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Archive feature from 2008: Davenports Magic Shop

Everyone was saddened to read Davenports’ recent tweet announcing the closure of its magic shop in London’s Charing Cross Underground Arcade after 36 years. I was lucky enough to be sent there once to meet Bill and Roy Davenport, and, to mark its final day – 30 January 2020 – we thought we’d post the feature I wrote about the shop and the family who have run the business since 1898.

By Liz Arratoon

Whether you’re looking for cups and balls or a £1,600 substitution trunk, Davenports magic shop in London is an atmospherically lit, red-lined treasure trove of tricks, books, DVDs and ghastly things such as severed hands and fake blood. Started by mail order in 1898 by Lewis Davenport, it is the oldest family-run magic business in the world. Today it is managed by his great-grandsons, Bill and Roy, although their mother, Betty, who has been working in the shop for 60 years – since she was 14 – still goes in every day.

It is a flourishing concern, and Bill points out that their bestseller is one of the smaller items from a vast range of 1,600. “Generally speaking, it’s packs of playing cards. Most come in from America but there are dozens of different types of cards and card tricks. We go through an awful lot of them.”

But how did it all begin? An early poster describes Lewis as a ‘bewilderist’. Roy explains: “He was a self-taught manipulator. He’d make cards, billiard balls, thimbles or coins appear from thin air. He’d started off as a juggler but bought a magic book and got into magic. His father had died when he was eight. So by day he was an apprentice barrel-maker but did shows in the evening to support his family, and met other magicians who needed tricks.” Lewis made improvements or added a novel twist to standard tricks, started selling them to his friends and began to build up his business. He was a star of his time and his name helped the shop to do well.

Working in Germany during the thirties, he recognised that war was imminent and had a brainwave. Roy continues: “He was massively ambitious and stole a lead on all the other magic dealers. Germany was the China of the day, mass-producing stock. He was wholesaling all round the country and bought up items literally by the million, and filled the store. He supplied other dealers throughout the war. That has stood us in good stead ever since.”

But the fact that the business survived owes a great deal to Betty. In 1962, Lewis and his son, George, died within 12 months of each other, leaving everything to her. Roy says: “Magic has always been a male-dominated bastion, and a lot of people assumed she’d sell, but she kept it going. She carried the London shop alone until 1979. It was an extraordinary effort.”

In 1984, Davenports moved to its present subterranean hideaway in the arcade at Charing Cross Underground. As Roy explains: “From 1961 we were opposite the British Museum. You’d have coachloads of children deposited at the museum, who all ran over and spent their 50p on stink bombs. It sounds great but the magician at the back who wanted to spend £100 couldn’t get to the counter or discuss things openly. The advantage now is that we’re dead centre in London but we’re out of the way. Magicians find us and they’ve got complete privacy.”

One of Davenports’ new ventures, its magic school, began because they found a lot of people were unsure where to start, and it attracts a cross-section of students. Bill says: “It’s really successful. We’re trying to explain the basics of card magic and non-card magic, manipulation, and give them some idea of how to progress. We’re making it as interactive as possible so people can learn a move or routine in the class and get instant feedback about how it looks. People want to learn techniques but we do try to encourage stagecraft, misdirection and some idea of the audience.”

For those who cannot get to London, Bill has a couple of suggestions: “Normally, we tend to recommend things based on the person’s experience, their individual needs and budget. For youngsters, a Svengali deck is very good. Often trick decks can only do one thing but this one’s great because it has a huge variety. It’s not too expensive and you can get up and running with it.” He adds: “The Miracle Ring is another trick I love. You have a little metal ring and you throw the ring at the shoelace and they link together. Anyone can do it.”

He recommends Spellbinding Boxes for more experienced practitioners. “You have a coin that can be signed and put under a handkerchief. It disappears, and then you have a small brass box. The spectator opens the box, inside there’s another smaller box, so you go through about five and in the innermost box is the person’s signed coin. It’s good for beginners to intermediates but can also be done in a professional environment.“

And Bill mentions Rainbow Cascade, a card trick that Davenports has sole rights to, which “takes a bit more practice”. He explains its intriguing effect: “You show some cards, which change from being face up to face down, face down to face up as you count them from hand to hand, and for the kicker at the end you turn them over and they’ve got these glittery prismatic backs, completely different to anything you’ve seen before.“

As for the future of Davenports, Bill’s 12-year-old son, Alex, is already inventing his own tricks. “We don’t pressurise him but he’s come up with some very clever things.”

His great-great-grandfather would be proud.

Davenports is looking for a new central London venue for its shop, but until then it has more than 1,400 items available to buy online here.

Pictures of Betty and Bill Davenport taken in 2008 by Stephanie Methven

© Liz Arratoon

This feature first appeared in The Stage

Secret London: Davenports Magic Shop

It’s a surprise that Davenports has managed to make it on to the Harry Potter tourist trail given the shop is so damned hard to find. You could walk around the dank subways that link Charing Cross and Trafalgar Square for years without stumbling across it, and then one day you’ll turn a corner and whamkazaam, there it is, right in front of you, looking like it’s appeared out of thin air. Well, what do you expect from a magic shop?

Davenports isn’t any old magic shop (if there even is such a thing), it’s the oldest family magic shop in the world, owned and run by a Davenport for four generations and eyeing up a fifth. It began in the East End in 1898 and its heyday was probably the 1950s and 1960s, when it was based first on New Oxford Street and then Great Russell Street opposite the British Museum. The shop, staffed by magicians only too happy to demonstrate their art, became such a draw for tourists they decided to take themselves off the beaten track and into the tunnels around Trafalgar Square. In the move, Davenports took with them much of the stock, some of the fixtures and all of the atmosphere – walk inside and you step back in time, to late Victorian London, when Davenports was founded and magic was experiencing its first golden age, moving from games of find-the-lady on shadowy street corners into the glamorous Music Hall theatres that dominated popular entertainment.

The vast front window is the first sign that you’ve stumbled upon a refugee from the past. It is crowded with wands, juggling balls, posters advertising old magic shows, ventriloquist dummies, ropes, boxes, cards, red Indian headdresses and a giant dog bone. Enticing no? Opening the door triggers a satisfyingly meaty ‘dong’ from a hidden bell and reveals a small red-hued, slightly creepy interior. Most of the stock, old and weird, is kept in wall-mounted cabinets behind glass doors. The wooden shelves behind the counter are covered with fading handwritten signs – ‘Whoopee Cushion, £1’ –in front of which a young clerk demonstrates sleight-of-hand tricks, pausing only to sell invisible thread and a pack of cards. He pauses between tricks, and I jump in to ask if there is anybody I can talk to about the shop’s history. He disappears, not in a puff of smoke, but round the back, and re-emerges with a neat old lady, wearing a clerk’s apron. This is Betty Davenport, granddaughter of founder Lewis Davenport. ‘I started working here in 1948,’ she tells me, ‘when I was 14 and green as grass.’ Betty has run the business since 1960 and still comes in every afternoon to keep an eye on things. She intends to keep it in the family. One son, Bill, already helps run the business while another, Reg, is a performer, and there are three grandchildren being groomed to take over. Betty has high hopes for the youngest, now seven and doing tricks since he was five. ‘Young boys are inclined to be interested in magic anyway,’ she says, ‘it’s just that when they get older, other things can get in the way.’

Unarguable, and with that thought, conversation peters out. I go back to watching the clerk perform, his brow furrowed in concentration, desperate to get things right and show that in his case those mysterious ‘other things’ were firmly pushed to one side. Davenports has a curiously sober air for a room that’s full of rubber chickens and itching powder. This is a place for serious wizardry, where illusion is business. It’s more like a library than a joke shop. Another customer walks in and starts talking about the art, and I can sense my presence as a non-magician has been noticed. Is it just me, or is there a fear in the room I might hear something I shouldn’t, a trick, as it were, of the trade? So I bid farewell to Betty, close the door and retrace my steps back through the underground passages of Charing Cross, wondering all the while whether Davenports will even be there when I return.

Davenports Magic Shop

The world’s oldest family-run magic shop in the depths of Charing Cross station.

If Harry Potter has taught us anything, it’s that magical places are hidden in the most unlikely and mundane corners of London. And fittingly, if you want to make like a real magician, there’s only one place to go: the depths of Charing Cross station, where you’ll find Davenports.

Opened in 1898 by 16-year-old music hall performer Lewis Davenport, this institution now holds the Guinness World Record as the world’s oldest family-run magic shop. Since 1984, Davenports has been tucked away in the rather unglamorous underground arcade below the Strand, alongside a fancydress shop and a deserted gym.

Bill Davenport is the latest of Lewis’s descendants to run the family business and has been working in the shop since he was a kid. As you’d expect, the small shop stocks boxes of colourful silks and ropes, metal rings, fake thumbs, and of course the classic cups and balls. But the best-selling item is a good old-fashioned deck of cards. ‘The popular style of magic is constantly evolving,’ says Bill. ‘In Victorian times the focus was on “parlour magic”, using weird and wonderful apparatus to mystify the audience. Today, the focus is more on magic with normal objects that people can relate to more easily.’

Props aside, Davenports is all about educating aspiring Houdinis young and old: its cabinets are full of instructional DVDs and books and it holds beginners’ courses in the studio next door. ‘I do feel a great sense of responsibility to help people of all backgrounds learn magic the right way,’ says Bill. ‘Often, people starting are quite confused, so we try to guide them and make sure they’re not overwhelmed by the variety of magic available.’

And it’s not all just for kids’ entertainers, street performers and wannabe Penn & Tellers. ‘What is especially refreshing is the increasing use of magic as therapy, and to empower people who may have disabilities,’ says Bill. ‘As magic can be very interactive and personal, it is used by people who have a role that involves breaking down social barriers, such as people who work with gang members and medical professionals.’

Of course, there are millions of YouTube tutorials out there, but according to Bill, people still find the face-to-face experience invaluable. ‘Most of our customers prefer to meet us in person. Often they’ll just come in for a chat about the latest goings-on in the magic world.’ Never mind Diagon Alley: if you want to meet some real conjurors, this is where the magic happens.

Davenports Magic Shop

Located in the heart of London, Davenports Magic is one of the most popular magic shops in all of London. Opened way back in 1898 by Lewis Davenport, the shop continues to be owned and operated by the Davenport family, making it one of the oldest shops of its kind in the world! The Guinness World Record holding place stores thousands of quirky and amusing magic toys and products for both kids and adults. Davenports Magic also frequently conducts magic classes and magic shows at the Davenport Magic Studio located within the facility.

Located in the heart of London, Davenports Magic is one of the most popular magic shops in all of London. Opened way back in 1898 by Lewis Davenport, the shop continues to be owned and operated by the Davenport family, making it one of the oldest shops of its kind in the world! The Guinness World Record holding place stores thousands of quirky and amusing magic toys and products for both kids and adults. Davenports Magic also frequently conducts magic classes and magic shows at the Davenport Magic Studio located within the facility.

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