Harrods, an upmarket department store on Brompton Road in Knightsbridge, has remained London's premier retail outlet for over 155 years.

Covering 4.5 acres (18,000 square metre), with over 1 million square feet (over 92,000 square metres) of selling space, the store generates 70% of its own electricity from its own generators. Harrods’s switchboard takes 7,000 calls a day.

In 1835, Charles Henry Harrod, a tea merchant set up as a wholesale grocer in Stepney. In 1849 escaping the cholera epidemic sweeping London Harrod moved his shop to Brompton Road in Knightsbridge that was then a semi-rural district.

Harrods grew together with Knightsbridge, and by 1880 it employed 100 staff – that is from a single room employing two assistants and a messenger boy. In 1883 the store burnt to the ground, giving the family the opportunity to rebuild on a grander scale.

Harrods was the place where the world’s first escalator appeared in 1898.

During WWII the store was producing uniforms, parachutes and parts for Lancaster bombers, and sections of the building were taken over by the Royal Navy.

Harrods's current owner is the Egyptian tycoon Mohamed Al-Fayed who bought the store in 1985 for £615 million.