Boswells door at night on Cornmarket Street, Oxford

Boswells of Oxford was the largest independent family-run

department store A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store made a dramatic appe ...

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

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. The store closed in 2020. The store first traded in 1738, and was the second oldest family-owned department store in the world. It was initially founded by Francis Boswell and located at 50

Cornmarket Street Cornmarket Street (colloquially referred to as Cornmarket or historically The Corn) is a major shopping street and pedestrian precinct in Oxford, England that runs north to south between Magdalen Street and Carfax Tower. To the east is the Go ...

. Boswells started up in business manufacturing and selling luggage and trunks, and it is believed their wares were taken on

Captain Cook James Cook (7 November 1728 Old Style date: 27 October – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the British Royal Navy, famous for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 in the Pacific Ocean and ...

's trip to explore the Southern Hemisphere. The business remained in the Boswell family until 1890 when there was no one left for direct succession. The ownership passed to Arthur Pearson, the then owner of the Oxford Drug Company. Boswells and the Oxford Drug Company are still owned by the Pearson family and, unusually for a Department Store, Boswells still contained a Pharmacy - right until it closed. In 1928, it expanded its premises with the main entrance moving to Broad Street, opposite

Balliol College Balliol College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. One of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the ...

and close to the spot (marked with a cross in the middle of the road) where the

Oxford Martyrs The Oxford Martyrs were Protestants tried for heresy in 1555 and burnt at the stake in Oxford, England, for their religious beliefs and teachings, during the Marian persecution in England. The three martyrs were the Church of England b ...

were burnt at the stake in the 16th century. The store was traditional in style and a local shopping landmark, particularly for toys, kitchenware, and luggage, continuing the tradition from 1738. It retained a smaller side entrance at the north end of Cornmarket Street, which was originally the Oxford Drug Company building. Its address is now 1–4 Broad Street. The company did not use an

apostrophe The apostrophe ( or ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes: * The marking of the omission of one ...

in its name, although others sometimes mistakenly do so. In 2014, the store launched an e-commerce website to replace a purely marketing website and sold products from all its departments online. In 2015, Boswells expanded upstairs to create a new tearoom and customer toilets, and added a takeaway cafe in 2018. The store departments were: * Basement – Cookshop and Kitchen Electricals, Hardware, Household Essentials, Lighting, Small Electricals, Tableware * Ground Floor – Cosmetics, Accessories, Umbrellas and Bags, Gifts, Luggage, Pharmacy, Tourism, Broad Street Cafe * First Floor – 1738 Tearoom, Toys and Games * Second Floor – Bedding and Bathrooms, Customer Toilets, Haberdashery, Parcel Collection point Boswells of Oxford - store closing 1

In 2020, there was a closing down sale after 282 years of trading. The

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

brought forward the closure of the store. The store closed due to the crisis, apart from the

pharmacy Pharmacy is the science and practice of discovering, producing, preparing, dispensing, reviewing and monitoring medications, aiming to ensure the safe, effective, and affordable use of medication, medicines. It is a miscellaneous science as it ...

, which closed on 11 April 2020.

References

Bibliography

External links

Boswells website
on Archive.org
Boswells of Oxford Limited
information from

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Touch Oxford information
1738 establishments in England 2020 disestablishments in England Retail companies established in 1738 Retail companies disestablished in 2020 Department stores of the United Kingdom Independent stores Shops in Oxford History of Oxford {{UK-retail-company-stub