(This is another entry in my series on London’s shops.)
It is an extraordinary front door. Gnarled and chipped, seemingly much-repaired, but also smartly painted in a business-like green and freshly glazed. Ancient yet still functional. However long it has been standing, it looks hearty enough to last a similar distance into the future.
Is it the oldest front door in London? The shop behind the green door has been trading on this site of 6 St James’s Street since 1759. That is over 261 years ago! A long time, even in London. General Wolfe defeated the French to capture Quebec in that year – and The British Museum in London and the Guiness Brewery in Dublin opened with their different cultural offerings. Has this door been ever-present since then? It really does look like it could be the case.
So entranced was I by the character of this wood and glass entrance that I spent several minutes pondering it and imagining all the thousands and thousands of people who have pushed their way into the shop over the years, knocking against the wood, each of them contributing in small and unnoticeable ways to its gradual disfigurement. I thought of the first customers who might have been struck by the modernity of the shop in 1759. Some may have been customers at the old shop, which had been called Davis’s and was located across the road, and surprised by its re-location to the sunny side of the street and its new name, Lock & Co. I imagined those early Georgians in powdered wigs followed by be-whiskered Victorians, Edwardians with fine moustaches and all the many people up to the twenty-first century who have pushed open the door, to be greeted by the chime of a ringing bell and the smile of a friendly member of staff. The doorbell still rings and the staff remain friendly. When I visited just before Christmas, the man who served me appeared to be delighted have the opportunity to do so. It was immaculate service. Nothing was too much trouble for him and he was happy to tell me some of the history of the place as he worked, exuding pride in his work and confidence in himself and his product.
And his product is hats.
Lock and Co are possibly the most famous hat shop in the world. They sold hats to Lord Nelson and Oscar Wilde who wore a Lock and Co Fedora hat when he toured the United States and started a craze for them.
In the mid-nineteenth century, Lock and Co commissioned the London hat makers, William and Thomas Bowler, to design a hat for one of their more demanding clients and the Bowlers came up with a rounded design which not only pleased their client but became a well known and much worn hat named after their surname.
The business actually pre-dates this shop, stretching back into the seventeenth century when Robert Davis founded it in 1676. His son Charles continued the business and took on one James Lock as an apprentice. James grew up to marry Charles’s daughter Mary, taking over the business in 1759 and renaming it Lock and Co and moving the shop to its current location.
