Benjamin Pollock's Toy Shop

Benjamin Pollock's Toy Shop is a toy shop specialising in vintage and retro toys in London's Covent Garden. One of the oldest toy shops in London it has its origins in Hoxton in 1851 before being taken over by Benjamin Pollock in 1877 who ran it until his death in 1937. The shop was co-owned by Coronation Street actor Peter Baldwin from 1988 to his death in 2015. Located at 44 The Market Building, Benjamin Pollock's Toy Shop specialises in Victorian toy theatres, both original and reproduction in addition to books, puppets, music boxes and other traditional toys.

John Redington (1819–1876), who described himself as a 'Printer, Bookbinder and Stationer; Tobacconist; and Dealer in miscellaneous articles', opened a theatrical print warehouse at 73 Hoxton Street in 1851. Redington was as an agent for the toy theatre publisher John Kilby Green, and when Green died in 1860 Redington bought up his engraved copper plates. Redington ran the Hoxton Street business until his death in 1876 following which his widow, youngest son William and daughter Eliza carried on with the business, but soon only Eliza Redington was left to run the print business.

Eliza Redington married Benjamin Pollock (1856–1937) in 1877, following which they ran the shop together. The couple went on to have eight children – four sons and four daughters. The business that Benjamin Pollock had inherited consisted of the toy theatre sheets of both J. K. Green and J. Redington. The material subsequently sold by Pollock was therefore predominantly from these previous publishers, with the imprint changed to 'B. Pollock'.

During the 1880s Benjamin Pollock's Toy Shop, as it was now known, was still opposite the Britannia Theatre at 73 Hoxton Street in Hoxton. Benjamin Pollock became a maker of toy theatres – or the 'juvenille drama' as it was called at the time, selling toy theatre drops and characters from contemporary dramas for "a penny plain, twopence coloured". Pollock generally republished older plays by using existing plates and simply changed the names of the actors. His version of Cinderella, for example, which could be bought from Pollock in the 1880s, used plates from 1844.

Pollock's business was not a success as tastes in the 1880s changed towards magic lantern shows and other innovations but when the shop was visited by Robert Louis Stevenson in 1884 things considerably improved. Stevenson wrote of the shop 'If you love art, folly or the bright eyes of children, speed to Pollock's'. Today a plaque marks the shop's original location on Hoxton Street.

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