The phrase ‘department store’ was barely used in Victorian Britain. Contemporaries were aware of very large shops selling a wide variety of goods and might term them ‘emporia’, ‘bazaars’ or ‘monster shops’. A very small number of shops, particularly in the West End of London, were perceived as exceptional. For the most part, however, shops that historians have called ‘department stores’ because of their later, twentieth-century characteristics, were not seen as qualitatively different from other large clothing or household goods shops. This article argues the case for being more aware of contemporary perceptions and less concerned about looking for exceptional origins among shops generally classed as provincial department stores in nineteenth-century England. It considers the origins and early development of five such shops in the North Midlands and Northern England, including the extent to which they acquired foundation myths. It concludes that our understanding of nineteenth-century retail history would be enriched by paying less attention to when or whether such shops became department stores and more to the ways in which they sought to meet the needs of contemporary customers and to secure their place in the wider retail landscape.