It will be 147 years ago next March that my great grandfather opened a very small shop, selling laces and cottons on The Moor, having worked for a while at Cole Brothers in the City. The Victorian era brought prosperity and Sheffield played its part in the industrial revolution with cutlery and steel production. All the ingredients were in place for a small new business to thrive.
John Atkinson worked tirelessly to grown his business on The Moor and established a strong customer base and, by 1899, he had grown into six small shops and decided to make the biggest decision of his life by knocking all these buildings into one very large shop, which was one of the first department stores in the country and had electric light!
The department store had a glazed roof, to allow natural light down through the building so that customers could see the true colours of the stock, sweeping staircases led customers through the three storey building, a gardener was hired to tend the hundreds of plants throughout the building. When John died in 1929 aged 84 he had achieved his life’s ambition and 2 of his sons, Harold and Walter continued in his steps.
On the nights of 12th and 13th December 1940 an incendiary bomb from a German bomber made a direct hit on the store and the following morning when Walter went onto The Moor the only thing left of the whole department store, was some pennies in the bottom of the weighing machine.
Atkinsons operated through several sites in the city until in 1960, on the site of the old department store, Walter’s sons, John and Peter opened the new store which was self-service and had one of the first escalators in Sheffield! Peter lost his brother in the late sixties and carried on until, Nicholas, joined him in 1972.
Peter expanded the business again in 1974, after befriending John Sainsbury (later Lord Sainsbury) after he approached him to build the first Sainsburys store in the north of England. Sainsbury’s main entrance was through Atkinsons entrance off The Moor and the store gained over 2 million customers a year walking through the store and up to the supermarket. Twenty-six years later in 2000, Sainsburys moved into the building next door and Atkinsons lost all that footfall overnight!
Atkinsons picked themselves up yet again, re-developed the old supermarket space and took over the car park. After Peter died in 2004, Nicholas took over the business and over the next 7 years developed the store and the 40 departments, 3 restaurants and improved the 440 space car park. The Company invested heavily in branding, IT and developed its social media skills. The Moor had a £130 million investment from Aberdeen Standard and is now without doubt the premier shopping centre of the City with a good mix of both retail and leisure.
Nicholas is the 4th generation of the Atkinson family, and continues to serve the good people of Sheffield to this day. Atkinsons are very proud to have won the Large Retailer of the Year award at the Sheffield City Centre Retail Awards, which were held of 10 November 2019.