Knight and Lee

This store, now part of the John Lewis Partnership, has been based in Palmerston Road, Southsea since 1874. Originally started by a local businessman, Frederick Wink, it was later purchased by two young brothers-in-law who had been trained in London, Jesse Knight and Edward Herbert Soden Lee. They specialised in clothes before widening the stock to include housewares. It was acquired by the John Lewis Partnership in its first big expansion outside London in 1934. At this time it occupied the site where (until recently) Woolworth’s, Boots and other shops are. In January 1941 the whole of the Palmerston Road shopping area, including this store, was devastated in the Blitz. The staff were all given 2 week’s paid leave after which offices were set up in the nearby Queen’s Hotel and ten different shops were found in which to carry on the business. All the records had been destroyed, so the staff list, and their salaries were calculated from memory by Miss Kite, the Counting House Manager. The current building was completed in March 1959, on a site slightly further along Palmerston Road where J D Mourant had been.