Bunty Pitz
with some assistance from Gordon
remembering their parents' shop in the 1940s

After my father was demobbed (1947ish, maybe later) he bought a small blue van (GOG 741 – fancy remembering that!) and became a greengrocer/fishmonger. He’d get up at 4am, three days a week and drive to Birmingham market to get fresh produce, some of which went into ‘the shop’ (the back kitchen part of the house) and some of which he would hawk round Whittington Barracks. Occasionally he’d go to the market later on a Monday and take me with him. My predominant memory of that is buying winkles in a paper cup and learning to eat them with a pin – provided by the stall holder.

I think the shop was open Tuesday to Saturday - and it was hard work. Only a certain amount could be kept in the actual shop - the rest was stored across the yard in ‘the garage’, so my mother was perpetually refilling boxes and display racks. I think my mother disliked the fish part—cold and smelly, but she enjoyed the interaction with customers, who’d walk in through our back gate. Many people came regularly, so regularly that Mum could have part of their order almost ready as soon as they got to the counter.

One regular I particularly remember was Mrs Johnson from Church Street: a very old lady who dressed in full length black skirts. Our ancient field spaniel, Crochet, (so named because he was a little black note with a short tail) would occasionally lift his leg on her if she stood still long enough, and she never noticed.

We ate well in those years – always fresh fish and fresh fruit and vegetables. I liked arranging the tins of baked beans and spaghetti and making towers out of the packets of processed peas, emulating the window displays I’d seen in ‘posh’ shops in Lichfield.

I can’t remember the exact sequence; whether the shop was closed before we got the post office, or was closed because we got the post office. I think my father continued his Barracks round for a while even after getting the post office.

There were side benefits to his knowing all those people ‘up there’. He once came home with a fantastic set of blue glass dishes that someone had used to pay him instead of money. He got us two kittens, one of whom produced so many kittens herself over the years that for some time there weren’t many cats in Whittington that didn’t have Dudley’s DNA (we thought she was a he at first.) And we were invited to view the coronation in the home of one family who had that luxury, a television. Corporal Fish, I think his name was.

The architecture of the old Holt was very strange.  The area that became the shop was really a separate building, a few feet north of the main house, and connected to the kitchen of the main house by a narrow passage.  The gap between the two buildings was too narrow to be useful for anything other than a hiding place for kids.

Prior to the development of the shop, the building was referred to as the “back scullery”.  It contained a large sink and little else.  Abutting the scullery was a WC.  The opening to the yard was a double door, top and bottom.  I think it remained that way for the life of the shop.

(I was told that at one time The Holt was an inn.  So this area might have been a stables?)

I’m pretty sure that the reason for closing the shop was my father’s appointment as postmaster.  It had become been clear that the shop was not profitable enough to support the family, and my parents were quite worried.  Acquiring the post office was both a welcome relief, as well as a job that would make it impossible to run the shop as well.  I think my father sold GOG741 soon afterwards, and took a job with Gills Cables in Hopwas.