Family way still the only way - 100 years on

HOPEWELLS SHINES ON IN CITY - AND NO OTHER STORE IN THE UK CAN MATCH ITS PRESTIGE RANGE

- By LYNETTE PINCHESS

IT started with house clearances in St Ann's but more than a century later Hopewells is still the place to go for a bewildering array of luxury furniture.

It's the biggest shop of its kind - there's no other store in the UK with its range of premium brands under one roof.

The massive three-storey Nottingham showroom is home to high-end sofas, dining tables, beds and homewares and the business counts sports stars and celebrity names among its customers.

Now in its fifth generation since the founder's great-great-granddaughter Kassie joined the family business, Hopewells is celebrating 140 years in the furniture trade, growing from humble beginnings to a niche for those who want to splash out on the best.

Policeman’s son Frank Hopewell had been using a horse and cart to deliver coal on the cobbled streets of St Ann’s but in 1885 he started doing house clearance and sold the second-hand furniture in Great Alfred Street Central - just a few hundred yards from where the business is now in Huntingdon Street.

Adam, the founder’s great-grandson and the present managing director, said: “At the time you had Victorians emigrating to Australia and Canada so they would sell the entire house, pillows, knives and forks - liquidate everything - to get their ticket and leave the country, so he got into house clearances around St Ann's.”

It wasn’t long before Frank, patriarch of a large Victorian family, started to sell new furniture and moved to bigger premises in St Ann's Well Road in 1898.

As well as having six sons and two daughters, his wife Annie used to bathe and feed the neighbourhood’s poor children before sending them home in fresh clothes.

Frank died in a car accident in 1936 but by then his grown-up sons Bernard and Eric were already working for the family business, while the others branched off into different parts of the trade.