Qualla: Harrods

Harrods: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Targeman, CC BY-SA 3.0. In December 1883, Charles Harrod's Knightsbridge shop burned to the ground three weeks before Christmas. Within days, working from temporary premises, he delivered every order his customers had already placed, on time, and finished the year with a record profit. That episode tells you most of what you need to know about how Harrods came to be Harrods. The store is enormous, baroque, terracotta-pink, and at night lit by 12,000 bulbs along its facade. It sells gold bars off the shelf and bespoke perfume; it has been a London landmark for so long that A. A. Milne bought Christopher Robin's teddy bear here in 1921, the bear that would become Winnie-the-Pooh. But its history is not only about luxury. It is also about an Egyptian businessman, a sovereign wealth fund, two IRA bombs, and the long-overdue reckoning with what was happening upstairs.

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Image: Targeman | CC BY-SA 3.0

Harrods: From Stepney Tea Merchant to Brompton Road

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unbekannte Autoren und Grafiker; Scan vom EDHAC e.V., Public domain. Charles Henry Harrod opened a wholesale grocery on Cable Street in Stepney in 1834, specialising in tea. Fifteen years later, hoping to catch the foot traffic that the 1851 Great Exhibition would bring to Hyde Park, he took over a small shop in the village of Brompton. It was a s...

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Image: Unbekannte Autoren und Grafiker; Scan vom EDHAC e.V. | Public domain

Harrods: The Moving Staircase and the Brandy

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Vidzonian, CC BY-SA 3.0. On 16 November 1898, Harrods unveiled England's first escalator, the so-called "moving staircase." It was not the gleaming machine of today. It was a continuous belt of woven leather, framed in mahogany and silver-plate glass, that hauled itself slowly between floors. Customers s...

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Image: Vidzonian | CC BY-SA 3.0

Harrods: Owners and Reckonings

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No Swan So Fine, CC BY-SA 4.0. Harrods was a public company, then part of House of Fraser, then in 1985 acquired by the Egyptian-born businessman Mohamed Al Fayed for £615 million. He sold it to the Qatar Investment Authority in 2010 for £1.5 billion. Under the Fayed brothers the store changed in visible ways,...

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Image: No Swan So Fine | CC BY-SA 4.0

Harrods: Two Bombs and a Bear

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Trimming, CC BY-SA 2.0. Harrods has twice been a target of Provisional IRA attacks. The bombing of 17 December 1983, just outside the Brompton Road entrance during the busiest shopping week of the year, killed six people: Stephen Dodd, Noel Lane, and Jane Arbuthnot of the Metropolitan Police; the journa...

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Image: Peter Trimming | CC BY-SA 2.0

Harrods: All Things for All People

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Joost J. Bakker IJmuiden, CC BY 2.0. The store's Latin motto, Omnia Omnibus Ubique, means "all things for all people, everywhere." In a sense it still tries to deliver on that promise. The 330 departments, spread across more than a million square feet, sell everything from bespoke fragrances to gold bullion to a Ben...

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Image: Joost J. Bakker IJmuiden | CC BY 2.0