Arding & Hobbs
Arding & Hobbs is a former department store and Grade II listed building at the junction of Lavender Hill and St John's Road, Battersea, in the London Borough of Wandsworth.[1]
Arding & Hobbs was established in 1876. A second store was established on the corner of Falcon Road, Battersea, known as the Falcon Road Drapery Store, but this was sold to former employees Mr. Hunt & Mr. Cole in 1894.[2] The original building was destroyed by a fire on 20 December 1909.[3] The present building was constructed in 1910 in an Edwardian Baroque style, and the architect was James Gibson.[1]
The department store was sold to the John Anstiss Group in 1938, however, John Anstiss was purchased by United Drapery Stores in 1948.[4] The store was added to the Allders group in the 1970s and continued to operate until Allders went into administration in 2005.[5] The building was subsequently broken up and sold, with the building split between a branch of Debenhams department store and TK Maxx retail. As of 9 June 2020, the Debenhams section of the building had been permanently closed.
The store and building are featured in a number of films and television programmes including the 1981 action-thriller Nighthawks, where the shop was bombed, and the 1994 Mr. Bean episode "Do-It-Yourself Mr. Bean".[6] It is very prominent in the video "Life On Your Own" by the band The Human League which is set in a future, apocalyptic London where the lead singer is the only person left alive and lives in the building.
References
[edit]- ^ a b Historic England (30 November 2001). "Arding and Hobbs store (1389528)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 9 May 2022.
- ^ "Try the British Newspaper Archive for FREE". Retrieved 8 October 2024 – via British Newspaper Archive.
- ^ Weinreb, Ben; Hibbert, Christopher (1992). The London Encyclopaedia (reprint ed.). Macmillan. p. 183.
- ^ Saint, Andrew (2013). @Survey of London: 1, Public, Commercial and Cultural. Battersea. Yale University Press. p. 401. ISBN 9780300196160.
- ^ Allders store closing its doors BBC News, 22 May 2005
- ^ "Mr Bean filming locations". retrofilminglocations.weebly.com. Retrieved 15 May 2022.
External links
[edit]- Media related to Arding & Hobbs at Wikimedia Commons
- 1876 establishments in England
- Allders
- Commercial buildings completed in 1910
- Debenhams
- Defunct department stores of the United Kingdom
- Edwardian architecture in London
- Grade II listed buildings in the London Borough of Wandsworth
- History of the London Borough of Wandsworth
- London building and structure stubs
- United Kingdom listed building stubs