HISTORY:THIS IS not the first time Arnotts has been forced to climb into bed with bankers.
Just two years after George Cannock and Andrew White opened a shop at 14 Henry Street in 1843, the pair borrowed £6,000 from a banking family called Reid in order to expand. As part of the deal, the pair agreed to take on the Reid brothers, Andrew and Patrick, as business partners.
Three years later White died and the Reids were joined by John Arnott, a Scottish entrepreneur who had originally come to Cork to make his fortune.
Cannock left the company in 1865 and the Reids acquiesced to their remaining business partner's request to rename the store in his honour. In 1873 the captain of industry expanded his empire by purchasing this newspaper for £35,000. It initiated an Arnott family involvement with The Irish Timesthat continued for more than 70 years.
The store’s history to date has been bookended by bad timing. It opened just ahead of the bleakest period in Irish history, and over 160 years later invested heavily in property as part of a plan to redevelop the north inner city. It also planned to reinvent itself – at least in part – as a vibrant youthful designer-label led clothes shop right before the property bubble burst and took most of the retailer’s potential market with it.
It is not the first time the store has had to surmount major challenges – in 1894 a blaze destroyed the store, its stock and much of Henry Street. It came close to being levelled again during the Easter Rising.
It had a number of cameos in the run up to the Rising. Countess Markievicz is said to have kitted out some of her Citizens’ Army in the uniform section, and Pádraig Pearse made a brief stop at the shop to close his account before taking up his position in the GPO.
It has at times prospered like no other, and there can be no escaping the fact it means more to Irish people than most other shops in Dublin. Many people can recall being hauled around it as children by parents in search of cheap school uniforms, value homeware and clothes of better quality than found elsewhere.
The sense of dismay at its difficulties was palpable in the shop yesterday, largely because its roots are deep and in some respects unbroken. In 1867 an Antrim protestant called Alexander Nesbitt came as an apprentice and slowly rose before becoming chairman in 1909. Until yesterday, his great grandson Richard Nesbitt was the majority shareholder in the store.
