Shops of yore

Hi all Fabulous memories wrapped up in this picture. I can almost smell the paraffin, turps & oiled metal stuff. Brill!

Yes, the smell is unforgettable. I like to go into ironmongers for a sniff now and again, There are a couple in Warwick that smell pretty good. We sold all the liquid items loose, i.e. creosote, meths, turps, parafffin. We also had fireworks, sodium chlorate weedkiller (explosive) and heated the place with paraffin heaters. How it didn't go up in flames I have no idea.

I remember a newsagents, the first shop in Spon St, near the junction with Holyhead Rd but on the opposite side. My granddad used to go in there for his paper. The owner who had a disabled arm (possibly a war wound) had the knack to pick up the paper. fold it twice lengthways with his right hand and tuck it under his left arm, hold out his right hand for the money, give the change and then hand the paper over, taking if from under his arm, all like grease lightening! This was in the 1940s. I am sure the srop survived the war but may not still be there

Goddard's?

Both correct and according to John Ashby's history of Spon Street and Spon End he was also able to do it while standing in the middle of the road and taking money from cyclists leaving the GEC factory after work!

If we're talking about the same shop I always remember it as seed merchant's in the late 1950s.

Goddard was No10, the seed merchant's was the next door along at No11

Thank you Dutchman, once you wrote Goddard's of course I knew it! Do you know how I could get a copy of John Ashby's Book on Spon St? My weaving and watchmaking ancestors lived there and baptised children at St. John's. Earlier still in Holy Trinity where several marriages took place. Book not available on Amazon just now.

Last time I was in Coventry Library it was available there

Herbert Goddard was a well known newsagent in the 1940's. I was told by my father that every morning Herbert Goddard would cycle to the railway station, at that time the morning papers were delivered by rail, and the men on the train would throw his papers out to him and he would cycle back to the shop so that he would be the first newsagent in town to have papers on sale. I never saw him without gaiters on his legs. It was said that when the night shift finished at the GEC, he would dodge in and out of the traffic at the lights and push papers between the handlebar and brakes of his customers’ bikes as they stopped.

He was an icon in the city centre for sure. My grandfather used a motorcycle originally, picking up the morning papers alongside H Goddard, getting them up to Tile Hill for when the Standard shifts changed over.

Just to clarify, there was a seed merchant's on the corner in the 1970s but in the 1950s that corner was still a vacant bomb site and the seed merchant's was slightly further along Spon Street on the other side of Goddard's.

Can anyone tell me did Lynes Stores move from Well Street before they closed? The Dalek film has the street name but though short enough to be Well Street it is not clear enough, and not certain that is Bishop Street to the right of Lynes in Dalek film. It looks as if Lynes might go round the corner and I don't remember that! Any pics of Lynes shop windows in still photos c. 50s onwards? I recall a centre show case with entrances from the street either side leading to the shop door set back.

I used to go to Mills & Mills as well as did my friend next door to buy additional 'Bako' parts, plastic tiles that fitted onto metal rods and made houses, buildings on a bakolite green base, one could add balustrade and even a dome!

The Dalek film was shot in Cox Street where Lynes had a shop on the corner of Gosford Street until 1965: