Page 28 - Hindsight Issue 26 April 2020

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THE HISTORY OF PHILLIPS’S DRAPERS’ AND FURNISHERS’ SHOPS
Robin Phillips
Robin Phillips was born in Northampton in 1932, the great-grandson of Aaron Phillips. He was a director of Phillips’s of Kettering for 48 years until he retired to Anglesey to further his interest in mountaineering. Ten years ago he returned to Northamptonshire to be nearer his family and now lives in Brigstock, where his interest in history led him to the Brigstock Historical Society, in which he now serves as Treasurer.
Aaron Phillips, the son of thomas Phillips, a Devonshire small farmer and blacksmith, was born in 1841. His father realised that the prospects for his children, four boys and four girls, in the small village of West Down were not good; at best they would become agricultural labourers or domestic servants. thomas made
certain that all his children had a good education. He sent the boys as boarders to Chaloner’s school in Barnstable to give them a better start in life and, at the finish of their schooling, he packed them all off to London under the supervision of an uncle, who had a costume and mantle business in Islington.
In 1857 at the age of 16 Aaron entered the world of Charles Dickens and served an apprenticeship in textiles with Duffield & Co, linen drapers in st. John’s street, Clerkenwell. After completing his apprenticeship, he moved to Manchester and became a sales representative for Henry Bannerman & sons Ltd, a large Manchester textile manufacturing company.
In 1884, he received an unexpected inheritance from an uncle. this encouraged him to open up a business of his own. During his travels, he realised northampton had become an
The new Abington Street shop opened in 1900 in Northampton
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