Remembering the past

As you walk down the side of the Bon Accord Centre you pass this granite memorial. Hundreds walk past it everyday and I bet they don't know it commemmorates shops from the nineteenth century. NC stands for the Northern Cooperative society.

It was formed in 1861 as Northern Co-operative Company, by two committees of Aberdeen residents who planned to follow the example of the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society. The first shop was a grocery business at 51 Gallowgate, opened in July that year. The original company had a fixed capital of £1000, but in 1917, it converted into Northern Co-operative Society.