Traditional Semi-detached Pair

 After taking a short break from exploring the north side of Hatfield Road, and having reached the recently redeveloped former trading premises, we discover a pair of semi-detached homes erected in the mid 1920s.  They do not appear on an OS map until the 1937 edition but were occupied as residences during the 1920s.

Circled are the two shops which are 225 and 227 Hatfield Road, first erected in the 1920s as
private residences, but only remained as such for a few years.  To the left of the circle is the detached house, until recently Bugess & Co, and to the right the car franchise.
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As has been usual along Hatfield Road it did not take long for conversions to take place into retail premises.  Let's begin with recent trading for those of us who walk past the shops today. Number 225 is a convenience store which is akin to what the shop has always been identified with.  The name on the fascia for much of its time had been Leon Turner, a business taken on by Leon Ralph Turner, whose family lived in Sandpit Lane, close to the Beaumonts Cottages.  Eventually, the shop became part of a franchise, but it has always remained a local convenience shop strategically located at the eastern end of the "mile of shops" along Hatfield Road.

The two local shops, each with the original arched front doors still visible and the modifications
needed to convert to shop frontages.  Photograph taken in 1964.
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Number 227 has had more opportunist owners in recent years, now supplying small office needs, but for most of its time customers came here for their basic ironmongery and domestic goods sold to them by Mary Blackstaffe; her husband meanwhile working as an engineer.

There were very little in thew way of rear garden spaces as most were accommodated by the factories which were the subject of the previous post.

Recent view in which cars are parked on what would have been the front garden space had the
properties remained residences.  Note that the blue canopy to the right replaced the former
detached house described in the next post.

The photograph taken in 1964 shows a neat and uncluttered frontage to the shops, in spite of the open air "showroom" in front of Blackstaffe's.  My own recollections of purchases from the 1940s and 50s included slices of carbolic soap from a long bar, washing crystals sold by weight in paper bags, and household candles – essential during the times when electric power cuts were a regular occurrence.  The times have treated the frontage reasonably well.  Number 225 lost its original front door (access was via its narrow sideway), becoming part of the shop converted from the original front living room.  Number 227's display area spilled into its hall while leaving the structure much the same.

When closed the building presents a very different
atmosphere.

Today the plot boundaries of many properties are not so clearly defined as usages have changed, and this includes the fence boundary to the right of number 227, the lack of which today gives a false impression of the vehicle access width past the next property I will describe; the one which until recently belonged to Milcars.  That, and the triangle of land behind will be for next time.  Although an attempt was made in the 1930s to add a further parade of shops, such expansion did not come about; Turner's and Blackstaffe's effectively calling a full stop to Fleetville's shopping facilities.