It's been 15 years since a Victorian-era shop that sold "all sorts of oddities" in the city closed its doors for a final time.


For well over a century, the Tutill-Nicol stationery shop was a familiar sight on Richmond Street in Liverpool city centre. Hailing from a time of feather quill pens, sealing wax and huge account books in Victorian Liverpool, it welcomed generations of customers through its doors.

It was formed from the merger of two independent retailers, Tutill and Nicol, who competed against each other in the same street before deciding to join forces. Through the years, many will remember getting rare stationery items from there that were no longer found in other shops, or heading there for school supplies.

Back in August 1981, the Liverpool Daily Post reported how the shop had undergone a refurbishment, but still maintained its "old world atmosphere." The article reads: "Nests of shelves climb up the walls; neat little cupboards and spaces are tightly and tidily packed between them.

"You get the feeling that Charles Dickens could quite happily have stocked himself up here. It’s a super little shop; probably the busiest stationers of its type in the city centre. There certainly isn't another quite like it."




By the 1990s, more change came to the site as it joined forces with another well-known name in stationery in Liverpool to trade from the same historic building. Jordan Woodrows, specialists in legal stationery and supplies, was based in Victoria Street but moved because the lease expired on its building.

On August 28, 1998, the ECHO reported the change and also gave insight into what Tutill-Nicol was like at the time. The article reads: "The store still stocks pen nibs, blotting paper and sealing wax. It also stocks ledgers and specially account books for book-keepers who still do their accounts the old fashioned way.