A Knightsbridge landmark

FIVE YEARS AGO, I wrote the following:

“In the early 1960s, my parents installed a Permutit water softening unit in our family home. I have no idea why they did this. Maybe it was to save soap and the furring up of pipework. I am not sure that they would have done it had they known of the research that shows that heart disease is reduced as the hardness of drinking water increases.

The apparatus consisted of two cream-coloured cylinders, each about five feet high, which stood next to each other in our garage by the side of the house. One of the cylinders was sealed shut and surmounted by a circular metal control wheel. Its neighbour could be opened by lifting a lid. Once a week, my father had to refresh the ion-exchange resin in the sealed container. This was done by adding salt in large quantities to the other cylinder …

… A special salt, called dendritic salt, was required for the weekly process … There was only one store that would both supply sacks of dendritic salt and, also, deliver it to our home. That store was the world-renowned Harrod’s in Knightsbridge, which brought us the salt in their silent, electrically powered delivery vehicles.  In order to get these regular deliveries, my parents had to open a Harrod’s account...”

Today, at the end of May 2023, I paid a visit to Harrod’s – a department store, which I last entered about 15 years ago. Since then, its interior has been modified considerably. The Ancient Egyptian themed central escalator hall is as it was when I last saw it, as is the superb, tiled food hall. Otherwise, it seemed unrecognisable to me.  

Rather than being what I have always believed a a department store should be – a large shop in which its various sections display different kinds of goods (for example, men’s clothing, kitchen appliances, toys, etc), todays Harrod’s is a collection of departments, each one dedicated to a brand rather than a type of product. Wandering through the store, trying to find our way out, it occurred to me that Harrod’s has become more like a shopping area in a large international airport than an ‘old-fashioned’ department store. Is this, I wonder, because today’s customers are more interested in brand names than the products to which they are attached? Also, I am curious to know whether Harrod’s still deliver sacks of dendritic salt to addresses in the Hampstead Garden Suburb, where we used to live.