a wide range of the consumer's personal and residential durable goods product needs; and at the same time offering the consumer a choice multiple merchandise lines, at variable price points, in all product categories...
in the
city centreNewcastle upon Tyne City Centre, or more commonly Newcastle City Centre or locally and colloquially as The Toon, is the central business district of Newcastle upon Tyne in North East England....
of
Newcastle upon TyneNewcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England...
,
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. Until 2002, the store was known as
Bainbridge, a name that dates back to 1838 and which is still in common usage amongst some shoppers.
Today the store is located in the Eldon Square complex in central Newcastle and now belongs to the
John Lewis PartnershipThe John Lewis Partnership is a major United Kingdom worker co-operative retailer which operates John Lewis department stores, Waitrose supermarkets and the direct services company Greenbee...
.
The origins of John Lewis Newcastle date back to 1838, when Emerson Muschamp Bainbridge went into partnership with William Alder Dunn and opened a
draperDraper is the now largely obsolete term for a wholesaler, or especially retailer of cloth, mainly for clothing, or one who works in a draper's shop. A draper may additionally operate as a cloth merchant or a haberdasher. The drapers were an important trade guild...
s and fashion shop in Newcastle's Market Street.
John Lewis Newcastle is a major
department storeA department store is a retail establishment which specializes in satisfying a wide range of the consumer's personal and residential durable goods product needs; and at the same time offering the consumer a choice multiple merchandise lines, at variable price points, in all product categories...
in the
city centreNewcastle upon Tyne City Centre, or more commonly Newcastle City Centre or locally and colloquially as The Toon, is the central business district of Newcastle upon Tyne in North East England....
of
Newcastle upon TyneNewcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England...
,
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. Until 2002, the store was known as
Bainbridge, a name that dates back to 1838 and which is still in common usage amongst some shoppers.
Today the store is located in the Eldon Square complex in central Newcastle and now belongs to the
John Lewis PartnershipThe John Lewis Partnership is a major United Kingdom worker co-operative retailer which operates John Lewis department stores, Waitrose supermarkets and the direct services company Greenbee...
.
History
The origins of John Lewis Newcastle date back to 1838, when Emerson Muschamp Bainbridge went into partnership with William Alder Dunn and opened a
draperDraper is the now largely obsolete term for a wholesaler, or especially retailer of cloth, mainly for clothing, or one who works in a draper's shop. A draper may additionally operate as a cloth merchant or a haberdasher. The drapers were an important trade guild...
s and fashion shop in Newcastle's Market Street. Despite success the two partners fell out and went their separate ways.
In terms of retailing history, one of the most significant facts about Bainbridge’s shop is that as early as 1849 weekly takings were recorded by department, making it one of the earliest of all department stores. This ledger survives and is now kept in the archives of the John Lewis Partnership.
Emerson Bainbridge died in 1892 and his sons took over the business. In 1897 the business became a private limited company. During the
DepressionThe Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, which hit the Newcastle area badly, the store introduced agents who operated in less prosperous areas, collecting payments in weekly instalments. This meant that people on low incomes could continue to buy from the shop and it kept the Bainbridge name and reputation known in areas where otherwise it might have faded away.
In 1952 an offer from the John Lewis Partnership was accepted and ownership transferred to John Lewis in the following year, although the store continued to operate under the Bainbridge brand, alongside the words
"A branch of the John Lewis Partnership". In 1976 the store was relocated to the major new Eldon Square shopping centre in the city.
In 2002 further refurbishment took place, and in the same year (following a suggestion from the store partners) the store was re-branded as John Lewis.
At the time of its demise, the Bainbridge name was one of the longest continuously traded department store brands in the world.
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