Is this the most bizarre shop in land-locked Central London?
Arthur Beale sounds like a character from Eastenders but is in fact an ancient Ships Chandlers, located on Shaftesbury Avenue.
There was a noticeable shortage of boats parked outside Arthur Beale on the morning of my visit just before Christmas. In fact there was a worrying shortage of customers and I had the place to myself. The three very nice ladies who worked in the shop (one upstairs, one downstairs and one who was vaccuming the stairs) were all keen to chat as I browsed but they admitted that business has been badly affected by the restrictions brought in by the government in response to Covid. I got there at around 11am and I was the first customer of the day.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” I said to the Polish lady who was behind a clear plastic screen. “But who exactly is your typical customer? You are so far from the sea.”
“You’d be surprised,” she replied. “There are a lot of people who live on boats on the rivers and canals in London and they are in here regularly buying things for their boats. We also have a lot of crafters in who buy the ropes to make things with.”
She pointed at a wall with a selection of drums that each had a different rope wrapped round it, the end of which extended out into the shop. You pull these extensions to unroll the rope and measure out the length you need.
Ropes were the original product of this business, which traces its origin back to “circa 1500” when a rope maker called John Buckingham started trading in the area. In those days the Parish of St Giles area was surrounded by fields which may well have been where the flax used to make the rope was grown. He would also have been quite close to the River Fleet which passes to the east of the area as it heads to the Thames. The shop was known as Buckingham and Sons of Broad Street, St Giles for many years. (Broad Street no longer exists but was roughly where High Holborn and Shaftesbury Avenue are today.)
The ropes were exceptional, winning awards and reknown, and were favoured by the Alpine Club of Great Britain from the mid-19th century on their early attempts to climb Everest as well as by Shackleton during his polar adventures.
The shop re-located to this present location in the middle of that century and here it has remained ever since. In 1890 a 15-year-old lad called Arthur Beale joined the company as an office boy. He would go on to own and rename the shop and focus it beyond just ropes on yachting equipment which proved successful. His son, also Arthur, took it on for some years.
The business took advantage of its proximity to the West End to build up a sideline in providing theatrical rigging to the local theatres, their rope raising and lowering stage backdrops made in the local Elms Lesters Painting Rooms.
The Beales are no longer involved. They sold their interest years ago. Alasdair Flint, a keen sailor who perhaps not coincidentally had previously owned and run a successful theatrical scenery building company, bought the shop in 2014 and remains the present owner.
It remains a wonderful peculiarity, a metaphorical fish out of water. And 500 later is still trading.
