Mellor had very few shops when I was a boy (now it has none at all!), so when we have visited them we will also go shopping in Marple Bridge. Let us start at the top of the village and walk down.
The village shop on Cheetham Hill changed but little over the years. Open the narrow door, and the bell on a coiled spring jangled as it must have done for the past 90 years or more. The shop provided a wide range of commodities – sweets, tobacco, toiletries, toys, stationery, groceries – for the people of Moor End were (and are still) an isolated community with only occasional public transport. Their shop served them with all their needs, and later it housed a Post Office as well.
In my boyhood it was owned by a Mr Cousill. His two daughters came to Mellor School across the fields, using the footpath which starts opposite the shop. They went in great fear of their father, who would shout their names from the shop door if he thought they were dallying too long on their homeward journey.
I barely remember Mr Bradbury’s Post Office in the cottages above the Chapel; for much of my life the Post Office meant Yeates’s shop, a little lower down the village. A busy little shop, this, and Mrs Yeates always had one or two local women as assistants. For here flocked the holiday-makers from the Cathedral Home, who enjoyed what we would call ‘self-catering’ holidays. Their groceries, sweets, toys, lemonade and crisps, picture postcards of Mellor and stamps were all to be found at the Post Office. Here too they could buy aspirin for their headaches, Sloane’s Backache Cure, Cecil Wood’s Cough Mixture, Beecham’s Pills and a hundred-and-one other patent medicines for minor ailments.
Here, too, came the local residents for the things they had forgotten when shopping in Marple Bridge – toothpaste, biscuits and jam. Here came the children on their way home from Mellor School, seeking sherbert fountains and cherryade. Later in the afternoon, their elder brothers and sisters would call for their educational needs – Indian ink, drawing pins and wooden rulers. And through the wire grille in the corner, telegrams were dispatched, pensions were paid and savings accumulated.
The Post Office received some competition from Millards’ shop, a hundred yards away. Millards sold sweets and tobacco, and also acted as a second outlet for Pollards’ bread. The Post Office sold mass-produced bread – sliced leaves in a waxed paper wrapper which was regarded by our household as an inferior product in comparison with the unwrapped, crusty, home-made variety. May and I came to Millards’ shop every Saturday afternoon with two-and-eightpence (14p). Most of this was for “Daddy’s tobacco” – 2 ounces of Gallagher’s Rich Dark Honeydew Flake. (No respectable shopkeeper would sell tobacco to such youngsters today!) Mother would have a quarter (4 ounces) of buttered brazils, or some Waller’s treacle toffee from the tin with a picture of Blackpool tower and the big wheel. That left May and I with a penny each – but you could get a lot of sweets for an old penny!
Millards’ was also a café. The sign outside announced Teas with Hovis, and teas with ‘Hovis’ brown bread you could have. (‘Hovis’ was the first of the ‘wholemeal’ flours which are now so popular. The standard wooden sign outside a tea-shop was a well-known feature of the period.) Those were the days when hikers filled the district at weekends, and trips by train into the country were a great boon for the town-dweller. Despite the competition of the humbler cottages advertising ‘Teas and Hot Water’ (you could bring your own leaf tea), Millards’ cafe must have paid its way. It survived the War and, under new management, operated into the 1950s.
Mr Millard had a job in Manchester, leaving the running of the shop to his wife and sister-in-law. He grew watercress in the little stream behind the shop, an unusual hobby of which he was very proud. No doubt his produce garnished the plates of boiled ham in the little café.
Now we must walk a fair way to the next shop – the Co-op (always simply called ‘The Stores’) – opposite the Royal Oak. The double-fronted building had two doors, but only the upper one was used by customers. The door stuck on the brown linoleum as you pushed it open, ringing the bell on the lintel.
On the left was the long counter, supporting the bacon-slicer, a pair of magnificent brass scales with a tapering pyramid of weights, and a string dispenser. The counter turned a right-angle and in the corner stood a bentwood chair for the customers’ use. Mr Walker was the manager; he worked in his shirt sleeves, wearing a long white apron. His shop smelled of smoked bacon, cheese, coffee and carbolic soap. Ranged in front of the counter were biscuit tins with glass lids; behind it were containers for currants, raisins, rice, tea and coffee. In the room beyond the shop were bins of flour, sacks of sugar and tubs of butter, for most groceries were sold loose. The few packeted goods were piled into symmetrical displays in the window.
Mrs Bray, wearing her tweeds, comes in. Mr Walker bids her good day. “And how’s the bacon this morning, Mr Walker?” she booms in her deep voice. A considerable time is spent in discussing the merits of the various sides of bacon hanging from the ceiling. At last a choice is made, and the thickness of cut is then decided. The bacon slicer is turned, and the red-and-white meat falls on to the greaseproof paper carefully placed in position beneath the whirring blade. After the ritual of weighing, adding another slice and cutting a little away, the paper is folded with a few deft movements.
Or perhaps a cheese needs to be tasted, or the freshly-ground coffee smelled. An assortment of biscuits can be obtained by Mr Walker taking a few from each tin – Coconut Rings, Lincoln Creams, Abbey, Nice, Marie, Petite Beurre, Osborne. Lump sugar is scooped into a blue paper bag and tied with a special knot in coarse string.
Then comes the addition of the bill, and the writing of the ‘check’ – a slip of paper with the shillings in words and the pence in figures. At home, these slips are carefully pasted on to a long gummed strip. At the end of each quarter, the amount is totalled, and the ‘divi’ paid out – sometimes as much as half-a-crown (12½ p) in the pound. No wonder Grandfather Heath called the Stores (which he would never patronise) “The spendthrift’s saving club”!
The checks come from all sections of the Stores – the coalman, the drapery shop in Marple Bridge, the breadman. On the day of reckoning, Mother will first add up her checks, then May, then I, struggling to do arithmetic with a column written in words rather than figures. When he comes home in the evening, Dad will get the correct answer, discarding our three different results.
The Stores also delivered an ‘order’ each week. On Thursday lunchtime, Herbert Dean, the young assistant, would call for the order-book. If Mother had not made out her list, he would patiently take it down with his indelible pencil in a clear hand. Then on Friday afternoon the Stores van-driver arrived with a wooden box full of groceries, taking away last week’s box with him. We thus had the use of a strong box for a whole week, and provided it was placed outside the back door on Friday, it could be a boat, or a castle, or a dolls’ house as we fancied. Mother used it as a step to reach high shelves, and, even Timmy could be persuaded to sleep in it.
Below the Stores was Harrops’, the greengrocers. This was a wonderful hotch-potch of vegetables in great baskets, fruit in boxes, boiled sweets in glass jars, and fish on a wooden block. Part of the adjoining house was given over to the County Bank (which became the District before it was swallowed by NatWest). The greengrocery was presided over by Mrs Harrop and her daughters, but its owner was old Sim who, with his horse and cart, went to market early in the morning and trudged the road during the day, selling direct from the vehicle. In his flat cap and brown dustcoat, he was well-known throughout the village. He was also well-known in the local pubs, and when he omitted the letter ‘b’ from ‘Derbyshire’ whilst painting his name and address on his cart, we suspected that he had come straight from the Royal Oak and picked up his paint brush.
In fact, Sim’s omission of a letter was hardly surprising, for spelling was not his strong point. Nevertheless, he came to the door with a pencil and paper. “Now, Missus,” he would say, and Mother would recite her needs. May and I used to sneak a look at his writing: ‘appers’ and ‘rubub’ were examples of his phonetics, for ‘appers’ and ‘rubub’ he called them.
Two or three doors down was Pollards’ – a small bakery, a few groceries and the most delicious ice cream. It was to Pollards’ that I would turn for solace after having a tooth extracted by Mr Appleton, the dentist. As we walked home past the shop, Mother would but me a cornet, partly in the belief that it would ’freeze’ my bleeding gums a little longer, and partly to cheer me up. I can picture the ice-cream container now, like a milk-churn with a big brass handle on top, floating in a melting ice in the surrounding tub.
Across the way stood a wooden hut housing the business of Ernest Renshaw, the local plumber. Herbert Hall’s butcher’s shop stood next door, whilst his brother Bernard was installed in the old shop in Sundial (which we passed on our way through Moor End), with his Tilley paraffin lamp roaring away on dark afternoons.
This was the era when most shops would deliver, and they often employed errand boys who were provided with special bicycles. Where are they now, those bikes with a small front wheel surmounted with an enormous basket? How proudly they displayed their owner’s name on a metal plate below the crossbar! H & B Hall, Butchers, had such a bicycle, but its proprietors often rode it themselves, or employed their sons Andrew and Derek.
There were plenty of tradesmen delivering by other means than the humble bicycle. The Stores, besides their regular grocery delivery, had a two-wheeled bread van pulled by a well-groomed horse. The driver was a man with twinkling eyes, a ready smile, white hair and a white moustache. Given a beard, you could have mistaken him for Father Christmas. This was Mr Leach, who lived in Marple. He appeared in the congregation every year at our Sermons, accompanied by his wife and three daughters.
The Stores also had a coal round. Marple Station then boasted a coal yard where the car park stands today. Here in the morning came the carts with their three horses and the coalmen wearing their leather back-protectors, An hour or two was spent in shovelling coal from the railway wagon into sacks, weighed on the massive scales against an iron hundredweight (50kg). Then off they went down Brabyns Brow. On the steep descent, only one horse walked in front, straining to shouts of “Whoa! Back!” from its masters, while the other two horses walked behind. The brake was screwed hard on, and the skid-pan was placed under one rear wheel. This wheel was thus completely locked, and the steel pan drew sparks from the cobbles as it slid along. At the foot of the hill, the two trailing horses were brought round to the front to help draw the heavy cart up to Mellor.
Fish also came to the door in Miss Harvey’s pony and trap. Miss Harvey was of mannish appearance, her pork-pie hat square on her head, and a long apron over her black skirt. Hake and herring, cod and kippers – Miss Harvey had them all. Even the shoe repairer called at the door, Sam Higginbotham sending John Shallcross round the village with a sack full of well-heeled footwear.
There was, of course, no shortage of milkmen. In the days before the mass collection of milk by tanker lorries from the central dairies, local farmers produced milk mainly for local consumption, although some milk was taken to the station early in the morning, whence it was conveyed by passenger train in large churns. One would often see a porter rolling one of these churns along the platform on its bottom rim, whilst supporting the top by the knob on the lid. Bert Yeates at Royal Oak Farm, Sam Livesey at Knowle, Sam Pickford at Townscliffe, John Brough at Appletree, John Taylor at Tarden, Hodgkinson at Linnet Clough, Joe Goddard at Longshawclough, all had their milk rounds, even though some covered only a few houses.
Cooled on a stone slab in the dairy after the morning milking, the milk was loaded into a great churn on the float – a two-wheeled horse-drawn chariot with the owner’s name emblazoned on a scroll across the front and over the splashers. Hanging near the churn were the measuring ladles with their long handles – quart, pint and gill. Eventually milk bottles (with cardboard tops) came into use, but for many years a jug had to be provided by the householder for filling from the measure dipped into the churn. The horses even knew at which houses to stop!
And there were men to do the less pleasant jobs. There was Mr Brown, the window-cleaner, with his ladders on his shoulder, his bucket and his wash-leather, going from house to house. If I happened to be indoors, he would make his leather squeak in a ‘wolf-whistle’ on the glass to attract my attention. He was also, I believe, a trumpet-player, whilst his son was an accomplished performer on the piano-accordion.
There was a road-sweeper, too, who was much needed when so many horses were used for haulage. He patrolled the village with his wheelbarrow, brush and shovel, keeping the road and its verges clean and tidy.
But the most unpleasant jobs fell to Harry Brough. Harry was the chimney-sweep; he would arrive very early on the appointed day with his flat circular brush and his bundle of rods. He had an old coat which he clamped against the fireplace, leaving one sleeve dangling up which he could feed the brush, screwing on rod after rod as he thrust it up the chimney. May and I would be sent outside to see if the brush had appeared above the chimney-pot. Harry would acknowledge our shouts of “Yes! Yes!” by giving the brush a final flourish before dragging it back, with soot and mortar pattering into the hearth. Then came the clearing up. He would take the soot away if requested, but often it was kept for improving the garden. Despite all precautions, the room was covered with a black film, and a damp sooty smell filled the air. It seemed to take a whole week to get the room habitable again.
Harry was also the night-soil man. Many of the cottages (not to mention the day school and the Chapel) had earth closets, which discharged into a pit. Ashes and other domestic refuse were tipped into an enclosure behind the privy, and periodically the whole affair had to be dug out and carted away. This was Harry’s job, with his stinking tumbril and plodding horse. One final job fell to Harry – he was the village gravedigger, too!
There were plenty of other tradesmen knocking at the door – itinerant pedlars of all kinds. Some were obvious rogues with a smooth tongue, but others were clearly men ‘down on their luck’, heaving a bulky suitcase up and down the hills, selling bootlaces, elastic, buttons and combs. Mother had them all sorted out; if she saw a “wrong ’un” coming, she would send May or I to the door with a polite “Not to-day, thank-you.” Deserving cases she attended to herself, and she would often buy an unwanted article to help a poor ex-serviceman, or offer a cup of hot Bovril on a cold day.
Regular visitors included the ‘potman’ with his basket of crockery balanced on his head, and the man who called to clean out the grids around the house. The Kleen-e-Zee brush salesman also appeared in his season, and was always patronised.
To his shout of “Rag-bone!” the rag-and-bone man trundled along with his horse and cart, giving ’Donkey stones’ in exchange for household rubbish. These stones, stamped with the effigy of a donkey, were used for whitening door steps and stone window sills. No housewife worthy of her name would leave her steps unwhitened on a Saturday.
In the summer came the ice-cream man, not in a motor van with a raucous chime, but on a pedal tricycle with its cumbersome box of dry ice, perspiring up the hill in the July heat. ‘Stop me and buy one’ said the sign. (“Knock me off and try one” we used to add). We bought our penny Snofrutes (triangular prisms of coloured ice) and twopenny briquettes from the Wall’s man on his black-and-white machine.
But now we have almost reached Marple Bridge, and we will walk to the foot of Brabyns Brow and then retrace our steps. But first we must buy a few toffees from the shop at the very bottom of Longhurst Lane with “Fry’s Cocoa & Chocolate” spelled out in white letters in a great arc on the window. Where now the boxes of unwrapped sweets – jelly babies, liquorice comfits, ducks and green peas? All that is left is a dwelling-house with a very large front window. Just below this shop, Sam Higginbotham had his cobbler’s shop, where you could hear him tap-tapping away as he mended our shoes.
The shops in Town Street started with the Post Office. Next came a gentlemen’s outfitters, and Mrs Hadfield’s stationery. Mrs Hadfield (the elder sister of Derek Bradshaw who featured in the story of the broken railway carriage window) also ran a lending library where books could be borrowed for a penny or two a week. Romances, detective stories and Westerns were the mainstay of her shelves.
Then came Turner the chemist; Frank Starkie and I bought ‘daylight’ paper here for making sepia photographic prints, since chemists did their own developing and printing on the premises, and photographic materials were always available. Next came Ardern’s confectionery, the doctor’s surgery and Miss Kirby’s haberdashery. Then, set back up a yard, Mr Foster the upholsterer, followed by Fred Hyde the gents’ hairdresser, Hart’s the poulterers and Powell’s the grocers.
Walking back along the other side of Town Street one passed a sweet shop, Schofield’s greengrocery, Burgons the grocers, Robinson’s ironmongery, Ardern’s butchery and Mr Mills, who sold and repaired bicycles and wireless sets, earning him the nickname of ‘Wireless Willie’. In a village with no mains electricity, wireless sets (the word ‘radio’ was quite unknown) were powered by two batteries – a ‘high tension’ dry cell affair producing 120 volts, and a ‘low tension’ lead-acid accumulator of 4½ volts. The latter needed charging every week, and so most wireless owners had two wet batteries – one to run the set while the second was being charged. Battery-charging was another of Mr Mills’s occupations, and he sent a man round with a little handcart to collect and deliver the batteries.
He also came to sell a few model aeroplane kits, and the first I ever bought for myself (I had previously had one or two as presents) came from Wireless Willie. It was a red-and-white Monocoupe 90A, an American cabin monoplane with a chubby cowling round its radial engine. Was it this model, I wonder, which first awakened my interest in aviation? Certainly I made many more models after that, and eventually my hobby led to a career as an aeronautical engineer.
Across the river, behind Wireless Willie’s, stood Flowerdew’s corn mill with its two great wheels turned by the River Goyt. Round the corner, after Yarwood’s ironmongery and Mrs Cosadinos’s hairdressing salon, stood the Marple Bridge Co-Operative Stores with its drapery department and the big clock jutting out over Lower Fold. Opposite the drapery, the Stores had its own Assembly Room, a large wooden hut which could be hired for wedding receptions and all sorts of social functions.
In Lower Fold was to be found Miss Higginbotham, a spinster of uncertain age, whose cottage front room housed her hairdressing business. This was an early ‘unisex’ establishment (although the word was not known then), since she attended to men, women and children, shaving the men if requested. She was also prepared to come to one’s home, and was a regular visitor to ‘Beaumont’.
These then were our shops and tradespeople. We had little call to venture beyond Marple Bridge for our everyday needs, and many of them were delivered to our door with a smile and a cheery word. It was a more leisured age, when people were more willing to provide a service. What need had we of supermarkets and self-service stores?