Abraham de Gruchy

MENTION the name de Gruchy in Jersey and it is likely that minds will turn immediately to the department store which occupies such a prominent position in King Street.

But the store, which celebrates its 200th anniversary this year, had its origins in St Peter rather than in the centre of St Helier.

The founders of the business, Abraham and Marie de Gruchy, opened their first small shop near St Peter’s Parish Church on 21 June 1810, a site which had more commercial potential than we might now assume.

At the end of the first decade of the 1800s General Don was providing the Island with a new network of roads and two of them, linking Beaumont with St Ouen and La Haule with St Helier, put St Peter on an important route linking town and the north-west.

The General’s roads were designed to make the transport of guns and troops to distant parts of the Island an easy matter, but they also provided passing trade for outlying settlements such as the village around St Peter’s Church.

The new road network was, of course, created in response to the threat of invasion by Napoleon’s forces, but if the early 1800s were a time of military and political uncertainty, they were also a time of prosperity in Jersey.

The military garrison had money to spend, so retailers – and tavern landlords – did well. Day books kept at the first de Gruchy store even show that General Don himself was one of the first customers.

However, Abraham and Marie de Gruchy did rather more than sit back and wait for business.
They worked long hours and maintained high standards.

They won the contract to tailor uniforms for the Jersey Militia and among the many lines they carried that you would now be hard pressed to find in King Street was a range of swords.

The arcade of the town store

In the early stages of the enterprise, Mr and Mrs de Gruchy were assisted by Mr de Gruchy’s younger brother, Matthieu, and they also did useful business with Mr de Gruchy’s uncle, Thomas, the owner and master of a ship called the Rose, which imported all sorts of goods, including cargoes from revolutionary France, in spite of its state of war with Britain.

Even as the war raged, Marie de Gruchy went on buying trips in France, apparently undeterred by the danger of travel on contested seas or of the risk of doing business in a hostile country.

The year 1815 saw the Battle of Waterloo, the final caging of Napoleon and the end of war.
It also saw the de Gruchy’s expand into larger premises in St Peter, the former Alexandre Hotel.

It is possible that at about the same time the family branched out into banking – in common with many other leading business people – but the record of just who was involved is ambiguous.

Then, probably in 1820, a major step forward was taken. A town branch of the shop was opened at 33 Broad Street, followed by the acquisition of 52 King Street in 1824.

Abraham and Marie bought a property known as La Grande Maison that had been the residence of two of the 18th century’s Bailiffs and transformed it into what they might well have described as an emporium.

The new store appears to have opened in 1825, given that advertisements appeared in that year in a newspaper called the Constitutionnel which said that the de Gruchy’s new undertaking was employing a master tailor called Mr Fisher and five London dressmakers.
The advertisement also promised the canny Jersey shopper healthy discounts for cash purchases.

In 1826 the de Gruchys took a full page in the Island’s first tourist booklet to advertise their ‘Magasin de nouveautés’, which by then had been extended to occupy 50 to 52 King Street.

It was also at about that time that a store which had extended its range of goods to include furniture and carpets adopted a name close to the one we know today, A de Gruchy et Fils.

The ‘fils’ in question was William Philip, a 17-year-old son fluent in English, French and Jersey-Norman French who also had a knowledge of Spanish.

In 1831 the store took a major technological step forward by fitting gas lighting which, one Island newspaper noted, was efficient to the extent that a single burner gave more light than ten candles.

By that time, the St Peter shop had been closed but the de Gruchy family grew steadily more wealthy.

The restaurant and tea room as it used to be

In 1840 they moved into The Grove in St Lawrence, still one of the Island’s most opulent properties.

They also owned farmland in Trinity and tracts of the St Ouen sand dunes which Abraham intended to use for experimental asparagus cultivation.

Then, in 1845, when Queen Victoria and Prince Albert visited the Island, it was A de Gruchy that provided the carpet onto which they stepped as they landed in St Helier Harbour.

But the carpet was no mere token – it was large enough to cover not only the steps used by the Queen and her consort but also much of the pier.

By 1854 a tourist guide was pointing out that de Gruchy’s store was comparable to the best that London had to offer and was accessible from three sides – King street, Dumaresq Street and New Street.

Abraham de Gruchy finally left his cherished business and the world in 1864, followed by his wife, Marie, two years later, but between them they had founded an organisation which continues to thrive today.

Despite the German Occupation and a disastrous fire in 1944, de Gruchy’s has lived on into the 21st century and shows no sign of slipping out of fashion with the Jersey public or the many visitors who browse and spend in its many departments.