The Shop in Billinge Road
After leaving Parkside in November 1963, we took over the shop at 94 Billinge Road. Edna and I had discussed the move at some length, and we finally decided to give it a go. Dad had reached the age of 64, and could get his pension after a 12 month on the sick list. We had no intention of moving from the house at 67 Billinge Road and our idea was to run the shop with Mother and Dad living behind it. I had been going down to the shop for quite a while when I wasn't at work, getting used to the run of it, and finally the day came for us to take it on as a going concern. I remember going in and running a stock check before we took over, so that we could pay Dad for the stock. The prices were really low according to the ones charged today. We used to have it all written down but the book has disappeared, which is a pity, as doubtless it would have made interesting reading.
The first day that I went in on my own, dressed suitably in a short gray overall with collar and tie was the Monday morning after I had finished at Parkside on the previous Friday. Monday was always a slack day, as most of our women customers did their washing then. I stood behind the counter waiting for the money to start rolling in. I seem to recall that the whole of the takings that week were in the region of £118, and the gross profit was 12.5%, so it wasn't much of a haul.
At that time we sold quite a bit of wet fish, brought to the shop by Millgate Fish, the firm that was started by Dick Whalley and Will Heinekey, who were the manager and clerk for the old Bill Davies outfit. Their premises was originally in the yard off Millgate hence the name, but they moved to the new fruit and fish market in Worthington Way later on. We used to buy cod fillet in 14lb boxes, some smoked haddock and sometimes a few plaice and kippers. Occasionally, right at the beginning, we would buy headless cod and cut it up ourselves, also gurnards, which had to be skinned. Monday was a good fish day and also Friday for obvious reasons, as at that time the RCs in our customers stuck rigidly to the Friday fish day.
I gradually got to know the customers' likes and dislikes. Some only wanted the tail end of the fish; in fact, I wished sometimes that a fish could be bred with 9 tails like a cat's nine lives! I became expert at trimming down the thick part of the fish to make a realistic tail end. One customer, who shall remain nameless, only wanted a piece of fish for the price of half a crown (12.5p). I would try to oblige, but if it weighed 3shillings (15p), she wanted some cut off!!
We tried to boost sales as much as we could; we had one old lady, Hannah Burrows who always spent 10/6 per week. I don't know how she worked it out, but it never varied. Never less than 10 shillings and never more than 10/6. I used to try and get her to spend more but I never succeeded. We got 10/6 and Sellars got the rest, because she was related to Mrs. Sellars.
Edna would come into the shop for the rest of the week after Monday, because she always had that day at home to see to the washing. We gradually saw the takings start to rise a bit, as we tried introducing different lines to tempt the customers with. Our first major acquisition was a bacon and cooked meat slicer. The one that was there at first was a hand turned thing, which used to tear the rind on the bacon and make it all ragged. We saw a slicer advertised in the local paper, at a shop in Billinge and Dad came with me in the car to pick it up. I think that we paid £34 for it, and it made vast improvements to the presentation of the bacon, ham and cooked meats. (Those days, it wasn't necessary to have separate machines for bacon and cooked meat)
I had made my mind up before we took the shop on that the first job was to get rid of the partition. Dad had put this in about 10 years previously, and it really restricted the size of the serving area. Another thing that I didn't like was the counters that we had, which were the original ones from when the shop was built, as they were really heavy looking and clumsy. I decided that these had to go as well, but it was about a couple of months before I could tackle the partition, and we had to get our first Christmas out of the way first.
We had a firm of sweets wholesalers calling on us by the name of Moffatt, and they had a Christmas show at the Brocket Hotel. Edna and I had been to the show in August and ordered a load of stuff for the Christmas period, and we had a lot of chocolate and sweets put away for people who were paying into a Christmas club during the year.
There's a story to be told about the sweets that we put away. It was a while later on about 1968 or so, Ma and Dad had gone to live at 98, as Bill, Janet and Dorothy had moved up to the house at 136 Billinge Rd. We were using the back of the shop as storage, and upstairs, was a trestle table, where we stored the Christmastime goods for people.
I had gone upstairs for something, I may have been putting goods away, but I was up there on my own, and as I stood there, I felt a hand on my shoulder! I was petrified!! The hairs stood up on the nape of my neck. When I looked round, it was Jeff who had crept up the stairs without my knowledge. He said, " What's up, you look like you've seen a ghost! I said, "Yes, I thought that one had just touched me!"
At that time, Holland and Clough delivered our groceries, Ted Ball was the rep. and their warehouse was in Greatacre, Scholes. They had, in fact, supplied Grandma Bradshaw, when she was in the shop in Hallgate.
Just a word about Ted Ball, he was a typical "traveller" with a trilby hat and a great "gift of the gab" He was the brother to Ernie Ball who had been Father to the Wigan Council, and at some time was made an Alderman. A few years after we had taken over the shop, Ted was taken into hospital with a cancerous lung, (he was a heavy smoker). He managed to get over the operation successfully, when they had removed a complete lung, and was ready to start work again when he started with appendicitis, and after the operation, which in itself is only minor surgery, he got a thrombosis and it killed him. Such is life!
I decided to diversify a bit, and started to use Wigan Wholesale, a cash and carry firm, whose premises were in Chapel Lane, near to Henhurst Bridge and I found an old receipt of theirs when I was searching for some facts about the shop. A side of bacon, 44lbs in weight was £8.76, in 1966 and that included boning and rolling, which made it approx. 19p per lb. I seem to recall that when we started, we sold bacon for 4/6 lb (22.2p) and ham for 5/-(25p). J.F.Ashton were our tobacco suppliers and in 1966, a 400 pack of Embassy cigarettes was £4/4/9d(4.24p) a cost of just over 24p for 20 cigarettes. 0.5lb condor tobacco was £2/3/10d(2.19p), and Woodbine cigarettes (Dad's favourite brand) were £3/17/7d (3.88p) for 400. Just a few of the prices that were current at the time.
Another of the cash and carrys at that time was a firm named Chumlies, who had a warehouse in Eleanor St, near the bus depot. I used them as well for various things, as their prices were competitive. They originated from Southport. It was a matter of getting as much value for money as possible. We were really disadvantaged because we were short of working capital, and consequently were more or less tied to the traditional wholesaler who could give monthly credit.
We had an account with Chadwick's, whose warehouse stood where Aldi is today. It was a matter of spreading the load where credit was concerned. Jack Winnard was the traveller for them, and he later took Holy Orders and became Vicar of St. Barnabas in Marsh Green. We also had another account with the Danish Bacon Company (DBC) of Preston, their own brand was Maid Marion, and was on tins of peas, beans etc. All these items were quite good and seemed to sell well.
After a few years, we took on a firm of bacon specialists, RT Jones, from Manchester, who supplied us with the best Danish bacon that we had ever seen. We could have any piece of the side smoked to order, and I must admit, the quality was fantastic. I always asked for the bacon to be delivered flat i.e. not rolled, as I preferred to do this myself. I watched the bacon roller at Wigan Wholesale a few times to get the hang of it, and then tried myself. First of all, I took out the ribs in a sheet, and then tunnelled out the bone in the ham and the shoulder. Next, I used the flat side of the mallet to shape the side into a round, and starting at the neck end with a noose of string, I would string the side, using the technique studied at Wigan Wholesale. It meant putting three twists on the string and pulling the loop over the side of bacon. The three twists made a firm knot when pulled tight. A loop was made every 2 inches or so along the side, until the end was reached.
Another wholesaler that we traded with was WHS Taylor, who originally had premesis in Market St. Wigan, but later on went up to Hart Common, Westhoughton. Howard Barnard was the rep for them. Their "in house" brand was Harvest Home and this had a logo showing a man with the world on a shovel.
Marsdens the pork butchers supplied us with sausages and black puddings, pork pies, and meat and potato pasties. Marsdens shop and bakery was on the corner of Caroline St, and was there until the reorganization of Wallgate in the late 60s. Their black puddings and pork pies were the best that I ever tasted, I don't know how they made them but they were fantastic. Marsdens also supplied us with Lancashire cheese, which Eric Marsden got from Pilling at the other side of Blackpool. We had chicken pasties from Bill Stanton, along with meal cakes, potato cakes and crumpets, and Bill's brother Dick delivered these.
Ernie Naylor called on us with "Smallware" i.e. toiletries, toothpaste and brushes, fancy goods etc, and he had a few items in drapery as well. A chap named Rothwell delivered paper rolls, which we used to wrap cooked meats, sausages and bacon. We had a dispenser like a toilet roll holder behind the counter, which incorporated a cutter, and this would cut the paper to length. Weldbank Plastics from Chorley supplied us with plastic bags for the potatoes.
We had to get another set of "fan" scales to use, as we only had one set from when Dad had the shop, so we contacted John Maguire in Upholland, who used to work for Avery's and he sold us a set. We kept John on as a maintenance contractor for all the scales, as these had to be checked and stamped every year. Early in 1964, we decided to get rid of the "school bus", the Bedford van 12 seater conversion (7926N) that I had when I worked at the pit. And we got a Vauxhall Victor estate car reg. no. JEK356. We had this so that it could be claimed for as a business and pleasure expense. It was quite a smart vehicle, and it lasted a couple of years. Those days, I arranged my vehicles through Tom Santus, who also sorted the insurance out, Ernie Wilkes sold the vehicles for Tom and he took the van in part exchange. I used the estate car to go to the market and to the cash and carry.
When I left the pit, I had quite a bit of money in the superannuation scheme, and, as I had been in the scheme for 10 years, I was allowed to take the money out. It came out in three stages, £360, £300, and £300, making a total of close on a £1000. We had to use this money as working capital, and of course on hindsight, it would have been better to leave it where it was, to make more pension at 65. We thought that we were going to make a fortune in business but nothing was further from the truth.
The business prospered for the first 5 years and we built up the takings steadily. After the partition came down, we made the shop open plan, and more or less self-service. We even got supermarket styled baskets, but people used to borrow them to take their shopping home, thus defeating the object of having them in the first place!! A firm called Webb came along and left us a stand from which we sold stockings on a sale or return basis, and we started to deal in a bit of drapery, supplied by Jack Mason who had a place in Chapel Lane more or less facing the Baths. Eric Aspinall was a partner with Jack. We also got clothing like cardigans and pullovers from Ernie Naylor.
The fruit and veg were bought originally from the small wholesalers that were on Wigan Market Square, and then I hit on the idea of opening an account with Owen Owen, who was still in Market St. This worked quite well and when the fruit market moved up to Worthington Way, I carried on trading with them for a while. We also traded quite a bit with Henry Holland for potatoes and with Les Forster who with his brother Gilbert, had taken over the business of AE Saunders. Later on, when Les and Gilbert had retired, Gilbert's son Jimmy took over the business. In our final years in the shop, most of our fruit and veg trade was with Jimmy Forster.
We bought a "Beanstalk" to display fruit and veg on. This was a freestanding frame on wheels and it had plastic covered baskets on either side, which were fitted with dividers to separate the produce. It cost £42 to buy, and I think that it was at an exhibition in Belle Vue that we first saw it. It was a very good sales point really. When I look back now, there wasn't a lot of potential left in the area around the shop, as most of the families had grown up and left.
We were left with a lot of pensioners who didn't buy a lot for obvious reasons. I used to say at the time, that when a man retired, we rarely saw his wife in the shop again as she used to send him for the goods. Uncle Jim Charnock was a good example of a man shopper. He would come in with his list written down on a piece of old Christmas card, and usually help himself to most of what he wanted. I don't think that Auntie Gertie ever crossed the doorstep to the shop. Sometimes, Uncle Jim would decide to give us a hand when the order was delivered, he was good hearted enough, but we dreaded it. He would stack the shelves with tins, all upside down and back to front, and we had to go and do it all again when he had gone home.
Uncle Jim and Auntie Gertie's needs were pretty simple. A small brown loaf three times a week, butter, carrots, a bit of fish once a week, and a chicken off the pen. That was about the sum total of their spending power. Auntie Gertie put the bread into the oven to dry it of again, as "It didn't suit Jim's digestion" The chicken had to be boiled, and carrots were eaten in place of potatoes. It must have done them good, because she was 92 when she died and he was 101!!
It was a funny thing, that. Uncle Jim was reckoned to have a weak stomach all his life and yet, when Auntie Gertie passed on, he started to eat all the things that had been forbidden him and even gained weight!
We decided on the alterations and took down the partition one weekend after we had finished on the Saturday. The shop looked enormous. We set out the side where the partition had been, with green grocery, and here we made a box where the loose potatoes were stored. I also constructed a centre island for displaying goods, made from timber salvaged from some shops in Scholes, which were being knocked down to make way for road widening. I made the island from the counters, and as these were solid mahogany, it was lovely timber to work with.
On top of this island, I had a Mars stand placed. The rep. from Mars had come into the shop one day and asked me to put a stand in, and it was the best thing that I ever did. The sales for sweets shot up to three times as much as they had been previously. The rep. knew what he was doing; I used to let him merchandise it for me. He would go into the back and bringing out the stock, would load up the stand and then tell me what I was short of. This way, he got his orders, I got the stand filled and I got the profit on the goods.
It was about this time that we encountered the mouse problem; the little pests hadn't troubled us for years, in fact, not since Ma had the dog, but we started seeing them again, and they could cause all sorts of damage. Mostly, it was chocolate that attracted them, and I recall seeing a bar of chocolate under the counter, which, when I had picked it up, proved to be an empty wrapper, complete with the foil. The mouse had nibbled the end off the foil, and had gradually extracted the chocolate.
During the run up to Christmas one year, we had a whole box of Galaxy chocolate bars ruined because the pesky little creatures had nibbled the edge off each bar in the box!! As well as this, they had been into the Mars Christmas stockings and had eaten all the maltesers, nothing else, just maltesers! They had extracted these in the same way that they had taken the chocolate from the wrapper, nibbling a small hole in the corner of the bag, and then taking the maltesers one at a time.
We tried traps and all other ways of catching them, we didn't know where they were coming from, until, one day we had a breakthrough. We decided to remove some shelving from the party wall of the house next door, where Mrs. Hart lived, and as we did so we found a very small hole that led through to her house. I blocked it off with some mortar, and, problem solved! Mrs. Hart was then complaining of mice and we were clear of them.
We made counters from new timber bought from Clough and Gaskell and I also constructed a stage in the old pantry where the spare stock was kept, using 2x2 spars for the frame, and 2x1 for the slats. The pantry was where we cut up the fish and there was a sink in there as well, along with a large fridge in which we kept our fish, bacon, cooked meats, etc.
The counters were made from 2x2 frames with a reeded hardboard fascia and painted cream, and they had blue Formica tops and a piece of aluminium angle across the front to protect the edge. We had two of these counters, one across the shop to the right as you entered, and another at right angles to it. Later on however, we demolished one and fitted a fridge counter in its place, to keep the bacon etc.in.
When we started to sell fancy goods, we made the remaining counter into a display window, with lights in it to show off the goods.
Continued...