Kew Shops:Then and Now

Kew Shops:then and now CAROLINE BLOMFIELD In June 2003, after selling our bookshop by Kew Gardens Station, we set up an exhibition celebrating one hundred years of shopping in Kew. The exhibition was held in a historic venue, the old workshops of Station ROYAL Avenue. They had just undergone complete renovation as a stylish studio 'So.,.Afo..,) \<;. complex, and the owners kindly lent us a large ground floor space. The ....ls exhibition was open to the public for just two days, and to our amazement we had almost 300 visitors. In view of this unexpected response, we are publishing our findings, in the hope that others may attempt something similar - and ideally even more wide-ranging - in their own communities. For most of the 20th century there were four main shopping areas in Kew: the original Kew village around the Green and along Mortlake Terrace; the full length of Sandycombe Road; the west side of the station, known today as 'The Village'; the east side of the station at the top of North Road, part of which has now been landscaped and pedestrianised as 'Kew Plaza'. (Until 1920 there was also a further small row of shops along the Lower Richmond Road, between the south ends of North Road and Dancer Road, called North Parade: these were demolished when the A316 was widened around 1930.) We decided to research these four areas and to try to establish how shops and shopping have changed in Kew, and to what extent premises that were retail businesses one hundred years ago were still operating as shops, and to what extent the goods and services demanded, and thus provided, have changed over the years. We included cafes and restaurants in the research, although they are not shops, as the changing eating-out pattern over the century is of parallel interest. )0\0 T. 1= : HoR 1 \'!Ot"M'loN We used Kelly's Directories as our main source of information from 1900 i'Nt,Al>E' to 1971 (when Kelly's ceased publication) covering twenty-year spans: J 1900, 1920, 1940, 1960 and 1971. Obviously there would have been ) changes between these dates, but these milestones provided a reasonable 4:"'(bc,'rt""21 HJ) overview for the first three-quarters ofthe century. Post-1971, however, we 10 Lowt:"R R,C. rIlC.> had to rely on less rei iable sources: our own memories and those of other long-term residents, notably Miss Pat Thomas, who has lived all her life in The main shopping streets of Kew Kew and has been a mine of information about the shops around the Green. Her father was the pharmacist on Mortlake Terrace for over 50 years, and Pat grew up living above the shop. A professional photographer, she has produced a small book, Kew Through My Camera Lens, which gives a gves a unique photographic picture of Kew's recent history. Our Shopping Trends in Kew, 1900-2003 exhibition, and this article, have benefited hugely from her contributions, Table A indicates the growth and decline of certain key retail businesses. and those of many of her contemporaries. We also owe much to the We have not included the numerous small businesses such as plumbers, pioneering work of Kew resident, David Collison, who recorded the history carpenters, builders etc, who often worked from small retail premises. of the shops in Kew's Mortlake Terrace in his TV series 'Talking Shop'. There have been some changes since we did our survey in 2003, and we did not include the Kew Retail Park, as it was a separately developed site within Kew rather than an existing retail area. Table A Shops in Kew 19'00-2003 / Kew's shops have always arrived, spread, and adapted - as shops do 1920 1940 :1971 2003 1900 everywhere - in response to demand. We carmot blame Sainsbury's, Tesco Total shops 140 154 159 .- 155 . 93 Express and the Retail Park for meeting our demands today, much as we 4 '- 3 . I mourn the closure of Kew's last greengrocer in 2003, and note Baker 5 7 r, , 3 1 .. ; 3 I nostalgically that there is now just one butcher where fifty years ago there Bank i 3 -, ' Butcher 7 T 9,_' 6 ' , • ': 1 were nine, and one baker where even as late as the 1970s there were three. Boot repairs 7' 8 .4 ;, 3 _ I 2 1 u 2 Books .0 '2 In the 19th century, the earliest, very small, shops in Kew were around the Chemists 3 4- 4 3 2 Confectioner . '9-" 7' - 6} Green. There were also tiny shops at the south end of Sandycombe Road. Tobacco k , $' 3.} 11 CTN 7CTN It was not until the 1880s that the flIst recorded shops appeared in Station Newsagents tv, lv, 2} Approach, strangely some fifteen years after the arrival of the station. Clothing' 5 I 5 7 1 These were the small, single-storey wooden buildings that still stretch from Dairy 9. 6 7 3 ,0 Drapers Kew Bookshop to River Traders. Large, brick-built 'parades' of shops, with !Haberdashers- 4 3- 3 v 2 2 two storeys of residential accommodation above, arrived around the turn of 11 7 19 Eating Out the century. The first were Mortlake Terrace, Royal Parade on Station Estate Agents 1 L 2 3 6 Electric81 . o o 3 3 3 Approach and Station Parade, with its date (1895) still recorded on its Fish (fresh) 2 4 3 2 0 nameplate above Victor Lown estate agents on the corner. On the east side Furnishing of the station, on North Road the slightly smaller brick parade was named IAntiques -2' 5 7 2 Grocer 8 14' 10 3 West Park Exchange (there are no Kelly's entries here for 1900, but the Greengrocer 'f 7 7 0 shops must have come very soon after), next to a further cluster of small HairlBeauty 7' 5 6 6 single-storey shops around what is now Kew Plaza. In Sandycombe Road, 4-- 4 2 J Hardware the first tiny businesses at the south end were in the front rooms of LaundrYlettes/ Dry Cleaners 2 2, 3 5 cottages, with the proprietors living above and behind the shop. Further up Post Office 4 3 -'" 3 1 the road another row of large red-brick buildings, Victoria Parade, went up Stationer.· 2 3 . --7, 0 0 .',\'; in 1899, also showing its date high up on the corner ofthe row. Watch IJewellery 3 1 1 0 WineIBeer 4 5 7 • 1 Most of the very small shops in Sandycombe Road have now been converted to attractive residential properties, many of them still recognisable as shops of long ago as they retain their pretty bow windows. Elsewhere, most of the premises around Kew that were trading as shops 100 years ago are still trading as retail businesses today, albeit of very different kinds. of tradesmen plied their wares from door to door. Greengrocers, bakers, muffin men, rag & bone etc, all with horse and cart drawn vehicles.' Shops in Kew peaked in numbers through the 1940s to the 1960s. 'There would be so many people in Sandycombe on a Saturday morning they'd be walking on each other's heads,' says Peter the window cleaner, still a familiar figure in the village, who grew up in Sandycombe Road. The small shops at the south end of Sandycombe began to change to residential use during the 1970s. Butchers, Bakers, Candlestick Makers and the rest In 1900 there were no fewer than four butchers in Sandycombe Road and some half a dozen more spread among the other1fl1\in shopping areas of Kew. Now there is just one left - Pethers in Station Parade. Keith Thomas remembers Kelland the butcher on the parade of shops on Kew Green, now part of Brown's restaurant, where you can still identify the original wide entrance that led to a yard behind the shop. Not long before his time he tells us that 'live beasts were brought to the shop and driven in there prior to slaughter.' In 1971 there were two butchers' shops, almost opposite each other, towards the south end of Sandycombe Road, run by Mr Masters in a minute premises at 199 and Mr Sibthorp at 216. Both had gone by the mid- 80s. Advertisements from the early part of the last century reveal that chicken, an expensive option until the growth of intensive farming, could have been bought from a 'fishmonger and poulterer'. Until the 1980s you could always buy fresh fish somewhere in Kew: there have been fishmongers in Sandycombe Road, in North Road, and at 8 Station Approach where River Traders gift shop is today. Now fish lovers queue eagerly in the Station forecourt on Wednesdays when Ken from Whitby arrives with his van, and there are two fish 'n chips shops, the Garden Fish Bar in Sandycombe Road, and the Kew Fish Bar on Kew Plaza, which opened in 2005, since our survey. In 1900 the local 'fried fish shop' was further along at.207 Sandycombe Road. Newens bread delivered by handcart Bread would always be bought fresh from a baker. Several in Kew baked on the premises, notably at 1 Station Parade, where Henry Lotz had a For a large part of the 20th century, everyone's daily needs were within bakery in 1900. By 1920 until the early 1980s this was the Osborne walking distance. Until self-service stores began to appear, leading to the Bakery. Then for a few years it was a dress boutique, before becoming the giant supennarket chains of today, shopping would have been done almost Greenhouse Cafe of today; the old baker's oven is still there, down in the daily in many different shops, as not many households had a fridge.

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