We have a new occasional theme for the Antique Dealer Research Blog – ‘Antique Shops Then and Now’ (it’s really just an excuse to travel the UK in search of locations of interesting antique shops, some inevitably long gone of course). Anyway, the first antique shop in this occasional theme is that of Edgar H. Burrows and family – who ran an antique shop from King Richard III house, 24 Sandgate, Scarborough, on the North East coast of England from 1915 until 1964.
Burrows bought the house and associated shop next door from the estate of another antique dealer, E. Booth Jones (who was originally from Manchester) in 1915; Booth Jones sadly drowned when the Lusitania was sunk by a German torpedo on May 7th 1915 – incidentally, the well known antique dealer Edgar Gorer, a leading specialist in Chinese ceramics based in New Bond Street in London, was also lost when Lusitania was sunk. The antique dealing business operated by Edgar Burrows was inherited by his son, C.H. Burrows, who ran the business with his wife until they eventually sold the property in 1964 and closed the antique shop. The antique dealing business was very successful it seems – the Burrows were elected to the BADA (British Antique Dealers Association). Scarborough was not such an unusual place to run an antique shop in the period – indeed Scarborough already had at least 25 antique dealers by 1930, and by the 1970s this community of antique dealers had doubled to more than 60, so it seemed to have been a very popular location for antique collectors.
Here (below) is Burrows antique shop as it was in the 1950s (in anonymous line drawing of the late 1940s). It was called ‘King Richard III House’ because it was said that Richard stayed in the house in 1484.
And here (below) is a photograph of the building, also from c.1950. Burrows operated a museum/shop in the Richard III building, with an associated antique shop next door, but it seems that the antique dealing business eventually took over the spaces of the museum and the shop – a useful hybrid model, blending ‘for public education’ with ‘for private profit’, which must have been very effective.
The building in 2025 (see below) looks much the same, but is no longer an antique business of course (it’s now a cafe).
Anyway, keep an eye on the Blog for more posts in this ‘Antique Shops Then and Now’ theme.
Mark
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