The Ramsgate branch of Lewis and Hyland Harbour Street originally operated as a toy shop in the early 1800s before becoming a general draper and gentleman's outfitter during the mid-to-late 1800s.
The Name Changes included Lewis, Hyland and Goble (1887) and Lewis, Hyland and Linom (1891), Lewis and Hyland 1918.Sometime after 1929, the building underwent structural modifications to unify it and its shop front into the department store layout.
The store was a self-contained community. Scores of young drapery apprentices, seamstresses, milliners, and clerks lived in residential quarters directly above the Harbour Street shop floors, as did the branch managers and domestic servants.
It closed in 1986 after which various businesses used part or all of it, see photos.
I have included a picture of the 1971 street directory page for Harbour Street and Harbour Parade all of which were once called Harbour Street.
You can buy a cheap reprint of the directory and the 1904 tourist guide from which the three photos together come, here at Michael's Bookshop in Ramsgate.




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