Morleys Stores
group of eight department stores in Greater London

Morleys Stores is a group of eight department stores in Greater London, a business-to-business furniture supply subsidiary called Morley's of Bicester Ltd and a department store & furniture centre called Camp Hopson of Newbury in Newbury, Berkshire. The group is named after the original store that opened in Brixton, south London as Morley & Lanceley.
On 18 March 2025 they announced the acquisition of the Jolly's department store in Milsom Street, Bath, one of the UK's oldest and scheduled to fully reopen after refurbishment in October 2026.
History
In 1854 Joseph Hopson opened a furniture business on West Street, Newbury. In 1886, Alfred Camp opened a drapery bazaar on Northbrook Street. The business ran as separate entities until 1920, when Paul Hopson, grandson of Joseph, married the daughter of Alfred, Norah, and the companies were merged to form Camp Hopson.
In 1929, the Brixton store started selling contract furniture, eventually expanding and moving to Bicester. It acquired the similar businesses of Duncan Roberts Ltd in 2002 and Principal Furniture Ltd in 2005.
The Brixton Road shop originally traded as Morley & Lanceley. In 2009 Morleys bought Roomes Fashion and Home in Upminster and in 2010 it bought the Pearsons stores in Enfield and Bishop's Stortford.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Morleys Stores” is group of eight department stores in Greater London. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Morleys, Stores and group, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6912573. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2025, 2026, 1854 and 1886.
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This entry incorporates text from “Morleys Stores” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.