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The Story of Hamleys by Victoria Gill

With 6 million visitors a year, and as one of the biggest toy shops in the world, Hamleys is among London's most popular tourist attractions. Many will know it for Christmas shopping trips with mum and dad: you've probably seen the toy demonstrators, magician and window displays for which the store is famous. Over the seven floors of the shop, there are over 40,000 different toys, games and gifts. But what you may not know is how Hamleys began, in 1760, as a small, cramped Holborn shop.

When William Hamley first opened a toy shop in London, Westminster Bridge had just opened to traffic - horses and carts. Even gas lights would not illuminate the city's streets for another half a century. The year was 1760, but William Hamley, a Cornishman from Bodmin, was not put off. He filled his cramped Holborn shop with every toy he could find; rag dolls and tin soldiers, hoops and wooden horses, because he wanted the finest toy shop in the world. He even called it the "Noah's Ark". So when Henry Charles Harrod opened a small grocer's in Knightsbridge in 1849, Hamleys was already a vastly successful "Joy Emporium".

To celebrate, in 1881, 11 years before the statue of Eros was created, William Hamley's grandsons opened a new branch in Regent Street, not so far from Piccadilly Circus. By the end of Queen Victoria's reign, croquet sets, cricket bats and "footballs for playing on the sands", jostled with marionettes, magic lanterns and model sailing boats on the shop's packed shelves. So great had the shop's reputation now become that Jean Jacques and Sons asked if they could launch their new "Gossima" exclusively through Hamleys. The public immediately took to the game which they christened "ping pong" after the noise made by the bouncing of its hollow white celluloid ball. Not until 1921 did it officially become Table Tennis.

In 1931 Walter Lines bought Hamleys and in 1938 he was rewarded with the Royal Warrant from Queen Mary. Her granddaughters, the young Princess Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, both had Hamleys toys in their nursery. Even being bombed five times in the blitz did not stop Hamleys. The staff wore tin hats as they served at the front door, rushing in to collect the toys, then handing them over at the door. After the War it was business as usual; the Festival of Britain in 1951 brought a Grand Doll's Salon as well as vast model railway to hypnotise children of any age. The new Queen Elizabeth II had not forgotten her own childhood companions. Both Prince Charles and Princess Anne received toys from Hamleys and, in 1955, Her Majesty honoured Walter Lines with his second Royal Warrant as a "Toys and Sports Merchant".

In 1981 Hamleys moved to 188-196 Regent Street and then, in May 1994, Hamleys obtained a listing on the London Stock Exchange and now trades as a public limited company. Below is a guide to where to go to find your toys.