Miss Harrold and her Haberdashery
Langman’s Draper’s shop at 88 High Road, Willesden was founded in the 1890s. When it closed in 1978 many of the shop fittings had remained unchanged since the day it opened. In 1908 Nancy Harrold joined the staff and with the retirement of the Langman sisters she took over the shop.
Miss Harrold
Miss Harrold rarely threw anything away and when the shop closed a lot of the stock, much of which dated to the 1950s was still in its original packaging.
The interior of the shop was moved largely intact to Brent Museum in the 1970s. At that time the museum was known as The Grange Museum of Community History and was based in Neasden. Below you can see the images of what the shop fittings and stock looked like in their first museum home.
And here is what the shop looked like when it moved to the Willesden Green Library Centre in 2005
The story of Miss Harrold’s shop will be looked at in the new museum due to open in the summer of 2015. We have chosen some key pieces from the original shop to explore what shopping and fashion were like in the past. We have also been very lucky to have been contacted in the past few months by a lady who knew Miss Harrold and used to play in her shop as a child. This quote from her is planned to appear in the new museum…
My Granny’s cousin (my “Auntie Nettie”) rented the top 2-floor flat above the shop. I remember when we visited Auntie Nettie, being very happy to be allowed to stay downstairs and “help” Auntie Harrold. I recall the lovely mahogany (as I now understand) counter, and all the wooden drawers with brass knobs, and especially the cotton-reel dispenser. Of course, at the time, as a very small child, I had no idea I was playing in living history.
We are always so pleased to be able to collect stories and memories about the history of the area and are looking forward to opening Brent Museum once more so that the story of Langman’s Draper’s shop can be told again.
brentmuseumandarchives
Colin C.
Emir Ghariani
nice to see days gone by
It’s a shame that the very fine display (as the first four colour photos above testify) in the old Grange Museum, which was, as this article says, a “largely in tact [sic]” period shop, was partly sawn up c. 2006 (I think the last photo dates to 2006, not 2005, but I’m not certain of this) so that a far smaller display could be fitted into Willesden Green Library Centre! Readers might like to ask how much of the original shop fittings (as opposed to stock) survives.
This article certainly covers (nearly) all the bases as to possible spellings of the owner’s name. It gives ‘Harold’ and ‘Haraold’ (!) before finally settling on the rather Scandinavian-sounding ‘Harald’. Unfortunately, as a brief look at the Museum online catalogue reveals, her name was actually ‘Harrold’ (at any rate, that is the name given in the catalogue), the one spelling this article does not give…
Thank-you for your comments. We have corrected the spelling. Those parts of Miss Harrold’s shop not on display in the new museum remain in the museum collection under the care of the Brent Museum & Archives team.