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Baines shop, facing the Green,
meeting place for the village |
LIKE most villages, Wethersfield, has steadily lost its shops. Only one,
the Post Office Stores remains. Baines’ shop on the Green closed in
1963 and Will Letch, who served customers there for over thirty years, is
gone too.
But in old age he talked about his days as a shopkeeper.
Will Letch:
We sold any damn thing. Washing-up powder, Sunlight soap, Lifebuoy, Primrose
– people had that to wash their hands with, because that wasn't so
strong. Toilet soap? The only one I can remember was Vinolia.
There was a soap that was called Monkey brand, I don't know what that was
for, but it was harder than a brick. Then there was Hudson's No 1 and Hudson's
No 2. There was something called Carbolic.
I can remember Persil and Rinso from the very early days. Vim seems to have
disappeared and it is all Ajax nowadays. |
| I
always liked working in the shop. I can remember when paraffin oil was brought
by two horses. Chris Shephard, son of the Rev Leonard Shephard
who was vicar of Wethersfield around 1945 also had memories of Baines’
Shop: Baines's was great fun because there was the smell of paraffin and
cheese and everything else mixed together. Shops were more than just places
we you bought things. They were social centres for the village. The late
Daphne Saines of Meadside recalled: Everyone used to get
in Will Letch's shop. They used to sit on the bags of sugar all these fellows.
He used to serve paraffin and then cut bacon but we didn't take any notice
of it. There is always the story of my mother who went in there and got
a bottle of soda, one of the sort you press, and she had it in her hand
, turned round and squirted it all over Willie Letch. Then she got on her
bicycle and it wasn’t until she got home she realised it was the postman’s.
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The paraffin cart,
pulled by two
horses, standing by the Tavern
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