Useful Retail Trade

Near the junction with Sandfield Road this Hatfield Road premises was built c1905 and occupied by builder and joiner James Andrew.  You may recognise the familiar features of the frontage, which, apart from colours, has changed little.  Today it is part of SK Carpets, and for more than half a century was P H Stone, newsagent. There is no evidence for this but it is likely that Mrs Andrew and daughter looked after the shop and are shown in the photo.

James Andrew's first shop at 157 Hatfield Road.

The same premises (on the right) in 2012.

Mr Andrew, having arrived in Hatfield Road, lost little time in acquiring a plot opposite for use as a yard for his building work.  I can't be certain he may also have built what was originally a semi-detached pair, named Surrey House and Troon House.  They were early enough which, together with the yard, was numbered in the initial Post Office  sequence.  As with most of the early homes along Hatfield Road they remained purely residences for a very short time before the benefits of retail trade became irresistible.  The facts appear to show the closure of the shop on the north side at about the same time as the righthand premises were opened as a shop on the south side.  James Andrew himself may have converted it so that all of his business was on one site.

Although keeping the building yard until about 1930, he gave up the shop around 1925.  Harry Tuckett, whose father had been a manager at Hallam's ironmongery shop on the corner of Chequer Street and High Street, took over the shop.  His older brother Bertie had been running the New Camp General Stores since 1910; this is the shop which itself became an ironmongers under John Dearman, and latterly Dearman-Gomm's, now closed.

Meanwhile Surrey House next door to the Hatfield Road ironmongery was also quickly turned into a shop for drapery; at first by Deekin & Watson.  But as soon as Harry Tuckett secured Mr Andrew's former premises, Harry's sister, Edith ran the drapery business next door.

When Harry died in 1952, Leonard Reed purchased the ironmongery and Gladys Cox turned the drapery into an outfitter's.  In competition with the nearby Handy Stores, Leon Reed not only added timber sales in the former outfitter's shop, but also added  extensions to the left and right to further expand his product ranges. However, the arrival of DIY warehouses made small ironmongery shops untenable and by the 1990s both Reeds, Handy Stores, and another useful shop, Blackstaffe's, had gone.

The original houses, Surrey House and Troon House: the drapery on the left and Tuckett's on the
right.  Mr Reed's two extensions on a day following final closure.
COURTESY DIANA DEVEREUX

Access to Mr Andrew's builder's yard was to the right of the extension.  Behind the red car is the 1960s block Grimsdyke Lodge, built by Grimsdyke Developments Ltd, and formerly a detached house and lock-up garage plot.  COURTESY DIANA DEVEREUX.

While we have the opportunity of investigating the 1990s photo with the red car we can take a peep beyond to the Grimsdyke Lodge flats, a late 1960s development.  At the far end was a 1930s detached house lived in for most of its time by Mrs Bell.  A large area to the right and presumably intended as a garden, was used as a rather untidy group of car lock-up garages.

Scrutiny of the Valuation Office records indicates the owner of the lock-up garages was C H Lavers, 12 Alma Road.  The record is dated 1953, but Lavers may well have acquired the site at the same time as it had purchased its timber yard (now Morrison's petrol station and car park) in c1925.  This date coincides with the withdrawal of James Andrew from trading in Hatfield Road.  Which neatly returns us to our starting point.

Except that we've not discovered what was built more recently.  Well, this: the Richmond House development and its bike shop!