Esoteric London

Cable Street, London, E1. Photo © Roger Dean 2011

In 1834 Charles Henry Harrod, having spotted an opportunity when the East India Company lost its monopoly on tea pricing, opened a wholesale grocery and tea merchants at 4 Cable Street, in London’s East End (pictured above). He moved into the City in 1849 and in the same year took a lease on a small grocer’s shop in semi-rural Knightsbridge which he figured would enable him to take advantage of the hugh numbers passing by on their way to the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park. R.D.