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Laws Stores Ltd, grocers

This page summarises records created by this Business

The summary includes a brief description of the collection(s) (usually including the covering dates of the collection), the name of the archive where they are held, and reference information to help you find the collection.

Date: 1907-1984
History: Laws Stores was founded in 1907 by Arthur McClelland, whose father Andrew Penman McClelland was a partner in the Sunderland wholesale grocery firm Joshua Wilson and Bros Ltd. Both the Wilsons and the McClellands were Quakers and Arthur completed an apprenticeship with another Quaker firm, Pumphrey & Carrick Watson in Newcastle. In 1949 Arthur's son Grigor returned from war service with the Friends Ambulance Unit followed by a degree at Oxford University and became managing director. During the 1950s he led innovation at Laws including the introduction of self-service supermarkets and modern systems of warehousing and stock control. At the same time Grigor McClelland became a leader in business and management education as (among other posts) founding director of the Manchester Business School in 1965. In 1978 he left Manchester and resumed the managing directorship of Laws, which was facing challenges in the economic crisis of the decade and from other retail amalgamations. In 1985 the company was sold to William Low Ltd. The McClelland family had established the Millfield House Foundation in 1976 with a shareholding in Laws Stores that gave it a large endowment on the sale of the company.
Places:
  • Newcastle upon Tyne, Northumberland
Functions, occupations and activities: Shops, merchants and distributors > Grocers, provisions merchants
Name authority reference: GB/NNAF/C106186 (Former ISAAR ref: GB/NNAF/B30596 )
Collections
Number Description Held by Reference Further information
1
c1907-84: records incl accounts, photographs, board papers
Tyne and Wear Archives
DT.LAW
See Annual Return 1999