Illustration of Kennington & Jenners

Category

Library Item

Item no

21019

Title

Illustration of Kennington & Jenners

Description

A group of Victorian ladies shop at Kennington & Jenners, Edinburgh. They are sitting on chairs at a counter whilst three male shop assistants show them material. Drawers and shelves reach to the ceiling behind the assistants. A man in a top hat, carrying a cane stands between the two groups of women. In the left-hand margin portraits of three of the shop assistants have been drawn. The names Rita, Lizzie, Bear and Al are annotated beneath the drawing.

Artist / maker

Unknown

Date

1869

Size

16.2 x 22.6 cm

Type

Pen work

Location

Edinburgh and Scottish Collection

This sketch was donated to Jenners in 1955, by the daughter of Lizzie (second lady from the left in the lace shawl). She was shopping for her wedding trousseau in Kennington & Jenners with her sister Rita and brother.

On 1 May 1838 Kennington & Jenner opened its doors for the first time. The business was founded by Charles Kennington and Charles Jenner, who had been dismissed by local drapers W.&R. Spence for taking the day off work to go to the Musselburgh races. Their advertisement in the Scotsman claimed that their establishment would offer the discerning customer, 'every prevailing British and Parisian fashion in silks, shawls, fancy dresses, ribbons, lace, hosiery, and every description of linen drapery and haberdashery'.

The original building that formed the department store was destroyed by fire on the 26 November 1892. In 1893 Scottish Architect William Hamilton Beattie was appointed to design the new store which opened in 1895. Charles Jenner became the driving force behind the reconstruction and it was at his insistence the building's caryatids - sculpted female figures - were to show symbolically that women are the support of the house, the new store also included technical innovations such as electric lighting and hydraulic lifts. Unfortunately, Charles Jenner died in 1893 and did not live see the new store completed.

The store continued to grow during the 1900s and by the 1920s it had cemented its reputation as the number one place to shop, becoming a local byword for extravagance and opulence.

In 2005 it was taken over by House of Fraser. While other acquisitions by House of Fraser have been renamed, Jenners kept its identity after the takeover, until it closed due to Covid-19 restrictions in December 2020 and did not reopen for business before House of Fraser officially closed it in May 2021. The Danish owner Anders Holch Povlsen, who bought the building in 2017, plans to restore it for use as a shop and hotel by 2025.

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Related subjects

Business > Service industry > Shops

Clothing and dress > Accessories > Hats

Clothing and dress > Garments > Dresses

Places > Edinburgh areas > New Town

Places > Scotland > Edinburgh

(55°57′11″N, 3°11′38″W)

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