Bringing the Debenhams Archive to The Nation: Collection Highlights and Future Plans
Version 1: March 2026
Background Debenhams went into administration in late 2020. By 15 May 2021, the last Debenhams store closed, signalling the end of over 200 years of trade on Britain’s high streets. While the brand name was purchased by Boohoo (subsequently rebranded as Debenhams), all physical stores and office functions were closed for sale with no permanent home for the archive.
Our case study Collaborating Across Sectors: Saving the Debenhams Archive charts how the Crisis Management Team for Business Archives (CMT) worked with partners to ensure the historical records of Debenhams were safeguarded during the administration process. Through a shared understanding of the importance of the records, the CMT, the insolvency profession, archive sector, academics, and members of the public achieved this crucial success and prevented the loss of the archives of one of the most important retail names in British history. The next steps were to ensure that the archives – telling the story of the business itself, and those who had worked for it – found a suitable permanent home.
By 2021, the Debenhams archive was safely transferred to temporary storage at South West Heritage Trust. Through an open-call to the archive sector, City of Westminster Archives, the local authority archive service of the London Borough of City of Westminster, was mutually agreed as the permanent home for the archive. A key deciding factor was Debenhams’ early beginnings in Westminster.
‘Westminster is very proud to have been home to a drapery store in Wigmore Street, Marylebone, which became the starting point of the Debenhams story all the way back in 1778. There are so many people all over the country, for whom Debenhams formed part of their lives, and now the archives are with us, we look forward to working with a wide range of people, other archives, and the Debenhams team, to keep the Debenhams story going.’
Gillian Staples, Archives & Collections Lead, City of Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea Bi-Borough Libraries and Archives.
The collaboration with South West Heritage Trust was crucial in enabling appraisal of the collection to take place before the final move of the collection to Westminster. At Taunton, while in emergency storage, the team from Westminster visited and appraised parts of the collection, including property management files relating to branches. This selection process helped improve existing survey lists, and save valuable time and storage space when the collection made its permanent move to Westminster.
In Summer 2024, the archive, consisting of over 200 boxes, was transferred from its storage at South West Heritage Trust to its new permanent home in the City of Westminster.
Uncovering Significance: Collection Highlights
The outstanding archive dates from the 18th century to the 2000s. The collection includes minutes, letter books, store plans, ledgers, printed material, estate property papers and photographs of stores.
These records reveal stories about fashion, world trade, employment practices, women in the labour force, consumerism, tastes and trends in retail. The collection also demonstrates the business model of Debenhams, something that was central to the evolution of the high street. The records show how the company was part of the lives of people living in Britain throughout the 18th -21st centuries, whether they were customers or staff.
Highlights of the collection include:
- Company diaries from 1899 onwards, covering decision making, letters, appointments, buyers’ journeys and staffing matters
- Records of the Drapery Trust, which was a leader in bringing family run department stores into a retail group, later taken over by Debenhams. This was an important 1920s business model in relation to the evolution of high street department stores.
- A ledger entitled ‘Debenhams Ltd Workroom Staff (Females) Savings and pension fund’, c.1930s-1940s, covering women’s wages. Other records give further detail about the experience of women working at Debenhams, for example the minutes of the ‘Workroom Committee’ which include correspondence with female employees during the 1920s. These minutes cover industrial relations between an entirely female department and the male management.
- Records of Debenhams in South Africa, Paris and records of trade across the world, from Melbourne to Chile.
- Advertising brochures containing illustrations of dress from the Edwardian period onward
- Merchandise and clothing samples, and Debenhams staff uniforms c. 1960s -1980s. Highlights include the ‘Debroyal’ own brand stocking tights and Ludo game board!
- Portraits, including one of William Debenham, whose name lent itself to the business for much of its history. In 1813 William Debenham was made a partner in the drapers shop on Wigmore Street, London and the store was renamed “Clark and Debenham”, becoming Debenhams in 1905.
Making the Collection Accessible: Addressing Priorities
The first priority for City of Westminster Archives has been to enhance box content lists to meet immediate enquiries and plan for cataloguing the collection. Surveying contents helps ascertain archival-standard packaging needs at the same time identifying fragile items for attention from a professional conservator. External funding is being sought to cover the costs for the conservation and to employ a qualified archivist to catalogue the collection to ISAD(G), the international standard for archival description. A collection of this size and complexity is estimated to take one person 1.5 years to catalogue to item level.
Once catalogued, the collections information will be made accessible on City of Westminster Archives’ online catalogue and in The National Archives’ Discovery database. This will enable researchers to find out about what is in the collection and to request the items they may wish to consult in person at City of Westminster’s search room. Without this work to catalogue the collection, public access can only be limited, as there are only high-level box listings that describe what is in the collection.
Another priority in coming years will be continuing to liaise with FRP Advisory to ensure certain records retained by them for their purposes as insolvency practitioners working on the Debenhams case eventually join the collection at City of Westminster. Using the summary lists of records retained by FRP Advisory, the CMT has been able to work with both FRP and City of Westminster to identify which of these should be transferred to City of Westminster for permanent preservation, and which can safely be disposed of.
Branch records
Records relating to local branches around the country were identified by their branch managers when stores were closing and transferred to Taunton in 2021. These records will soon be gifted and transferred by City of Westminster to relevant local authority archive services across the country.
Archive services with deposits made before 2021 have worked with City of Westminster and FRP Advisory to ensure that documentation is in place to make these transfers official. A standard gift agreement was agreed and adopted as a template for these local archives to use for existing branch archives already in their custody, to be shared with FRP Advisory for signature, until the end of administration on 9 April 2026.
Lessons learnt
- The Debenhams archive has strong links to Westminster’s wider existing retail business archive collections. This was a further important element in finding its new home at Westminster.
- Regular communication between insolvency practitioners, the CMT, and City of Westminster Archives Centre was essential as the collection moved to Westminster. Existing guidance on the Managing Business Archives website helped to ensure that documentation was robust when finalising the donation of the collection via a deed of gift agreement.
- The collaboration of colleagues within the archive sector at South West Heritage Trust was crucial in enabling appraisal of the collection to take place before the final move of the collection to Westminster, helping to save valuable time and storage space once it was at its new home.
- Capturing the experiences of staff through oral histories can be a positive project in the context of an otherwise difficult situation. South West Heritage Trust successfully ran a ‘Debenhams Memories’ project in 2022-2023, which captured the memories and experiences of staff who worked at Debenhams’ offices in Taunton. These recordings are kept at South West Heritage Trust and will be flagged by Westminster to researchers as a related collection. The Trust’s status as an Accredited Archive Service was supported by their vital involvement in providing emergency storage for the business archive and embarking on this oral history project.