Mobile and Home Deliveries

Don't remember the name but there was a van which used to come around and sharpen knives, scissors, shears, etc. He also had a tool for straightening the blades on scissors and shears so they would last longer.

That's the trouble with them being 'mobile', it's hard to find any details of them. We'll have to rely on some memories coming in and see if anyone else remembers the 'scissor-man'.

As a 70's kid the only mobile man aside from the Co-op milky was the Alpine man

I do not remember much about him but I do know "the scissor man" came down Alma St. As far as I remember it was an annual event and his grindstone was foot operated. A lot of people used him but my dad used to sharpen our knives on the back doorstep and scissors are easily sharpened with a round bar of metal.

Anyone remember the ultimate in mobile shopping - Wal's Mobile Catering at Highfield Road? His staff would walk around the pitch carrying a tray with snacks on and a large urn of hot water on their back so that they could serve tea and coffee. The customer would pass their order and money down through the crowd and the goods and change would be passed back to them. Hard to imagine that happening today

When I was 17 back in 1958 I worked at Harrabins in the garage. Now and then they would send me out with the driver delivering bagged coal. One day the driver said it was about time I carried a few bags, so this day we were delivering in Bell Green, the houses were the type where you had to carry the coal through the house. After carrying my very first bag I was coming back through the house and the well built housewife clipped my ear. When I asked what was that for, she pointed to the wall and I could see a long black mark all the way down the hall off the wet coal bag. Those were hard times for me being built like a whippet, but in those days you did as you were told.

Hi NormK. Do you remember the baker delivering bread with his horse and cart down Leicester Causeway?

Lovely to read all these. I found a photo of a milkman, and I reckon it says Co-op.

Meerkat, I can remember that. I forget who the baker was, and also the horse had a name, we gave it pieces of bread. And also the horse would move to the next house on its own.

Yes I remember the baker filling his basket with bread and dropping it at the houses and the horse would walk up the road on his own.

During the 50s and early 60s my dad was the manager of Britannia Street Co-op butchers, near Highfield Road stadium. He also had a mobile butchers van and served Willenhall and Stoke Aldermoor on Tuesdays and Tile Hill and Canley on Fridays and Saturdays. I often went with him to knock on the doors to let the housewives know we were in the vicinity. The new estates were built very quickly and the priority was to build houses first so it was some time before the shops were completed. I think also that mobiles were a popular form of shopping all over the country in those days. In the forties my mum delivered bread for the Co-op from a horse-drawn van around Keresley and Corley and often took me with her for a year or so until my brother came along. It must have been a pleasant way of getting around in those days of little traffic.

If I remember correctly there was a Frisswell/Cresswell who served the Radford area selling greengrocery from an open sided green Commer/Bedford truck in the forties & fifties. Regards.

That's a great pity MisterD-Di, all that information lost, now we really do have to rely on the Forum for the memories

I recall the coalmen Lenton & Bray, sure they were either twins or brothers. Milkman you still can get from down by the old dairy, can't recall the name of the road, I had him up until a few months ago.

Kingy with the horse drawn cart selling greengrocery, Co-op milk, Savage's bakery and Coulson the coalman. All were regulars in Fynford Rd. There was also Coppola with his horse-drawn two wheel ice cream cart with a colourful umbrella, ice cream being in big tubs surrounded by dry ice. Coulson would let us ride on the back of his lorry as far as Keresley pit where we would jump off and walk through to Corley Rocks.