SHOPPING IN YOXFORD IN THE 20TH CENTURY
HORNER’S
The village shop has a long history. George Horner already owned a drapers (now Blythburgh House, Mains Restaurant) and a chemists business (since demolished and a new house built, next to Manor House) in the village when he took over the grocers in 1907. There had been a shop on the site since the late 17th century. The present shop and warehouse were built by Sir Charles Blois of Cockfield Hall in the mid-19th century, the original building having pinnacles to imitate those at the Hall. There were various tenants of the shop before George, including Alfred Phillips 1891-1906
After the First World War the population of Yoxford had diminished but there was a rise in wages and people’s spending power had increased. By 1918 things were looking up for George, the business had become ‘George Horner & Son’ when his son Percy joined the business and he had opened branches in Kelsale, Peasenhall and Middleton. Horners became a Limited Company in 1922. Percy continued to increase trade and in the 1930s set up a delivery service within a ten-mile radius using a Rolls Royce van attracting public attention. He introduced Own Brand Lines including Sunset Tea and Clover Leaf Margarine. Everything bought was weighed and packed on the premises. In 1932 light, heat and power was added to the shops.
He diversified upstairs selling small household items such as tables, chairs and three-piece suites. In the Second World War many men were called up so Percy employed mostly women part-time workers.
George’s grandson Jack started working in the shop when he was 15 and took over the business in 1947. Later he vividly remembered the ration books and every delivery starting with the same order ‘sugar, butter, marg, lard, bacon, cheese, tea and eggs’. Slab cakes and meat pies were not rationed and they were kept aside for registered customers as they were so popular people used to fight over them. Jack bought the shop in 1951 and his brother Billy became a Director. Jack had the shop refitted in the 1960s helping to increase turnover. In the 1970s, due to the increase in staff wages and longer holidays, Jack had to close his Peasenhall and Middleton branch, leasing out his shop in Kelsale to a Mr. S. F. Lawes. The Yoxford branch managed to stay open and Jack and his wife Pat were selling local produce and home cooked hams. They became licensed in 1979. In 1985 their son David joined the firm and introduced seven-day trading. When Jack retired in 1994, a retirement party was held in the village hall on Sunday 5th June.
David expressed a wish not to continue in the business and the premises were let to Sparrows of Laxfield, who were still operating the business in 2000. The lease was sold in 2005 and the shop was run as a Londis store.
It continued to be leased until shortly before Jack’s death in 2017. The shop was then bought by Jon Hunt, owner of Cockfield Hall and it continues to be leased as a Grocery/Newsagent/Off Licence, at present run by Ravi and Kumar and their families. The business still trades under the name ‘Horner’s’.
Employees included Bill Brown, Mary Warner, Margaret Howlett over 20 years; Jean Chapman over 30 years.
SUFFOLK HOUSE (Andrew Singleton Antiques, G & T’s Café)
The building was given the name by William Short, grocer, draper and wine merchant. He was a very successful businessman and sold the goodwill for twice the price he paid for it. He was born in 1843 the son of William Short of Sibton & his wife Esther. He entered into partnership with Mrs Mary Baldry, widow of the former proprietor soon after 1870. She died in 1904. He married the widow of A W Smith the chemist. It was a small business in the sense that he had no horse, only a boy with a handcart so trade was confined to the village. The original shop was the west end only, with a higher parapet.
The remainder was once three dwellings. Short added the first of these to his shop, the second was then a dealer in antiques, the third a saddler. His successor Arthur Cutting extended his business to all three and introduced modern shop windows. He had a drapers, grocers and furniture dealing business here from just after 1891 until just before 1911. He and his wife and two daughters lived at Rosslyn House. Arthur was born in 1855 in Pettaugh, Suffolk, did his grocer’s apprenticeship in Debenham then was an assistant in Paddington, London at the age of 25. Ten years later in 1891 he was a grocer, draper and earthenware dealer in the High Street in Hadleigh, Suffolk. He married Elizabeth Garrod, his milliner and draper’s assistant and they moved to Yoxford.
Cutting retired to Manningtree owing to ill-health before 1913, but still owned the property, letting it to CharlesFrench c1909, and he continued for 20 years. The saddler was William Row, who died in 1838, his son George Howlett Row continuing the business. His wife Mary Ann was a milliner according to White’s 1855 Directory. George’s assistant was John Reeve Cotton, the son of James Cotton, coachmaker. In 1859 John married Emma Dalby. In 1882 Row retired and his earlier apprentice Salmon Howard continueduntil Cutting’s shop absorbed his and he moved to the other side of the road. Herbert Chapman succeeded French, acquired the house (Yoxholme, now Craig House) and the bookselling business. He let the house and made the business his tobacco and stationery department. The garden extends behind Barnsdale.
When he retired his son John took over, until 1949. By 1996 the building housed two shops – Suffolk House Antiques (Andrew Singleton) – from 1991; Post Office ……… (Gareth and Suzanne Bartlett). (See separate article). Craig House was by then a private residence. Various people then ran the P. O. with a shop or later a café until 2014 when the P.O. closed and the village was left without one. (Yoxford is now serviced by Saxmundham P.O. twice weekly in the Village Hall). In 2016 the café was taken over by Gina Knox and Thalia Barker, both with extensive catering trade experience, who traded as G & T’s Café and Kitchen. In 2017 they were nominated for the East Anglian Daily Times Suffolk Food and Drink awards and were winners in the category Best Coffee/Tea Shop. They left the village in early 2023, having closed at Christmas. On 2 nd June Black Dog Deli opened with a 10-year lease after a period of refurbishment.
HUMPHREYS NEWSAGENT
LONDON HOUSE
There had been a butcher’s shop here since the early 19th Century. In 1844 it was auctioned at The Three Tuns: ‘There is an excellent selling-shop, detached slaughterhouse, pound, and stabling for 4 horses’.
From 1895 John Henry Pearson had a business here. By 1916 Frederick William Balls was the proprietor, who died in 1938 after 35 years. It is thought his son then ran it. In 1948 Clarence Frederick Kett, a former employee of Balls, took over until he died in 1959. Kett had married Ida Chenery, daughter of Herbert Chenery, publican at the King’s Head. She worked in the butcher’s shop during the week, then at her father’s sweet shop on Saturdays. It was her nephew Peter Chenery who then continued at London House until 1994. Peter ceased trading owing to lack of business and ran a second-hand furniture, books and bric-a-brac shop here instead, with his wife Viv.
THE OLD BAKERY (FISHERS)
The house was once thatched judging by its steep roof. At some point it was extended at the side to create an L-shape when the house became too small. The baker and confectioner’s business was begun by Robert Fisher. After his death his son Frederick Barnes Fisher took over. Teas were supplied and also ginger beer, which was made by William Denison at his Steam Works and supplied in stoneware bottles. However, many people would be baking their own bread in old brick ovens to last a week. By the 1920s the business was Crisp Fisher. Bob Watling pushed a handcart delivering bread around the village. By 1937 it was Rand, Fisher & Co.
YEW TREE HOUSE (next door to Minsmere House)
In 1911, Salmon Howard was a harness maker here. In the 1920s he was chauffeur to Mr Lomax at Grove Park, and was a saddler here.
From the 1920s and still in 1937 Colin Fairweather was running a cycle shop and was also a radio engineer and repairer.
By the 1950s it was Masters cycle, tv and radio (cycles in one window, radios in the other). He did repairs and also sold toys from a catalogue.
GARDEN HOUSE
In 1900 Sidney Smith was running a market garden here. A shop was built circa 1903. There were glasshouses in the adjacent Mulberry Park. By 1937 his son Harold had taken over, with a greenhouse at the rear and grew vegetables to sell from there. His sister Nellie sold sweets in the shop.
By 2000 this was Garden House Bookshop, run by Lisa Adamczewski. She sold books and prints and also engaged in the restoration of paintings and gilding. It is now Garden House Antiques.
COACH HOUSE COTTAGE
Alfred Hurren, watchmaker and jeweller. In 1938 Edward (Teddy) Page took over the business, doing watch repairs and jewellery, also the next door property (‘Old Wool Shop’). He was still there in 1947.
OLD WOOL SHOP
Peter Clemence Blowers was a tailor here from 1911. By 1937 he was a ladies and gents tailor and outfitter. In 1938 Blowers died at the age of 58 and his wife took over with a wool shop. After she retired her daughter Mrs Joan Bean took over until she herself retired in 1991. She had also sold ladies underwear, T-shirts and haberdashery. By 1996 there was a bookshop here run by a Mr Hamburger.
FISH AND CHIP SHOP, Little Street
This was situated at the last house in the street, next to the old village forge. It was run in the 1950s by Philip Morphey’s nephew Jim. It was so popular there were often queues down the hill. After that it was run by a Mr Groom.
MILESTONE HOUSE
There was a cobbler’s business here run by a Mr Philpott, then his son Charles by the 1950s.
Diana Rose and her daughter Biddy moved to Yoxford in January 1974 and set up Milestone House Pottery, opening on Easter Saturday, making studio pottery until 1996. The house had recently been renovated but there was a derelict two-storey building at the rear which they renovated to make the pottery workshop. Initially a small kiln was used, fired by calor gas but later connected to the mains. Mother and daughter both joined Suffolk Craft Society not long after moving to Yoxford. They held their first exhibition at the shop at Christmas 1978, including other craftspeople. Eventually they opened a room as a permanent gallery and shop. Harry Barclay joined them in Yoxford at some point and Biddy married him in 1981. A landscape architect, he set up a practice at the house. He made pots too and introduced large garden pots and fountains. A five-pointed potter’s (identification) mark was used by all of them but it seems to have been slightly different in each case. However, it does appear that they all had personal seals (stylised H, B and D), which they used for individual pieces alongside these marks.
Interviewed at the age of 80 Diana said ‘pottery blossomed and took over everything. It has given me a quality of life not many my age have.’ She continued into her late nineties and died aged 99 in 2013. By this time mother and daughter had moved to Aldeburgh where they opened a shop called Avocet.
HAIRDRESSERS (next to Garden House)
Francis (Frank) James Clarke, ladies and gents hairdresser, came to Yoxford between 1900 and 1916. Men’s haircuts cost 3d in the 1920s (around 50p). Frank and his son Dudley, barber, (b 1900) worked together until Frank died in 1933 aged 61. Dudley continued the business on his own for a while; appearing in Kelly’s Directory for 1937. He died in 1974.
Jock Goldie was the next proprietor, working as a barber, until he retired around 1980. Another man continued for about three years, until Maureen Martin-Wiles took over the business as a unisex salon from about April 1984. (Jock told her that he had been there 40 years). She named the business Snips and it continues to this day, though now on a part-time basis as
Maureen is semi-retired. Jock also told her that the shop front had originally come from a shop in Leiston.
THE OLD BUTCHERS SHOP (Chapmans Butchers)
William Chapman 1900, 1916, 1925. His son Henry J (Harry) 1937. By the 1950s this was the Co-op butchers.
MONTGOMERY’S CYCLE REPAIRS (now Wayside)
From at least the 1920s. The building burnt down circa 1930.
MORPHEYS
There has been a building on this site since the 15th C. By 1913 the house was occupied by Joseph Smith, corn and coal merchant and his wife Emma Florence. Their daughter GladysEna, born in Yoxford in 1906, married Philip Morphey in 1926 and continued the business after Joseph’s retirement. Gladys ran a sweet shop at the street end of the house. She died in 1970 at the age of 63. Their youngest grandson Timothy continued the business after Philip retired and is still there today. His son George runs the CAT scaffolding business from the same premises.
BAILLIE’S SWEET & TOBACCONIST’S SHOP
In the middle property next to Rattys Retreat, Riverside. Frank and Gertrude Baillie moved to High Street, Yoxford in 1928, where they operated a sweet and tobacconist shop. The name over the shop door was Gertrude Jane Baillie. The house had a front sitting room, behind which was a long kitchen. At the end of the kitchen was a storeroom for shop supplies and in front of that was the shop itself with its rows of shelves containing the large glass jars of sweets.
THE KING’S HEAD
In the 18th century coaches were stopping here for repair and refreshment.
At some point after 1911 Herbert William Chenery became landlord. Born in 1871 to James Chenery and Betsy (nee Smith) he grew up at the entrance lodge to Cockfield Hall where James was a gardener and Betsy the lodge keeper. Herbert also had a sweet shop at the left hand side of The King’s Head, where his daughter Ida worked on Saturdays. In 1943 she married butcher Clarence Kett and worked in his business at London House during the week.
The King’s Head was run as Monets restaurant in 2000. It was last sold in 2004. Its more recent claim to fame was it was the first no smoking pub in Suffolk.
Copyright Yoxford History Group. February 2019