At the heart of the city: Glasgow’s jewellery quarter

AT Mr Harold & Son, No 33 Argyll Arcade, a family of jewellers is talking about the most romantic stories in the shop’s history. It’s closing time, and diamonds are being shut away in safes, and tills closed down at the end of another day of business on one of Europe’s oldest covered arcades.

“Remember the time Dad ran down the street after that couple who were having a row?” asks Samuel Groundland, the “son” in Mr Harold & Son and, since his father’s death last year, its owner. His mother, Sally, who has come to the shop every Tuesday “for company” since her husband died, smiles and picks up the story.

“They came in to choose an engagement ring and the man must have said something to upset the woman,” she explains. “They started arguing and stormed out. My husband ran after them and talked them into coming back. He made them make up and they ended up buying the ring. Later they came back for their wedding rings. That was what my husband was like… everybody remembers buying their rings from him.” She trails off and Samuel and his sister, who also works here (as well as his wife and son), nod vigorously. It’s a typical Argyll Arcade tale, steeped in emotion, romance, and, more than anything, history.

Mr Harold & Son may not be the oldest jeweller on Glasgow’s Argyll Arcade but it certainly looks it. The shopfront is painted forest green, the colour of grand Victorian tradition. The window displays are a dazzling reaction against the contemporary minimalism of the rest of the shops. Here, more diamonds than you can imagine nestle in plush green velvet like glamorous creatures on a seabed. You have to ring a gold bell to get inside, where heavy green curtains are drawn across the windows, a nod to a time when shopping on the arcade was often a secret affair.

The sign above the door, in curly gold letters, reads: A Fine Collection of Traditional Jewellery… From the Golden Age of the Past & Present. It’s all straight out of 1827, the year when Argyll Arcade, Scotland’s first indoor mall, opened to the public: a glamorous world of jewellers, clothes shops, and tea rooms in one of the finest cities in Europe.

It’s the week running up to Valentine’s day, one of the arcade’s busiest times of the year. Along the Parisian-style walkway, couples stroll hand-in-hand, admiring rings, bracelets, necklaces and watches. The beadles patrol up and down in top hats and tails. Even the passers-by who are only using the L-shaped arcade to get from Buchanan to Argyle Street stop and linger in front of the glittering window displays, marvelling at £35,000 diamond rings and wondering who on earth could afford them. I meet a couple in their eighties who tell me they bought their wedding rings here “hundreds of years ago” for £40; mothers and daughters shopping for eternity rings; and Chinese tourists taking each other’s photos. Scottish couples – and many from further afield – have been coming here for almost 200 years, generations of families picking rings and then nipping upstairs to Sloan’s bar for a glass of champagne.

“I started out on the arcade as a tea boy when I was 17,” says Harry Brown, 54, a gemologist, diamond assessor and owner of Chisholm Hunter, which opened on the Trongate in 1857, the year American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote: “I am inclined to think that Glasgow is the stateliest city I ever beheld”. Chisholm Hunter, originally called The Store of 100,000 Wonders, is now Scotland’s largest independent jewellers.

“It was a time when the buildings were black and you couldn’t get a good coffee. The arcade was the only place in Glasgow where you could walk in and feel instant glamour. Couples would sit upstairs in a waiting room with benches and Formica tables until a flashing light told them it was their turn. Then they would go into a little cubicle, sit down and buy a ring. Now it’s a bit more sophisticated. You get champagne, privacy, the full experience.”

“We get all sorts now,” agrees Maureen McKee, manager at Chisholm Hunter for more than two decades. “Women buying jewellery for themselves, couples choosing rings together, two men or two women coming in for their civil partnership rings. It’s a long way from a man coming in on his own, in secret. It’s lovely seeing how things change.”

Outside H Samuel, the only high-street chain on the arcade (along with Ernest Jones, owned by the same company), Gemma Blaney-Wilson, 24, and Rob Williams, 23, from Swansea are shopping for a Valentine’s locket. “We’re in the navy and when our ship is here, we come down to the arcade,” she explains. “It was his idea.” Williams looks embarrassed. “We don’t get to spend much time together,” he says by way of explanation. What do they think of the arcade? “It’s lovely,” says Blaney-Wilson. “Lots of bling …”

There are 31 jewellers, a few with workshops still attached. The majority are independent, family- run Scottish businesses. Walk into James Porter & Son, and you likely be met by Simon Porter, fifth generation, who used to work here alongside his father and grandfather. The arcade is a rare jewel, a place frozen in time, and a remarkable success story in the midst of recession. Here in a city centre where more than 21 per cent of stores lie empty is an oasis of high-end, old-school glamour. This is even more the case since last year when a £750,000 restoration was completed.

Yet it’s only in the past two decades that it has become an exclusive jewellery quarter. The Body Shop, Tie Rack, the Clyde Model Dockyard toy shop, which is mentioned (and mourned) by almost everyone I meet – all of these used to have a home in the arcade.

Over at Laing’s, established more than 150 years ago by James Laing, a clockmaker who worked for the Duke of Hamilton, I meet the sixth generation. Wendy Laing and her husband, Joe, took over from her father, Stuart Laing. Recently they bought another shop in the arcade – the independents tend to snap up units on the rare occasions when they come up for sale – and opened it as Robert Stewart, bringing back the name of a historic Glasgow jeweller who was once silversmith to Queen Victoria.

“Competition is fierce in the arcade,” says Wendy, who used to wrap gifts in Laings when she was 12. “But people still see us as their family jewellers. We have customers whose great-grandparents bought their wedding rings here. You won’t find many trades left like this one.”

“My childhood memories are of an arcade with varied shops and a sprinkling of jewellers,” recalls Stuart, who took over in 1972. “There were wooden benches where shoppers would rest and have a smoke. And look at it now – the most important and largest jewellery retailer in Europe.”

Some things may have changed, but other fashions are returning. In the 19th century many couples would hold their wedding receptions upstairs in the third-floor ballroom of Sloan’s. Now this space and the banqueting hall beside it are becoming renowned for weddings again.

Every shop I go into has their own cherished stories of men going down on one knee on the spur of the moment, staff being invited to weddings, and champagne being poured amid floods of tears.

“People will always come here if they’re getting married,” says Simon Porter as he shows me old photos on his mobile of his ancestors standing outside the shop in 1890, the same spot where we are now. “No matter what’s happening in the world or what changes, people fall in love and want to celebrate it. You get a lot of tears and emotion in this business. It’s lovely. You’re always going to see couples embracing along Argyll Arcade.”