A blue plaque is to be installed in Weston-super-Mare to mark a retail giant’s special links with the seaside town. Weston Town Council has teamed up with the department store John Lewis to install a plaque dedicated to its founder.
The blue plaque will be installed on the gate pillar of 72 Bristol Road Lower, a property once owned by Mr Lewis, next month. John Lewis came from a Shepton Mallet family of bakers and milliners.
Through sheer hard work and entrepreneurial zeal he rose to become one of the nation’s favourite retail traders and his name, together with those of later associates Messrs Waite and Rose, still adorn the front of many large stores and supermarkets from London’s prestigious Oxford Street to provincial cities and towns.
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In 1843, when John was seven his father died leaving him, five sisters and their 46-year old mother in challenging circumstances. Whilst John moved to London to begin making his fortune, the sisters, under their widowed aunt’s care, were by 1861 living in High Street Weston-super-Mare where they ran a ‘fancy’ stationery and dress making establishment.
Living ‘above the shop’ was then normal practice. A decade later they were still in High Street - at number 27.
By 1851, Elizabeth, the 26-year old eldest child was a servant to the Rector of Corton Denham and remaining siblings were employed in drapers’ shops in Wells and Glastonbury. John Lewis’s business endeavours in London were beginning to reap rewards allowing his first freehold purchase to be made - a house in Weston-super-Mare for his sisters’ early retirement.
The detached house at the junction of Arundell Road and Bristol Road Lower, which Mr Lewis named Spedan Ham, came with a substantial garden and magnificent views over the bay. John Lewis died in 1928 and his two London-based sons – John Spedan Lewis and Oswald Lewis – had no reason to feel attachment to Weston-super-Mare.
Where old Mr Lewis had been an autocratic clothing company proprietor his sons adopted different managerial techniques. They began selling modern electrical goods, offered free health care to employees and introduced the concept of ‘partnership’ whereby all staff had a share in the company’s fortunes and vicissitudes.
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They also began to look beyond London’s Oxford Street for profit. Local historian Councillor John Crockford-Hawley said "John Lewis is a household retail name and yet few people will know of his personal family links with Weston-super-Mare and our own High Street.
"As the world of shopping continues to change it's fitting that we commemorate the Lewis contribution to our local story with this blue plaque".
