Fascinating history of city’s most famous store
BOOK CHRONICLES STORY OF FENWICK
FOR 137 years Fenwick has shared in the lives of generations of North East families. For many, no shopping trip would be complete without a visit to the flagship Newcastle department store’s food hall, or tea with friends in its sedate Tivoli restaurant, while children always make a bee-line for the toy department.
And, of course, it has a role all its own over the festive season, as hundreds of thousands of Geordies make their annual pilgrimage to see its famous Christmas window display.
The man to thank for that innovation is Christopher Fenwick who, for more than 30 of those 137 years, was a director at the family firm, focusing on marketing and development.
The now retired 82-year-old has written The Story of Fenwick and its Family which, for the first time, brings to colourful life the history of the iconic store on Northumberland Street that has earned its place in local people’s hearts by tapping into ever-changing needs and tastes and never forgetting its roots.
Christopher’s book, which is to have an official launch at Waterstones in Newcastle this month, is a detailed history of Fenwick and how it has developed over the years in order to stay ahead of the game.
“I enjoyed the writing and I enjoyed the research,” said Christopher. “It’s been so interesting, as has finding out how Newcastle has changed.”
As director at Fenwick, Christopher worked with his brothers and cousins to expand the business and he has had a wealth of family stories to draw upon.
“It was part of my home life, table talk at home,” he said.
And the family’s trademark humour comes across in the hardback, which he calls “a cross between a coffee table book and a history book”.
History is his subject - he graduated with a history degree from Cambridge - but he says: “I’m a history buff; I don’t like to claim more than that!”
His story starts with his ancestor John James Fenwick, known as JJ, who was born in Richmond, North Yorkshire, and came to the city by way of an apprenticeship with a master tailor in Stockton. After taking up a post as buyer manager at a top Newcastle finest draper, the young talent went on to establish Fenwick in 1882.
Quite how he did so makes for interesting reading.
As one of the first department stores, and one source of inspiration for BBC drama The Paradise, says Christopher, the rise of Fenwick helped to shape the city - and the city shaped the store.
While customers might have the feeling Fenwick has withstood the test of time in a changing world, it has undergone huge development and expansion over the years – including the launch of its revamped food hall four years ago – to ensure it doesn’t slip behind the times.
There was the early addition of air conditioning, for instance, and the installation of lower steps to enable ladies to climb them easily in cumbersome fashions of the day. Then – with the advent of frozen food – quick-thinking came up with the idea of a demonstration evening to show off the first deep freezers, which led to the sale of 53 of them that very night.
The book is set in the context of what is happening at the time in Newcastle, such as Dan Smith’s 1960 city development plan and its effects on business.
Christopher has written one previous book, called 20,000 Miles - an account of his road trip through Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Africa in 1960 and says of his new work: “What I tried to do was to make the book more than just a history of Fenwick, to bring the family into it. I wanted to illustrate what a part they played in the history of the community, particularly during the 20th Century and what Fenwick meant to Newcastle and I hope I’ve given an impartial view of that.”
As for his own role in its story, as the man behind Fenwick’s Window, he tells how, in 1971, he and the store’s much-admired display manager and visualiser Bill Cass introduced the first of the animated window displays that now attract hundreds of thousands of visitors every year.
He recalls how, with Christmas such an important time, there was a need to outsmart the competition posed by furniture store Callers, which was on the opposite side of Northumberland Street.
The rival business had suffered a fire but, following a revamp, the store was expected to launch a festive spectacular.
Christopher told Cass: “This year, Bill, we have to beat Callers.”
The pair travelled to Paris to see what the festive trend was in the fashion capital and they noticed crowds around one solitary window which had a moving display.
Inspired, they enlisted a man called Keith Sparks, who had animated a scene from the children’s TV show Camberwick Green for an exhibition. This became the theme of Fenwick’s