“Understanding yesterday, for the benefit of  today and tomorrow”

Kibworth

History

Society

Memories of Trades People in Kibworth Beauchamp in the 1930s

 

By Dennis Clarke

 

Although Kibworth was fortunate in having an excellent train service to Leicester and Market Harborough, many folk at that time did not have the time or resources to venture far from the village but their needs were well catered for by various local trades people.

 

Starting near the top (west end) of Fleckney Road lived Mr ‘Billy’ Smith who was a chimney sweep and window cleaner.  His services were in high demand for almost every house was heated by a coal fire which meant some chimneys required sweeping on a monthly basis.

 

On the opposite (south) side of the road, just below the hosiery factory, was George Gamble’s builder’s yard followed by ‘Winky’ Orams’ fish and chip shop where one could buy a pennyworth of chips.  On the corner of Halford Street was Miss Adams’ sweet shop, noted for a small bell on the entrance door which small boys shook vigorously, and for the wire netting which covered the open sweet trays to stop little fingers from taking samples.

 

Just below the Working Men’s Club was another sweet shop owned by Miss Harvey.  When small boys and girls asked for ‘jelly babies’ or ‘dolly mixtures’ she would insist on their saying “if you please” before letting the sweets fall out of the jar into the scale pan.

 

Moving towards Buller Street was a butcher’s shop run by Mr A Sedgley and his son Terry.  They also had a slaughter house in Buller Street and it was a common sight to see Mr ‘Loddy’ Ward, the assistant, carrying half a beast on his back from there up to the shop.  On the corner was an ‘Off Licence’ and grocery owned by Mr George Simons.

 

There were two shops opposite (on the south side of Fleckney Road) whose roles I cannot recall, but in Harcourt Road lived two nurses, Nurse Harris and Nurse Homer, who ran the Kibworth and Smeeton Nursing Association.  This provided midwifery and routine medical services in return for an annual subscription and to which most villagers belonged as visiting the doctor’s involved paying a fee.

 

Back in Buller Street there was also a builder’s yard owned by a Mr Billing.  Further down and left in an unmade extension to White Street, next to the Salvation Army hut and on the north side, was a cycle repair shed owned by a Mr ‘Spotty’ French.  He was well known for owning a very early Morgan three wheeler, one of the few cars in the village at that time.  Nicknames were quite common in those days; it was part of the culture and I cannot recall why the particular nicknames above were given.

 

The Salvation Army hut in the unmade-up extension of White Street was of wood and had the appearance of an old army hut, possibly one from World War 1 (the Kibworth Band hut in Halford Street at that time was of similar design).  It had a wooden floor, and also windows with curtains.  The hut was used regularly for services and meetings in those days.

 

Returning to Fleckney Road (north side), there was a shoe repairer’s shop owned by a Mr A Roberts, to be followed on the corner of Kimberley Street by The Newtown Bakery and Bakehouse run by the Badcock family with Mr Ross Jacques being the baker.  Then followed another small sweet shop owned and run by Mrs Maudie Stevenson.

 

On the opposite side further down was a large house called ‘Southlands’ where Dr Phillips lived and had his surgery and dispensary.  Moving into the High Street and on the north side one arrives at the Market Harborough Coop Shop which was established in 1900 and which has been one of the main grocery stores since that time.  The next shop was Mr Eli Bale’s outfitters and in the adjoining house a Mr Dewey from Market Harborough ran a visiting dental clinic.

 

Then there was a photographer’s shop (Mr Walter Bale) and a lending library run by Mr Alan Timson.  A lady called Daisy Driver ran a haberdashery shop on the corner of School Road, with Mr Greasley’s barber’s shop on the opposite corner next door to Callaghan’s bakery.

 

Opposite School Road (on the south side of High Street) was Miss Hare’s stationers and newsagents, the Royal Oak public house (Mr W Brutnell), Mr Rudkin’s pork butchers, another butchers (F Simons) and Dalton’s shoe shop.  After a row of cottages was Mr Davis’ builder’s yard.

 

As I was born and lived at the far (west) end of Fleckney Road, my recollections and knowledge of shops and traders around the main square (The Bank) and in Station Street are less clear, but even in those days of few cars the needs of villagers were adequately supplied by the shops and traders existing at that time.

 

Written in November 2008

Memories of Vendors in Kibworth Harcourt in the 1920s and 1930s

 

By Betty Ward

 

Here are my childhood memories of vendors in Harcourt, chiefly people who came around the village selling their goods.  In those days my family lived at Priory Farm in Main Street, Kibworth Harcourt.  There were no such places as supermarkets so we relied on travelling vendors or the local shop.

 

One of my early recollections is of the ice cream man, Mr Masarella.  He would come either on his bike, with a box on the front, or in a motor van, each with his tub of ice cream.  Us kids would wait at our gates with a cup and spoon and rattle the spoon until the ice cream man came up the street.  There was ‘method in our madness’ - we could have had a cornet but you got more for your money by using a cup!  We would pay one (old) penny, or tuppence if one’s parents could afford it.

 

Next I remember the rag and bone man; he also had either a bike with trailer or an old truck.  He used to go down the street shouting “Rag, bone ... rag, bone” and you would come out with your rubbish such as old clothes, buckets and so on.  I don’t think he paid for anything he got - he was providing a service, but I suppose it was quite an industry for him otherwise he wouldn’t have collected things.

 

Then there was the scissor grinder.  He had a contraption, which he sat on, with a handle and wheel to grind and sharpen your scissors and knives. This was done outside your house in the street.  I can’t recall what he charged.

 

Next came an open-sided lorry owned by a Mr Tarrant - we just referred to him as ‘Tarrant’.  I think he came from Fleckney.  He sold food and general goods (not hardware) and these were displayed on each side of the lorry.  He pulled up in the street and you went out to look at the goods and decide what to buy: all the ladies did and then they bought their provisions.  As a child I particularly remember that Tarrant had a small drawer lower down with sweets in, for which we would pay one or two pennies (old money).  He would sell flour, tins and packets of foods, and fruit (there were cherries and bananas before WW2), tomatoes and salad stuff - things that you didn’t grow in your own garden; also there were towels and dish cloths etc.  He came every week.  There were no soft drinks (‘pop’) on sale as we children were encouraged mainly to drink water or homemade lemonade or ginger beer (made from a ‘ginger beer plant’).

 

I do remember that one could buy lemonade in bottles at the Three Horseshoes pub across the road (Main Street).  In those days there was a passageway (now closed up) at the front door and you went down that passage to a window to obtain the lemonade.  We could stare through the window to see men drinking beer.  Grown-ups could also buy beer by taking a jug to the window.

 

The next travelling vendor was ‘Tingle-Basin’.  This was our nickname for Mr Garner, from Fleckney, because he used to rattle a basin with a spoon to let you know he was there.  He sold hardware such as kitchen goods and cleaning materials.  He also visited quite frequently.  There was a terrific service in those days by the vendors who came to the village.

 

Then we had a regular visit from the baker: he was from the Coop.  I can still remember our Coop number 3232 which you gave to the baker when you bought bread (it was like a bonus points system, but then it was called ‘divi’ - short for dividend).  The bread we had was white - in those days it came unsliced.  My mum was very good at slicing bread with a carving knife so that we had wafer thin bread and butter for tea.

 

Groceries were also delivered by Lynn’s from the square in Beauchamp (‘The Bank’).  Each week Maurice Marsden would visit to take your order and later would deliver the foodstuffs to your door.  Lynn’s was purely a food store.  But think of the service we got in those days.

 

Next was the butcher, Frank Gamble.  He worked for Sedgley’s butchers up the Fleckney Road in Beauchamp.  Again, he would come first to collect your order and by the end of the week he came back with your meat.  A terrific service!  There was a choice of beef, pork or mutton.  Families like ours would buy a joint which would have to last for the following week: a roast on Sunday, cold meat on Monday and stews and the like for the rest of the week.  I don’t recall poultry being offered (some folk had a few chickens in their back garden).  There were six butchers in Kibworth.

 

Then there were the milkmen, of which there were several, who came around twice daily.  At Priory Farm we had dairy cows, milked twice daily and thus needed to deliver twice each day to local residents.  Milk from the cows was cooled (in a contraption called ‘the cooler’) but it was not filtered or treated in any other way.  It tasted delicious - you can’t beat it!  The roundsman would take the pony and trap (a sledge on snowy days) with a small galvanised churn and can with a measure.  He would go to his customer’s door and ladle out the required quantity of milk into the family’s container.  We also sold milk at the farm through a hatch at the side entrance.

 

There were no means for storing surplus milk, so we used to skim the cream and make butter.  The cream was repeatedly skimmed-off the settled milk.  When I was older I also made butter.  At our farm we didn’t make cheese.  Some surplus milk was given to the pigs.  But in those days milk never went away to be pasteurised or whatever: we were horrified when such treatments became compulsory!

 

Then I remember the fish and chip van.  The man came in the evenings about once a week with his little old van which had a chimney on the top where smoke from the fryers came out.  What a gorgeous smell when fish and chips were cooking!  Prices were in the region of tuppence or thrupence, but kids usually went for the chips in a paper bag.  Fried fish were always in smaller portions in those days - no larger than an opened adult hand.

 

Harcourt did have a village shop in Main Street, at house number 28 (see photograph), and this was run by Mrs Bolton, a large lady as I recall.  The shop entrance (now blocked up) in those days was just to the right of today’s remaining door.  In fact the ‘shop’ was in its front room and the front window (with shutters) displayed large jars of sweets.  She sold general provisions as well as sweets.  Typically, foodstuffs were in large hessian sacks just inside the door: these included sugar and potatoes - there was rather a limited range compared to other vendors but it was a handy little shop, especially when you ran out of something.  The shop fascinated us as children; we would peer through the window at all the old-fashioned sweets: aniseed balls, pear drops, gobstoppers, ‘hundred & thousands’, dolly mixtures, liquorice and kali (the powder was put in a bag and you ate it using a dabber - a stick with a sweet on the end - or sucked it up with a liquorice stick).  Wonderful!

 

Some years earlier than Mrs Bolton’s shop there was a sweet shop at 12 Albert Street with a high counter inside the front door.  After Mrs Bolton’s time, Annie Lee opened a shop opposite at 70 Main Street (see photograph on the right) and that became the village shop selling a similar range of foods and sweets.

 

Round the corner from Mrs Bolton’s and up the hill was Berry’s butcher’s shop (a single storey building to the right of the house, now 10 Main Street - see photo below; the shop door was at the front in those days).  Mr Berry was a large fat man, hence his nickname ‘Beefy Berry’.  He had a slaughterhouse at the back, and the squealing pigs could be heard in the cottages beyond in Harcourt Terrace.  This part of Main Street was called ‘Berry’s Hill’ and is still referred to thus by the older residents in the Village.

 

 

 

 

Up on the Leicester Road, opposite the top of Berry’s Hill was the Rose & Crown field, where the annual fair came once a year.  This was always at the same time - the second week in October (about the 12th) and this was called ‘Kibworth Feast’.  There was great excitement when the large traction engines came trundling up from Market Harborough, pulling the wagons and all the paraphernalia for setting up the fair in this field.  “The fair’s coming, the fair’s coming” the kids used to shout.  The fair would finally be set up - the rides in the middle, such as roundabouts, the cake walk and swing boats, and the stalls around the outside.  The old fairground organs supplied the music and large flares provided the lighting.  The traction engines produced the power for all this, and the smells and sounds were very nostalgic.

 

I think this was the only time we had things like brandy snap: the magic of Feast Week was wonderful.  And one always remembers the mud, lots of mud under foot as it always seemed to rain at this time.  This same field was eventually the site of the prisoner-of-war camp towards the end of WW2.

 

Next to the field was the Rose & Crown garden, and then on the corner (still on the south side of Leicester Road) was a saddler’s shop kept first by Arthur Hill and then Roy Javes.  Then, looking towards Market Harborough, there was a long building which was a sort of cycle repair shop (Marriott’s?).  This building later became an assembly (parts) shop for Gents Electrical Engineers (famous for electric clocks) and was managed by my brother, Harold Ward.  Next a large house ‘The Croft’ (still there as 14 Leicester Road); the large house and long building belonged to the Parsons family who were the founders of Gents.

 

After The Croft was a row of cottages with steps up to front doors, and then the Coach & Horses pub.  These cottages were knocked down to enlarge the pub car park.  Pictures have previously been published of the long stone trough outside the Coach & Horses where the horses pulling the carriages from London were watered.

 

On the north side of Leicester Road, looking towards Market Harborough, first was the Rose & Crown Hotel with its entrance at the front (not at the side as now).  Beyond their car park was Nibloe’s Garage & Bus Company.  Then old Joe Nourish’s cobbler’s shop (very quaint: described well elsewhere).  Next to Joe’s shop was a small general store run by a Mrs Luker, but going further back this shop was once a post office (the only one Kibworth Harcourt ever had).

 

Next came a small cottage occupied by the Cox family, and then the Foxhound pub.  This was run by Tom Shave and his wife (both characters) and carried on by Mrs Shave, a dominant woman, after Tom’s death.  Raw dog meat was delivered here once a week from the kennels, packed in little hessian bags for easy access to customers.  My Dad, who was strict teetotal and would never set foot in a pub, went round to Mrs Shave’s every Tuesday to get the weekly portion of meat for our sheep dog ‘Monty’.

 

Next to the Foxhound was the beginning of Lady Marriott’s estate.  Harcourt House and its garden were large, and later these were all destroyed to make Harcourt Estate and four shops at the end which remain today.  The first shop was ‘The Quality Shop’ (sweets etc) which later became a café ‘The Singing Kettle’.  Then Mrs Bingham’s wool shop, then ‘The Countryman’ selling good quality pictures and artefacts.  And finally Gardener’s butcher’s shop at the end.

 

In Lady Marriott’s day there was a jitty at the end running down to the Marsh Field (hence the present road name ‘Marsh Drive’).  At the bottom of this was our first recreation ground: two swings and a seesaw!  This became the site for the Women’s Land Army hostel during WW2.

 

Recorded November 2008, and revised in March 2009