The Village Shops

The Village Shops
Straight Bit


The Green Man and newsagents hut circa 1930s (picture from SWOP website)	The village shops today

The early shops were small affairs
A shop front here, a shop front there,
Some were simply wooden shacks
Providing goods the village lacked,
And many folk remember well
The type of items they would sell,
An ounce of wool, a ball of string,
A magazine, that sort of thing.
Wilkes and Chettles, Dolly’s too,
Were local names which we all knew
And OAPs can tell you still
Their Co-Op number for the till.

By the 1950s the village had a general store at Northern Woods and Dolly Walker's shop near Oakland Way for groceries, and the village centre had Jennings (butcher, baker, grocer), Chettles (newsagent and confectioner), Stapleys (chemist), Whitemans (butcher) and a small Co-Op outlet (groceries). There was also a wool shop where you could buy basic clothing necessities such as underwear which was part of Wilkes Stores I believe. Swains Market was built about 1960 and this is when the first wave of shops started to expand the shopping opportunities of the villagers.

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