Published in Windlesora 33 (2016)
© WLHG 2018
2017 sees the centenary of the opening of the newly rebuilt Boots building in Thames Street in 1917. Jesse Boot opened his first shop in Nottingham in 1877, and by the early 1900s, had built up a considerable pharmaceutical empire. The early shops were built in the half-timbered, mock-Tudor style, but Windsor’s was the first in what Pevsner describes as ‘gentlemanly neo-George I’.
It is the work of Percy Morely Horder, who designed many of the early shops; he also designed country houses and college buildings at Oxford and Cambridge Universities.
Left: Sir Jesse Boot; Right: Percy Morely Horder
Windsor had two branches of Boots, the other being on Peascod Street. The Thames Street branch had a lending library, and at one time the company’s logo appeared as a huge illuminated sign right across the front of the building. Boots has long gone, and the building is now the King and Castle Pub and Restaurant, but signs of its original use can still be seen in items such as the pestle and mortar carved on the keystones over the windows.
Images ©ShootingThePast
Adjoining the building is King Edward VII Gateway, marked by a bust of the king over the entrance, and a plaque proclaims that the gateway was given to the citizens of Windsor by Sir Jesse Boot, and opened by Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, in 1921. Regardless of its official name, many locals still refer to it as Boots Passage.
On the passage wall is a ceramic reproduction of Wenceslas Hollar’s 17th century view of Windsor Castle. It is the work of Macdonald Gill whose brother Eric was the well-known sculptor and typographer. Not one to miss a trick, Sir Jesse had a notice put in the appropriate place stating that ‘on this site standeth Boots Cash Chemists’.
Windsor Local History Group 