Jenners in its Heyday: 32 amazing pictures of the Edinburgh department store in the 1950s and 1960s

We’re looking back at the glory days of the Edinburgh’s most famous department store.

Last week saw the first images emerge of the extensive renovations being carried out in the Jenners building on Edinburgh’s Prices Street.

Fire ripped through the building in January 2023, with scaffolding covering the former department store ever since.

But that scaffolding is starting to now come down, giving a tantalising glimpse of what will eventually be “a mixed-use development that seamlessly integrates contemporary retail, hospitality, wellbeing and cultural offerings within a single destination.”

It will be the latest chapter of a storied history that started in 1838 when linen drapers Charles Jenner and Charles Kennington founded ‘Kennington & Jenner’ - the shop that would become Jenners Department Store.

The business’s original building was destroyed by fire in 1892, with Scottish architect William Hamilton Beattie appointed to design a replacement store the year after. It was completed in 1895 and remains a category A listed building on Princes Street.

When Charles Jenner retired in 1881 the so-called ‘Harrods of the North’ was taken over by James Kennedy and his descendants, the Douglas Miller family, ran the company until it was sold to House of Fraser for £46.1 million in 2005.

The store, which had held a Royal Warrant since 1911, remained open under the Jenners name, even when the building was bought by Danish billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen in 2017.

But in 2021 it was announced that Jenners would close for good, at the cost of over 200 jobs. A year later planning permission was granted for the building to be converted into a 96-room hotel retaining the iconic three-storey central atrium and the Jenners signage.

Two years later the fire, which tragically claimed the life of firefighter Barry Martin, threatened the very future of the building, but it now appears to be well on its way to being saved.

Here are 32 pictures to take you back to Jenners’ heyday in the 1950s and 1960s.

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