These two rather fabulous photos were lent to us by David.
They show the Whit Walks in 1966 and were taken at the bottom of Market Street just below Union Street. The houses are long gone but the shops still remain, albeit different business's now.
Savilles was a cobblers and the shop next door was a newsagents ,so I'm told.
Todays view courtesy of Google maps.
Many Thanks, David. Much appreciated ! :)
9 comments:
Nice photos, and thanks for sharing,,
I wish I can visit your country someday :)
Ernie Saville lived just behind me on Marlborough Road and he wasn't just a cobbler, he was a clogger and would make bespoke clogs using wooden 'blanks' for the soles, which he would shape to the customer's foot and then craft the leather tops to suit the customer. He told me that his father was a clogger before him and when he started he didn't have pre-formed 'blanks' but used to work with just raw pieces of wood which he would have to cut to size and shape before he started to form the sole. He said that the best wood for clogs was Alder. Any link with the school name?
In his later years when he stopped making clogs his main business was supplying leather to Hyde's cobblers. Hence the description 'Leather Factors' over his shop
I think the man in the 2nd photo in the middle in the blue suit was a headmaster at St Georges but I cant be certain.
The man in the 2nd photo was Jim Birch, who was one time head of St George's School.
Looking further down Market Street than your shot from Google Earth, the shop which is now Nail City was Slaters' Newsagents and the present pawnshop was Proctor's Photographers/camera shop.
Next to Jim Birch in the middle photo is Duncan Baird who was Vicar of St George's at the time.
Great post and so good to read the comments coming in... very interesting to read about the clog making..
Werneth Low - didn't Slaters have two shops next door to one another? If I remember rightly, one was a newsagents and the other a card shop?
Hi Anonymous
Now there's a question! I have this memory of Slater's shop being double-fronted but that memory for some reason doesn't include newspapers! So you could well be right, in that there were two separate shops.
I believe that Slater's was lower down than Saville's and that the shop in question was a butcher's although I cannot recall the name. Slater's was double fronted and sold greetings cards and other fancy stationery, we knew it as Slater's bottom shop, they also owned the newsagents at 209 Market Street (between Vernon Street and Queen Street which we calles Slater's top shop. I also seem to recall a single fronted Slater's newsagents next door to the card shop.
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