Nottingham’s former Debenhams department store has been listed at Grade II by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport on the advice of Historic England, giving it greater protection and recognition.
The store comprises of a range of buildings and the dominant corner block, developed by entrepreneurs Mr W Griffin and J.T Spalding, features carved cherubs and foliage.
In 1878, the two businessmen purchased a draper’s shop on the corner of Market Street and re-named it after themselves. Over the years Griffin and Spalding acquired several neighbouring buildings in order to expand, including the Mikado Café, which was kept as a separate enterprise until around 1960 when it was incorporated into the store. However, some of its decorative mouldings remain on the east side of the building.
The business was sold to Debenhams in 1944. The name was retained until 1973 when Debenhams embarked on a national re-branding scheme.
Located over 36-44 Long Row and 2-20 Market Street, the site is impressive in scale and prominence, and during its glory years reflected the city’s wealth and taste. In 1883, it boasted of hiring London fitters for its dressmaking department.
Between 1920 and 1927, noted Nottingham architects Bromley and Watkins re-modelled the corner block at 40-44 Long Row. The architects used Portland stone, widely used for buildings along Regent Street, which brought current architectural fashion to the centre of Nottingham.
Griffin and Spalding and the Mikado Café were well-known, long-standing institutions in the city of Nottingham, which contributed to the vibrancy of the city as a provincial and regional destination for shopping and socialising. By 1978, it had 37 trading floors and was one of the largest department stores in England.
It was often ahead of its time in terms of ‘retail theatre’, holding in-store fashion shows and with marketing from the 1950s encouraging shoppers to make a day of a store visit by booking into the hairdressers and lunching in the restaurant.
Historic England architectural investigator Elain Harwood, who was born and raised in Nottingham, says:
“Griffin and Spalding, as it is still known to many Nottingham folk, was the city’s paramount store. Its importance is reflected in its dominant position on Nottingham’s premier shopping street, Long Row, overlooking the Market Square.”
Hugh Shannon, Historic England Listing Adviser says: “For many people in Nottingham it was more than a store or a place of work, it’s a place that holds cherished memories of meetings with friends or family, of buying significant items for life events. It was a destination where people spent their leisure time.”
Shannon adds that it illustrates a process common in the evolution of department stores in the 19th and 20th centuries, where the success of a single shop allowed it to expand piecemeal by acquiring its neighbours, and that it’s rare for this process to be preserved visually.
“While some of these individual buildings are by Nottingham’s best known and respected architects such as T.C. Hine and Son and William Dymock Pratt, it is the 1920s classically detailed, Portland Stone clad corner block by Bromley and Watkins at 40-44 Long Row which dominates,” he says.
“This brought to Nottingham a building in the style of the large shops in London’s newly rebuilt Regent Street. In combination with the contemporary council house and the stone slabs which pave Old Market Square, it defines the character of the commercial centre of Nottingham.”
Its importance is noted in the recent Save Britain’s Heritage report into department stores, which describes the site as “an iconic feature of the city’s historic centre”.