There
used to be three shops on Corby Road. On the corner was a grocer's
store,
owned in the 1950s by Mrs Stapleton and in the 1960s by Geoff Buckby. The railings in front of the shop,
shown in the picture top left, were removed during the second world
war to make armaments.
Next
to Mrs Stapleton's was a haberdashery shop selling buttons, shoe laces and so on. Located where the village shop
window is now, this shop was owned by Rose Smith, who also ran the chip
shop on Corby Road.
Mrs
Stapleton and the Smiths lived in tiny cottages in between the two shops, where
the village shop now stands.
Mrs Stapleton's husband Sid owned a taxi, registration number ANV 681 and
both were ARP
wardens during the war. Story goes that, one day, Sid's taxi fell into a
ditch and that local character George 'Sketch'
Patrick (who purportedly weighed some 22 stone) put his back into it and
lifted it clean out!
In the cottage to the left of the current
shop was a Co-Op. This shop is shown on the 1960s picture top right with a delivery
van parked outside. The lady standing by the wellhead in this picture is Mrs
Stapleton. Later on the Yorks purchased the Co-Op and the cottage below, and
made it into one dwelling.
Laurie
and Irene Beadsworth recall playing 'shop windows' on the corner of Corby Road
in the 1950s. Says Laurie: "A group of us used to choose the name of an
item from one of the shop windows, and then hide, leaving two lads behind by the
shops. These lads would then try and guess what we'd chosen by shouting out 'is
it beans? is it candles?' and so on. When they picked the right item, we all ran
out from our hiding places and tried to get back to the shop without being
tagged by one of the two finders."
|