Front room shops

This was a post office, not a front room shop Mick. Used to buy my daughter's bus pass from there about a dozen years ago.

This one on Longford Road is a bit of a “gem”

There was a front room shoe shop in Richmond Street, off Clay Lane, Stoke, not many houses up on the left. My grandma took me there once, she may have known the man from when my grandparents rented rooms in Cambridge Street before they bought their first house in Ranby Road when they came to Coventry from Grantham c.1906.

Unless my memory is wrong, that was Hanson, the butchers. Early 60's, we had a shop a few doors up on Longford bridge.

Your memory is not wrong, argon!

Hanson butchers were still operating into the 80's, maybe longer. A proper old fashioned butcher complete with the abattoir down the side.

When I was there, it was run by Mr Hanson and his sister and neither was young. I don't think they would be there in the 80's. He once said to me that he earned more staying in bed and share dealing than he did working all day in the shop, so I think he was ready to retire then.

In the 1939 Register, Arthur Hanson (butcher) and his wife Catherine were listed, together with son John (butcher and farmer, born 1909) and daughter Margaret (born 1913). Arthur died in 1940, Catherine in 1962, both still at Longford Road, as was Margaret when she died in 1973 - she left a goodly sum!!! John died in 1983, his address was The Firs, Wilsons Lane, and he too left a goodly sum!!!

If you went to President Kennedy in the 80's and dissected pigs' trotters during Biology lessons then Hansons was the shop where the laboratory technicians bought them.