Clements Hall Local History Group, York The corner shop BBC2 ’s Back in Time for the Corner Shop has proved to be a popular series, attracting 2.5 million viewers. By recreating the shop through time, with its traders and customers, it has successfully demonstrated retail trends and consumption patterns over the last 100 years. The history of retail trade is of interest to local historians but also reaches a wider public. Clements Hall Local History Group was set up seven years ago, to cover the Scarcroft, Clementhorpe and South Bank areas of York. We’re a small group, covering an area of densely packed housing, mainly late 19th century/early 20th century, to the south of the city walls, west of the River Ouse and east of the racecourse. Much of the development was driven by railways and chocolate, based upon the North Eastern Railway and Terry’s confectionery works. The history of our local shops was one of the first topics we chose to investigate, exploring how a local shopping street had developed over the last 150 years. ‘Bishy Road’ is still very popular, winning GB High St of the Year in 2015, due to its strong community base. As well as the census and the 1939 Register, we used trade directories, classified and business telephone directories. Maps are essential and the National Library of Scotland has an excellent collection of digitised maps. Other sources include contemporary newspapers, with the British Newspaper Archive, and the York Civic Archive, for plans and council committee records. The archives of church magazines highlight how traders presented themselves, and the goods and services they sold. One local newsagent proudly announced in January 1914 in a magazine ad ‘1914 is now with us. To make this year a year free from worry, and every day a joy, order all your Newspapers and Periodicals from ...’ We’ve used memories from people who recall the old shops, and now social media can be a useful tool, to attract information, personal photos and postcard views. We have our own award-winning website at www.clementshallhistorygroup.org.uk , and that's been a helpful vehicle for publicising and disseminating information. There was support from our local traders’ association, the Council’s Ward Fund and two local trusts, to fund a book, published in September 2018: Bishy Road: a York shopping street in time . This has a brief history of each of the business trading premises, together with stories from customers and newspaper reports. There are many photographs, together with excerpts from interviews with traders and from a memory wall. It also discusses the factors which have shaped trading changes.
We priced the book at £5, to ensure affordability locally, with a competitively-costed print run of 1,500. It has sold well, mainly in local shops, but also in city centre bookshops, by post, and at events, and we have few copies left . We’ve given talks about it to a range of old people’s groups, residents’ associations, U3A and other groups, emphasising the role of our local independent shops in reinforcing a sense of community and shared values. In March 2019 we launched a school resource pack for junior school children, based on our researches. Working with teachers at our local primary, Scarcroft School, we devised a useful pack to link in with the KS1/2 curriculum. With laminated images and maps, it encourages children to walk around their neighbourhood spaces, looking at how traders have changed over a long period and question why. The proceeds of the first book enabled the group to develop researches into the history of other local shops, to produce further publications. We focused on a second area and produced a further volume . ‘ Shadows in the Bricks: the old shops of South Bank in York’ was launched in November 2019, and to date has sold almost 1,000 copies, priced this time at £7, as it included more content. Attached are a few slides from a recent talk given by Susan Major about this topic. Last month we launched research for a third volume, covering our remaining shopping streets in Nunnery Lane and Clementhorpe. We were delighted when one of our old pubs agreed to be a local history hub for us. We put up a display panel and announced a meeting, but then Covid-19 struck and the pub had to close. So progress on this is presently limited to researches we can pursue from home. Susan Major Bishy Road: a York shopping street in time (Clements Hall Local History Group, 2018) ISBN 978-19996655-0-0 Price £5 Shadows in the Bricks: the old shops of South Bank in Yor k (Clements Hall Local History Group, 2019) ISBN 978-1-9996655-1-7 Price £7 Contact: enquiries@clementshall.org.uk, Web: www.clementshallhistorygroup.org.uk Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/clementshallhistorygroup Twitter: https://twitter.com/clemhallhistory
Attached PDF of selected slides from Shadows in the Bricks talk. Photos • Two book cover images • Susan Major at book launch with Chair of Bishopthorpe Road Traders Association, Pete Kilbane • Scarcroft School children following the shops trail with resource pack
Recommend
More recommend
