Shops and Businesses
Apart from the High Street shopping parades introduced in the 1930s, many traditional shops have continued to thrive until the present, though the nature of their business has changed with the times. Nonetheless even after the war there were numerous examples of traders catering to the specific needs of what until only a decade or two earlier had remained a self-contained rural community. These included several general and grocery stores, one of which survived a few doors along Nelson Road from the Admiral Nelson until the mid-1950s. This type of one-stop household supplier was eventually swept away by the modern supermarket.
Other businesses that survived into the fifties and sixties were cobblers (traditional shoe repairers) in Nelson Road opposite the Admiral Nelson and at the terrace of shops near the junction of Nelson and Warren Roads; a cycle repair business in the same terrace, that continued to provide a vital service to the many residents who relied on their bicycles for their daily transport until the late 1950s and at various times fish and chip shops in Nelson Road in the old village and a few doors down from Holly Bush Corner.
In Hounslow Road there were a confectioner/tobacconist run by an elderly lady until her death in the early 1950s; an electrical store where residents took the lead-acid accumulators from their wireless sets once a week for re-charging; and a toyshop. New shops were incorporated into the facade of the Baptist church in 1935. For many years one of these was occupied by a hairdresser who advertised Marcel Permanent Waving. A second shop was not let out but used as a Sunday School room.
In the early years of the War a familiar sight in the village was a traditional gilt barleysugar-pillared Italian ice-cream wagon drawn by a horse, though this eventually disappeared as a result of rationing. During the same period, opposite the Gospel Hall was a coal dealer's yard which was a great attraction to children for the massive Foden steam lorry the dealer used to make his deliveries. A fine example was restored to full working order during the 1990s at the Kew Bridge Steam Museum.
Although it was a bucolic reminder of Whitton's former status as an important farming and market gardening centre, one business that was not popular with nearby residents was an extensive pig farm that operated on land between Tranmere and Nelson Roads until the early 1950s.
These days, Whitton has the third largest town centre in the borough, with around 100 shops, only Richmond and Twickenham are larger.
Read more about this topic: Whitton, London
Famous quotes containing the words shops and, shops and/or businesses:
“I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring some rust,... confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance, to say nothing of the moral insensibility, of my neighbors who confine themselves to shops and offices the whole day for weeks and months, aye, and years almost together. I know not what manner of stuff they are of,—sitting there now at three o’clock in the afternoon, as if it were three o’clock in the morning.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Americans are fascinated by their own love of shopping. This does not make them unique. It’s just that they have more to buy than most other people on the planet. And it’s also an affirmation of faith in their country, its prosperity and limitless bounty. They have shops the way that lesser countries have statues.”
—Simon Hoggart (b. 1946)
“One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten, and to leave off fighting at once.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)