Patrick Comerford
Hatchards is the oldest bookshop in England and has been on Piccadilly since 1797, when the shop was founded by John Hatchard. So, I cannot understand why I never stepped through its doors until I was in Piccadilly yesterday.
Of course, I have walked past Hatchards many times before and have been along Piccadilly throughout my life. Most memorably, I spent working time in Piccadilly when the Athens News commissioned me to write a major two-page feaure on ‘Byzantium 330-1453’, an exhibition hosted by the Royal Academy of Arts in the Main Galleries in Burlington House for five months in 2008-2009.
I have been to Hatchards other outlet at Saint Pancras station last year, when Charlotte and I were on our way to Paris, yet somehow I had missed the shop on Piccadilly all my life. But then, there are many places I have never visited on Piccadilly, including Fortum and Mason, right next door to Hatchards.
I was in Piccadilly yesterday with the Anglican mission agency USPG and the publisher SPCK for the celebrations of Founder’s Day in Saint Jame’s Church. And, of course, on Charlotte’s recommendation, I spent some time afterwards in Hatchards, which is prominently located between Saint James’s and Fortum and Mason and across the street from Burlington House.
SPCK is one of England’s oldest publishers – founded by Thomas Bray in 1698, it is older than John Murray (1768), and younger only than Cambridge University Press (1534) and Oxford University Press (1586). It seemed only right, after celebrating with one of England’s oldest publishers, to then spend some time too in England’s oldest bookshop.
Hatchards has had a shop on Piccadilly for 228 years. The business was founded by the bookseller and publisher John Hatchard ((1769-1849) at 173 Piccadilly in 1797. John Hatchard was still in his 20s when he took over the bookshop at 173 Piccadilly formerly run by Richard White and bought a collection of merchandise from a bookseller Simon Vandenbergh.
The shop moved along Piccadilly in 1801, to No 189-190, and the street number of the second shop changed to No 187 in 1820. Meanwhile, the site of the first shop had been cleared in 1810 to build the Egyptian Hall.
Hatchard had deep religious views and was an abolitionist and he became the main publisher for works associated with the Clapham Sect. William Wilberforce, Sir Walter Scott, Sir John Hawkins and Lord Spencer were among the figures of the day who frequented Hatchard’s back parlour. Sydney Smith writing in the Edinburgh Review in 1810, described Hatchard’s visitors as ‘a set of well-dressed, prosperous gentlemen, assembling daily at the shop well in with the people in power, delighted with every existing institution and with every existing circumstance.’
Hatchard died at Clapham Common in 1849, and there is a memorial to him in Saint Paul’s Church, Clapham. His grandson, George Josiah Palmer (1828-1892), was the founder and editor of the Church Times.
Later in the 19th century, Hatchards was Oscar Wilde’s favourite bookshop, and he signed his books sitting at the ground floor main table – still known today as ‘Oscar’s Table’.
Hatchards was bought for £6,000 by the convicted fraudster Clarence Hatry (1888-1965). Ten years earlier, the fall of the Hatry group which had been worth about £24 million (equivalent to £1,840 million today), contributed to the Wall Street crash of 1929. Hatry turned around the ailing business at Hatchards, and in 1946 he also acquired the publishers T Werner Laurie Ltd. Within four years, he owned the largest retail book business in London.
Hatchards was acquired by William Collins & Sons in 1956, and it expanded its number of retail outlets in the 1980s, opening branches across the United Kingdom. It was bought by Pentos in 1990. Pentos, in turn, was acquired by Waterstones who rebranded all the shops apart from Hatchards on Piccadilly. Waterstones also owns Hodges Figgis in Dublin, which was founded in 1768 and is the oldest bookshop in Ireland.
Today, Hatchards has a reputation for attracting high-profile authors and holds three royal warrants. The shop opened its new outlet in St Pancras station in 2014, beside a new branch of Fortnum and Mason, continuing a pairing that goes back over two centuries. A third shop opened in Cheltenham in 2022.
Hatchards is no ordinary Waterstone’s shop – it is a unique British institution and a landmark building on Piccadilly. It is familiar to many with its curving bay windows and its prominently displayed royal warrants above the front doors. Inside, the shop has a grand, four-storey staircase and mementos of the past through the building, with historic photographs, old catalogues, Oscar Wilde’s table, which continues to be used for book signings, and an anonymous painting said to be a portrait of the founder John Hatchard.
The shop also displays an array of first editions from Margaret Atwood, Samuel Beckett, Ted Hughes, DH Lawrence and Iris Murdoch. The shop continues to host regular book signings and author events. Indeed, many of those authors are also regular customers, and the shop remains a literary haven for authors.
As for the Egyptian Hall on Piccadilly, built in 1812 on the site of the first Hatchards shop, it became a venue for exhibitions, popular entertainments and lectures, and became known as ‘England’s Home of Mystery’. But after less than a century, it was demolished in 1905 to make way for flats and offices.
Hatchards is the oldest bookshop in England. But it is not the oldest bookshop on these islands. That accolade goes to Hodges Figgis on Dawson Street in Dublin, which was founded in 1768, and is the third-oldest functioning bookshop in the world, after the Livraria Bertrand in Lisbon (1732) and Pennsylvania’s Moravian Book Shop (1745).
Hodges Figgis opened in Dublin in 1768 at 10 Skinner’s Row, near Christ Church Cathedral, and has had many addresses since then, including 32 Grafton Street (1797), 104 Grafton Street (1819), 20 Nassau Street (1920), 6-7 Dawson Street (1945), and Saint Stephen’s Green (1974). Since 1979, Hodges Figgis has been at 56-58 Dawson Street, the former Browne and Nolan bookshop. Like Hatchards, Hodges Figgis is now owned and operated by Waterstones. But then, so too are Dillons and Foyles in London and Blackwell’s in Oxford.
Hopefully, Hatchards, and all those other unique bookshops, maintain their style and presence for generations to come. And, hopefully, I shall be back in Hatchards the next time I am in Piccadilly.
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