Shop at Barrow Green

We asked for information on the shop shown on the front cover of the Autumn 2012 Teynham News, The 'original' postcard is reproduced above dated 5th August 1911. Well we have received the following responses and we are most appreciative of the information provided.

Mrs Brightman remembers when the shop was a general grocers owned by Mr (Bill?) French, brother to Mr Percy French. She felt that the butchers shop next door was part of a combined operation. The Butchers had its own slaughter house close by. A sweet shop owned by Mrs Miles was situated out of shot but close to the alley into Triggs Row.

Mrs Bruce mentioned that when she was first married she and her husband lived at Barrow Green from 1952 - 1954 when the shop was a Butchers owned by Mr Peter Blain.

Sarah Ferns has kindly emailed us together with the lower photograph to say that the photograph, she believes, had originally come from Ron Boorman and was attached to a calendar. There were several of them on sale in the local shops. Regrettably she does not have the calendar attachment to give us a year, but it may have been in the 1990s. She wonders if any of our readers remember the calendar, and still has one. If you do we should be pleased to hear from you. Perhaps there is someone who can name those in the photograph.

Sarah is certain that her grandfather, Ted Dalton, worked at the butchers shop in the early 1900’s. He was a shop assistant and made deliveries of meat in the local area. This was how he met his future wife, May, as she was working as a cook at Norton Court. There was no long commute for him to get to work as he lived in French’s Row, a row of cottages just behind the shop! She guesses that Ted is the young man standing in the doorway wearing a striped apron and holding a knife, but as she does not have any photographs of him as a young man she cannot be absolutely sure.

The other people in the photograph could be members of the Taylor family, as a number of them worked at the shop during this period.

Sarah and indeed the Editorial Committee would be grateful for any further details our readers could add regarding the shop, the owners, and/or the people who worked there. If you have any information please email the Clerk to the Council at parishclerk@teynham.org

Barry Knell supplied the photograph opposite of Barrow Green during the Victorian era,

French's butchers on left with French's farm office just out of site again to the left. Conyer Road is to the right.

The house behind the wall on the right was occupied by the Bruce family. In the 1940/50s the Seager family lived in the bungalow on corner behind woman in the apron. The houses behind that was where the Cook family lived. And behind that but out of sight is where the air raid shelter was during WWII. Opposite the Cooks and on the corner of the alley to Triggs Row were the Alston family (son was Bob). The large tree behind the man on the horse is almost opposite the station..