James Roberts Ogden (JRO) was born to Charles and Ellen Ogden of Leeds in the summer of 1866, barely a year after the ending of the American Civil War. The child of grocers, James grew up around the feverish development of Harrogate as the 'World's Leading Spa'.

As a schoolboy James would pass small quarries on Cold Bath Road which supplied much of the stone used in building the expansive villas, mansions and hotels demanded by a booming town. Hard, brilliant stones often appeared in the soil, especially after a rain shower. These stones were quartz, but their quality caused them to be known as “Harrogate Diamonds”, and it is thought that they sparked James's fascination with gem stones.

On leaving school, James apprenticed himself to a Harrogate jeweller, John Greenhalgh, and in 1893 he opened his first premises in Cambridge Street, The Little Diamond Shop. The first recorded sale was a hall clock to Smith Kelly of Norfolk.

Displayed in our Archive is the first pocket watch sold by J.R. Ogden, during his first week’s business. The customer, Mr Bennett, was unable to afford the price of purchase outright, so was allowed to pay a deposit, take the watch away, and make payments on account. Long before the purchase was concluded, Mr Bennett called to make one of his payments, and was told that no further payments were required, because Mr Bennett, having proudly shown his acquisition to many friends and workmates, had brought about a large increase in the sales of pocket watches! As a measure of Mr Bennett's family's gratitude, it was returned to Ogdens upon his death.

Business was brisk, and clients included royalty, aristocracy and the cream of international creative talent, all visiting Harrogate's spa during the Season. These included Edward VII, for whom James Ogden had made a diamond and pearl collet for Edward to give to his daughter, Princess Maude, who later became the Queen of Norway. Many important buildings sprung up during this time, including the Frank Matcham's Royal Hall, modelled on the Viennese Kursaal, and the vast Royal Baths complex. The 1897 photo on the left marks a celebration to mark the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria, with the shop in the background.

In the years before the Great War, JRO opened further shops in Harrogate, Bath, Llandrindod Wells and Scarborough, and in 1910 the flagship branch was moved to the capacious premises of 38 James Street, the current home of Ogden of Harrogate. The beautiful Edwardian frontage and much of the interior furnishings date back to this period.

In 1911 The Daily Mail sponsored a round Britain air race finishing in Harrogate, with a prize of £10,000 for the winner. The Harrogate Chamber of Trade offered a wonderful solid silver tea service from Ogdens as a prize for the first placed pilot. In the event, the weight of the prize prevented the pilot from taking off, and remained in Harrogate!

The outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 must have come as a terrible shock to the citizens of Harrogate, who were well used to having the crowned heads of Europe in their midst. James Ogden was moved by the plight of the Belgian people and converted his home at Spring Glen into a reception centre for Belgian refugees. After the War, King Albert awarded James Ogden the prestigious Légion d’honneur in recognition of his great contribution to Belgium’s cause. Tragedy struck in 1917 when JRO’s youngest son, Walter, was killed on 1st December at the battle of Cambrai. He was just 19, and a Second Lieutenant in charge of the tank 'Harrogate'. A cache of letters to and from the front was found in our attics in 2014, and is now on display in our first floor Archive.

The new shops in Bath, Llandrindod Wells and Scarborough had needed to be closed during the war, but JRO decided to open in London. An amusing anecdote has survived of his attempt to locate suitable business premises in the capital. JRO visited London, disguised himself in working men’s clothes, and loitered about the streets of St. James, trying to assess which areas were visited by the most wealthy-looking customers. A suitable premises was found on Duke Street St James', which opened in 1922 and was run by the three surviving sons, William, John ('Jack') and James Roberts Junior. The London branch was a huge success, and indeed William Ogden left the company in 1925 to set up his own business in London.

JRO had always been fascinated by antiquity and archaeology and his skills as an expert in precious metals and gemstones meant that he was soon called upon by the British Museum and the leading archaeologists of the day. He was responsible for weighing and valuing the solid gold coffin of Tutankhamun, along with many other items, and our archive has many items of correspondence between Lord Carnarvon, Howard Carter, Leonard and Katharine Woolley and JRO.

JRO was soon giving slide lectures about the finds in Egypt and Ur (modern day Iraq), and by 1931 had raised over £40,000 to support the digs. The collection of letters from Katharine Woolley in our archive is thought to be the only surviving correspondence of hers in existence. Many of JRO's papers and artefacts are now in museum collections all over the world, including the British Museum and the Pennsylvania State Museum.

The period from 1922 until the Wall Street crash of 1929 was an era of increasing prosperity. It was also a time which saw a sudden rise in the popularity of pearl jewellery. One of JRO's most famous creations was made of the much rarer black pearl. In 1923, a Lady of title visited the Duke Street premises wishing to to acquire a necklace made of black pearls as a mourning tribute to her late husband. The cost, it seemed, was to be no barrier to assembling the finest such necklace ever made. Pearl by pearl, JRO managed to assemble and grade a superb collection of the rare black pearls with a total weight of over 1,000 grains. The delighted customer paid £16,000 for this necklace. In 1920 JRO acquired the star lot (a three-row natural pearl necklace) in the Paris auction of the estate of Gaby Deslys, one of the most famous performers of the Edwardian era, and in 1923 sold a pearl necklace for the extraordinary sum of £50,000, around £2.5million in today's money.

In these times, the silver department numbered eight silversmiths, and commissions were pouring in. In 1926 the authorities in both Harrogate and Ripon presented Lord Irwin with tableware to mark his accession as Viceroy of India. Harrogate ordered a solid gold salver, and Ripon ordered 18 silver-gilt desert plates; both came from Ogdens. Perhaps the most famous artefact ever to come from the Ogden workshops was the solid silver model of the Royal Pump Room which still graces the Mayor’s table on the occasion of great banquets. This was presented to Harrogate in 1927 by the Mayor, Captain Whitworth. That same year, Ogdens also supplied a superb gold casket for the scroll of Honorary Freedom of the Borough conferred on the First World War hero Earl Jellicoe. In 1930, a solid silver gilt sheep was made to commemorate the octocentenary of the Worshipful Weavers Company, 1130 to 1930. It was briefly 'repatriated' to Harrogate in 2018 to mark our 125 year anniversary.

These silver and pearl commissions, while eye-catching, were dwarfed by some of the more opulent jewellery commissions of this period, some of which were from royalty and foreign dignitaries including the Shah of Persia, who designated JRO his 'personal jeweller'. In 1934 Prince George (later, Duke of Kent) and Princess Marina visited the London premises with a box of jewellery from Queen Alexandra which he wished to re-model into a platinum, diamond and pearl suite. The result was a stunning Art Deco ensemble that was widely photographed in the national press. In 1935 the firm acquired a diamond necklace once owned by Marie-Antoinette, which was loaned to the Birmingham Silver Company to be displayed at its Silver Jubilee Ball.

The Coronation of George VI in 1937 brought much additional business to the Company, and one matter captured the imagination of the press. The Company acquired the famous diamond coronet which had been created at the command of the Emperor Napoleon for this wife Empress Josephine. The coronet was sold to a Lady of title, who wore it to great effect at the Coronation.

To celebrate the coronation of King George VI Ogdens also created two replicas of the Imperial State Crown in silver and paste, which were proudly displayed in the two shops. These are still on display in the current showrooms and are a masterpiece of craftsmanship.

Throughout the 1930s, JRO senior devoted himself to his public and private interests. He had always admired and respected the great writer Kipling, and indeed the family later recalled that there had been a slight connection with the author, as some of the Ogden children had been nannied by two of Kipling’s aunts, who lived in Yorkshire. When Kipling died in 1936, JRO prepared a commemorative volume containing a vast number of contemporary cuttings and biographical notes. This was presented to the British Museum under the title “Harrogate’s gift to the nation, of newspaper cuttings and other material concerning Rudyard Kipling”. This collection may still be consulted in the great Reading Room of the British Library. JRO also collected vast archives on Oliver Cromwell and the Battle of Marston Moor. The image is of JRO giving a lecture on this subject.

The contribution to local life made by James Roberts Ogden was fully recognized by the town in 1936, when the Council conferred on him the honorary Freedom of the Borough. At a special ceremony in the Royal Hall the Mayor paid fitting tribute to the man who had given so richly of himself to public service in Harrogate, and whose professional activities had been a lustre to the town’s crown. A photograph of the occasion shows JRO seated at the foot of the stairs of the Winter Gardens, surrounded by his family of several generations.

The late Summer of 1939 witnessed Harrogate’s last great state occasion connected with the Spa, when the Lord Mayor of London visited the town to open the extension to the Royal Baths, later known as the “Western Wing”. The new buildings were intended to revive the town’s declining Spa business, but before they could be put to the test, World War Two began. Throughout the difficult winter of 1939-40, JRO spent much of his time disposing of his vast collection of books, newspaper cuttings, historical notes, antiquities and photographs. James Roberts Ogden died on 13th April 1940, surrounded by his loved ones. When the news of his passing reached the Council, the members stood in silent respect.

During the Second World War, Ogdens continued to trade, but much of the work was repairs and affordable wristwatches for the forces. JRO’s son, Jack, was killed by an exploding bomb near the London premises. The Harrogate shop had a notable sale during the war when Winston Churchill ordered a special cigar box and in 1942, the British Parliamentary Committee presented Mrs Franklin Delano Roosevelt with two beautiful silver tureens, supplied by Ogden's, to commemorate her visit to the Houses of Parliament.

After the war, the spa business never really returned to Harrogate, and so the town began to vaunt its conference venues and its floral displays. JRO's grandsons, Guy, Denis and James (Jimmy) had joined the business in the 1930s, and were now working alongside the older generation. In 1956 Denis was watching the TV programme 'Panorama', which showed members of the Prendergast family handing to the Burmese Government articles of historic furniture from the Palace of King Thibaw in Mandalay, which had been looted following Sir Harry Prendergast’s expedition across the Irrawaddy in 1885. Denis’s eye recognised one of the carved ivory chairs as being identical to a chair which had been acquired over forty years earlier by JRO, and indeed, it turned out to be one of the lost treasures of the Palace. The Company decided to present the chair to the Burmese Government, who accepted the gift with great pleasure.

By the 1960s the next generation, Glen and Jack (both sons of Denis) had joined the business, and in 1981, Glen took on the stewardship of the Harrogate premises, with Jack working in London. Dr Jack Ogden is now one of the world's leading authorities on ancient jewellery and diamonds, and also an Egyptologist, like his great-grandfather. His books on ancient jewellery are standard reference works on early jewellery technology. Following a huge rent increase, which made the Duke Street premises less viable, Jack switched to a full time academic and consultancy career, enjoying positions at the pinnacle of the jewellery industry, including Chief Executive of The National Association of Goldsmiths, Secretary General to CIBJO (The World Jewellery Confederation) and Chief Executive of the Gemmological Association (Gem-A). He has returned to Ogdens to give talks to our clients.

Glen’s main interest had always been in fine jewellery and precious stones, and before he completed a course in gemmology, he worked for a time with the well-known Swiss jewellers Gübelin of Lucerne. Also an expert in antique jewellery and silverware, he has regularly been invited to discuss his work in the media. In 2002 he was joined by his son Ben, who had trained at Boodles, Christies and Bonhams, and in 2009 by Robert, who had begun his career in opera and classical music. That same year, Glen retired from the business. In 2014 we renovated our Harrogate shop, adding the 'Regency Room' upstairs, and putting the workshop behind a glass wall so that customers can witness the craftsmanship on display. In 2015 we opened a branch in Minster Gates, York, in the shadow of York Minster.

Both our shops have featured in films and television programmes down the years, including 'Agatha' in 1972, 'The Mixer' in 1992, 'A is for Acid' in 2002, Emmerdale in 2016 and over in York, 'Patience' in 2024.

In 2006 we presented King Charles (then HRH Prince of Wales) with a Breguet watch, in celebration of the re-opening of Harrogate's Royal Hall. Breguet watches have had many distinguished owners including Marie-Antoinette, Napoleon, George Washington, Queen Victoria and Winston Churchill, so it was a fitting gift.

Ogdens has long had a friendship with actor Edward Fox OBE, whose great-grandfather Samson Fox was Mayor of Harrogate three times and funded the building of the Royal Hall and also London's Royal College of Music. Edward returned to Ogdens in 2018 to give a moving talk to mark 100 years since the First World War.

In 2023 we celebrated 130 years with an exhibition in the Regency Room. Artefacts and correspondence, many of which were loaned back to us by museums, were displayed and told the story of our history and JRO's archaeological exploits. Guided tours were given throughout the month of September and to launch the exhibition renowned archaeologist Joann Fletcher gave a talk to clients in the showroom.