Tam Shepherd's Trick Shop: Legendary Glasgow city centre magic trick shop closed after 138 years

Tam Shepherd’s Trick Shop, one of the oldest shops in the city, has closed with immediate effect. It was the oldest magic shop in the world, opened in 1886. A statement from the family business said: “We are sad to announce that Saturday 9th November 2024 was the last day of trading from our long established bricks and mortar shop in Queen Street. The building that we are a part of is to be redeveloped. The new development includes retail space, and we have the opportunity to re-open in what we hope will be a revitalised, small-business friendly, city centre.

“However, the uncertainty over the redevelopment, together with high costs of being a small independent shop in the city centre in the current climate, is not sustainable for us.

“Tam Shepherds will continue with our online shop tamshepherds.com supplying customers with our range of magic, tricks, jokes and costumes.

“To all our customers and friends, thank you so much for your continued custom and support. We hope to welcome you back in the future. And thank you to Glasgow for making Tam Shepherds the shop it has been.”

Plans to demolish the building that houses Tam Shepherd’s have been approved. Developers will build a 14-storey building on Glasgow’s Queen Street where the former popular nightclub Archaos once stood.

Plans included retaining the current façade of the 1830s building and there was a commercial unit, intended for reoccupation by Tam Shepherd’s Trick Shop, on the ground floor. The new building will be a 195-bed student accommodation development.

Roy Walton, long time owner of Tam Shepherd's Trick Shop, died in 2020. The shop was established in 1886 and has been run by the Walton family for the past 82 years. Roy’s daughters Sarah and Julia continued the family tradition of bringing magic to Glasgow city centre.

The building on Queen Street has been mostly vacant since 2010. Representatives for the developers said, when the plans for student flats were presented, that there have been extensive talks with the owners of Tam Shepherd’s Trick Shop over the design of a new commercial unit.

They added the shop had “first refusal” on the premises. A representative from the architects behind the scheme, Flow Design, said it was “an opportunity to stop the rapidly increasing deterioration of a city centre asset”.

In the application, the firms behind the project, Carrick Properties Ltd and global real estate company CA Ventures, claimed they would “bring positive, high quality regeneration to a largely vacant site within the city centre”.

The accommodation is set to be managed by Novel Student, which operates CA Ventures’ student accommodation portfolio across the UK and Europe.