Mawer and Collingham remembered

With the news of House of Fraser closing its Lincoln store in May Miriam Smith of the Survey of Lincoln explores the history of the prominent retailing site.

One of the most prominent retail spaces in Lincoln’s city centre north of the Stonebow is the site currently occupied by the House of Fraser at 226 to 232 High Street. 

In 1980, the company purchased the department store of Mawer & Collingham, which had previously occupied the site, and initially renamed it Binns. 

This article explores the previous use of this site from the early nineteenth century until the early 1960s when Mawer & Collingham both first occupied all of the site under its own name, and also undertook a major refurbishment of the buildings, commissioning the construction of the store’s distinctive consolidated modernist façade. 

William Mawer opened a linen and woollen shop in a building that now comprises the middle part of the High Street frontage of the current department store.  The shop sold fabrics by the yard and also retailed ready-made items, such as hosiery and handkerchiefs, as well as some furnishing materials and haberdashery. 

Mawer’s son, another William, and son-in-law Joseph Collingham bought the premises at number 228 (later renumbered 229) from Robert Bunyan in 1826.  The three-storey shop was rebuilt in 1845 with pillars supporting the upper floors so that daylight could be provided in the premises by two light wells in the roof. 

Many of the shop’s staff lived on the premises in dormitories: in 1851, there were 21 assistants living-in, 12 males and nine females. Land was acquired in Mint Lane (later Street) and in 1869 two four-bedroom houses were built, now with the windows and doors blacked out. Male shop assistants lived in these houses, and their female colleagues were accommodated at 84 Newland. 

Joseph Collingham owned the business until his death in 1873. By then, his son Joseph Mawer Collingham, was running it. Until the last quarter of the century the shop was located solely at 229 High Street.  During the 1880s the business expanded by taking over 230 High Street and then acquiring the corner premises at 226 High Street. By 1900 Kelly’s trade directory listed 226, 229 and 230 High Street as ‘Mawer & Collingham shops’. The business also owned some of the lock-up shops in Mint Street but did not occupy them.

In 1902 a café was opened in the shop which became a popular and genteel social space, especially favoured by female customers. Mawer & Collingham had become a high-class department store and would develop further in the first half of the twentieth century. 

Through its gradual acquisition of adjoining businesses, by 1930, Mawer & Collingham owned an entire block of shops, though it leased out 231 and 232 High Street to the International Tea Company Stores Limited, trading as Maypole Dairy Company, until 1960, when these premises also became occupied by the department store. 

In 1961-62, the company commissioned the builders Simons to envelop all of the frontages of its High Street buildings, and some of Mint Street, with one continuous ‘blue front’, which provided the store with its distinctive modernist architectural uniformity. Over 150 years of trading as Mawer & Collingham came to an end with the business’s sale to House of Fraser.

More about Mawer & Collingham and its department store rival, Bainbridge’s, can be found in chapters by Miriam Smith in The Survey of Lincoln’s book, ‘Shops and Shopping in Lincoln: A History’. To find out more about The Survey of Lincoln and its work, see www.thesurveyoflincoln.co.uk.

The picture above is a postcard showing Lincoln’s High Street from the Maurice Hodson Collection.

The image below shows Mawer & Collingham circa 1907.