Closure of Jenners will be a wrench for generations of seasoned shoppers

Jenners. When you say that name today, anyone under the age of – well, mine, I suppose – will probably automatically think of the extended family of Kardashians who have so dominated telly and social media in recent years. But to Scots of a certain age – again, mine! – and especially those brought up in Edinburgh, it means the department store of dreams, the posh place you went to for special presents, the glittering Christmas tree over four floors, the amazingly artistic displays, the things you couldn’t get elsewhere and things you generally couldn’t afford. If you couldn’t meet the prices, you went into town just to gawp at the window displays.

Snob value? Yes, definitely, in Scotland’s overly self-aware capital. But quality? You betcha. And yet, although it had moved with the times as far as it could – you don’t reach 183 years in existence in a cut-throat world unless you do that – it was always somehow steeped in nostalgia. So in some ways, it’s not only no surprise but somehow feels inevitable to find that it has finally run its course as an emporium for the discerning.

When we first moved to Edinburgh from the wilds of Ayrshire in the late 1960s, Jenner’s, R W Forsyth’s, Small’s, Darling’s, Patrick Thomson, J & R Allan (and those are just the ones I remember) loomed large in the city’s retail and social life. Think of the Dundee icons, too – Caird’s, Draffen’s, D M Brown’s, G L Wilson’s and so many more. Every city had them and these places were much more than the sum of their departments.

I was wide-eyed when mum and I were taken to Jenners salon tearoom (these were never, ever known as cafés back then) by our elderly Edinburgh cousin (complete with hat and fur tippet) and treated to tea and scones. Boy, did we think we were erchie! Which only shows how we weren’t!

But we’ve all known for a long time that this style of shopping has had its day and in a way it’s amazing – and perhaps a testament to the strength of the Jenners name and brand – that it lasted so far into the 21st Century. Hypocritically, I hadn’t been in for years, not since my old mum couldn’t manage the intricate stairs. Like Rome, Jenners was built on at least seven hills, or felt like it and the lifts were notorious for their tiny scale and somewhat approximate approach to arriving at any given floor in any given order. But now that it’s going, it’s still a bit of a wrench to know it won’t be there as I knew it. It hadn’t really been Jenners for years, of course, not since it was taken over by House of Fraser.

That’s actually a very sniffily Edinburgh

thing to say but it’s quite true although its alterations and changes in the intervening years really only presaged the decline and, as the current closure of the Debenhams chain demonstrates, the continuing fall, of the traditional British department store.

Covid has a lot to answer for too but I hope against hope that one of the unforeseen consequences of the pandemic and its seeming destruction of retail and hospitality sectors as we know them is that many independent, individual, quirky phoenixes might rise from the ashes of the dominant names of the last few decades as (if my own acquaintanceship is anything to go by) people actively try to support small, specialist and, above all, local outlets run by real people you get to know and trust.

So farewell, Jenners; you made your mark on many. And may continue to do so in some form, if the building (I devoutly hope) stays around in any recognisable form.

Me, I never quite recovered when

bookseller James Thin disappeared, even though the Edinburgh premises still house Blackwell’s bookshop.

I remember writing a nostalgic piece when the Dundee branch closed many years ago, about what the mothership meant to me and how my mentor, a Miss Granger who knew more about children’s books than anyone I’ve ever known, guided generations throsugh the wonder of words. But at some point, as the quotation goes, one must put away childish things and if ever there was a time to be looking to the future and thinking of supporting generations to come, this is it.

I like to think that the redoubtable Miss Granger, who never missed a trick in recognising what was good and what would appeal to young minds, would rather approve of parents harnessing technology, as well as old-style text, in their efforts to educate their kids at home. But she’d approve of the return of a traditional, old-style bookshop even more…

In the now great tradition of “important” interviewees getting a richt ridder from their under-dressed spouses, embarrassing bookshelf contents, children and pets during Zoom or other video-type chats with pundits, Michael Gove was apparently thoroughly upstaged by his cat the other day, while being forensically probed (in a verbal manner) by LBC’S Nick Ferrari.

All I want to know is, was it laughing at the time?

I was wide-eyed when mum and I were taken to Jenners tearoom

SHEER QUALITY: Jenners was the department store of dreams, gracing Edinburgh for 183 years, but is sadly now to close.