Living memory
The various interviews in the Voices section of this website are rich with reminiscences about the shops. Dorothy Fleming recalled that people were much more self sufficient in days during and after the War. The grew or reared a lot of what they ate and usually lacked fridges at home, so the concept of a ‘weekly shop’ was more or less unknown. Dorothy’s own family at Howlands had two acres of land; they kept two pigs during the war; also chickens, whose surplus eggs they sold at market; they had apple and plum trees and blackberries, so her mother hardly bought anything except butter and sugar and the occasional tin of baked beans as a treat. A lot of food was delivered on rounds. There was a fish man with a horse and cart, a couple of people who sold vegetables and a man named Summerlight who came from Saffron Walden and sold everything from biscuits to paraffin. The grocer Westleigh came once a week from Steeple Bumpstead. Dorothy’s mother only ever went to Saffron Walden for the clothing club.
The timeline of the shops is still a work in progress. However, we now believe that – at least from the 1930s and very possibly earlier – Hempstead was served by the Post Office, which was also a grocer and confectioner. This was situated in what is now the Old Bakery (although the actual bakehouse at the time was next door). There was also a drapers and ‘odds and ends’ shop across the road next to the pub, in what is now Drapers.
The Post Office
The postmaster since at least 1914 had been Harold Humphrey but, after his death, his widow Mary continued as postmistress. However, the shop itself was run for many years by Margery Johnson, who moved there from the Almshouses. Margaret Drane wrote this tribute to Margery in the St Andrew’s newsletter of November 1980.
The shop at Drapers
Margaret Drane remembers the shop here as being run by a Mrs Felgate, an elderly lady who opened the shop very erratically and had very little stock. Margaret remembers her father, Frank Marsh, being told off by Mrs Felgate for never coming into the shop, and replying that he didn’t think the shop had anything he wanted!
Ian Beaton, who was born at the start of the war, and Brian Gypps who was born towards the end, each remember the shopkeepers as a Mr and Mrs Wilsher. Brian describes how his grandfather would send him to the shop on his bike to fetch 20 Woodbines: if those didn’t last all day, grandfather would get some more when he visited the Rose and Crown in the evening for a pint of Benskins Ale.
Clearly, in the immediate post war years, the two shops co-existed and the Post Office remained in its location next to the bakery. However, the latter closed when Margery Turner retired, some time in the late 1960s, and the Post Office business moved across the road to the shop at Drapers. The relocation of the telephone box must have happened before this, because Margaret Drane remembers complaints in the Post Office that they would no longer be able to hear it ringing in its new location!
We don’t have a full record of shopkeepers after the Wilshers, but we do know that when Chris Bampton and her husband took over the shop in the early 1980s, they did so from Harry and Mary Gilbert, who had acquired it in their turn from Charlie and Jo Farrow. The Farrows built a house next to the shop, into which they moved when they retired.
The shop by now sold a wide range of groceries and the Bamptons used to keep a barrel of sherry on the counter so that customers could bring their empty bottles to fill up. By this time, there was a tiny post office ‘booth’ round the corner as you entered the shop. Chris recalls that 80-90% of her trade was local: with just a few exceptions, people used it for odds and ends and did their weekly shop at Tesco.
Jenny Foster (daughter of Reg Foster who worked at Hill Farm)
The last owners of the shop were Richard and Angela Crane. Angela remembers them being paid £3 a year by the government to house the village siren. They sold up in 1992 when competition from supermarkets had made the shop unviable. With recent disclosures about the Post Office, they may think their timing was good!
The Bakery
The bakehouse, situated next to the Post Office (not to be confused with the Old Post Office, see below) was run by Frank Marsh (left) , Margaret Drane’s father. In the photo above, the bakehouse is the white building on the right and we believe that Frank is the man in the cap standing in front. The bread was baked in the ovens at the back. The building further along with the corrugated roof still survives as the garage of the Old Bakery and was used for storing animal meal. Also shown in the picture are (L to R) Chaseside, Bellropes and, in the background, Firs Cottage and Firs House.
Margaret remembers helping her father, both in the bakery and on his rounds, and also recalls that when she was a child at school during the War, you could smell the bread baking from the schoolroom. Frank’s wife made cakes on the oil stove at Box Cottage and the bakery sold these as well. The business delivered around the village and to Sampford: there was also a round in Radwinter for a time.
Earlier times
We believe (being logical people) that the Post Office was originally situated in what is now Old Post Office Cottage, a little further up the High Street in the direction of Bumpstead. However, this must have closed and the Post Office business transferred to the location next to the bakery well before the Second World War, as we have heard no recollections of it as anything other than a house.
Ian Beaton remembers hearing of a butcher’s shop which operated before World War 2 from what is now the ‘snug’ of the Rose and Crown (now the Bluebell). And we have photographic evidence of other shops at Dick Turpin’s Cottage and at the Dip (as the Triangle used to be known) although the dates when they operated are not known.
This bill from the Hempstead ‘Grocer and Draper’ is dated 1905.
The table below lists all the people that we have been able to find, in the census records and trade directories to which we have access, who are listed in carrying out any retail trade in Hempstead over the years. Assigning them to specific buildings remains an unsolved puzzle.
