Bradley’s Shop – The Stores
Other, but older, grocery shops in Hagley are listed at the bottom of this page. Please click here.
A long-standing (67 years) family business was the baker’s and grocer’s known as Bradley’s shop or The Stores. This was located on the corner of Hall Lane and Bromsgrove Road, across from the Lyttelton Arms Hotel. “The Recollections of Miss Mona Hickman and Other Memories of Village Life in the 1820’s”, published in the 1920s by E L Grazebrook, gives this account of what is thought to be the original of the shop that the Bradleys occupied:
“The Corner Shop was quite a feature of the village. It was kept by a portly person of the name of Violetta Whittaker, and rejoiced in the dignified name of “Whittaker’s London Tea and Grocery Warehouse.” It was smaller then, and a group of squalid cottages came up to it”.
George Enoch Bradley, a baker, in 1901 was helping his father John Bradley at John’s grocery and bakery shop in Holy Cross, Clent.
George both started his business in Hagley and married Beatrice Mildred Greene in 1902
The 1911 census lists them with two children; one of which, Charles Eric Bradley later became a baker’s roundsman and is recorded as so, aged 31, in the 1939 register. Charles had married Mary Deawkins in 1931 and they were living at Woodbine Cottage (73 Stourbridge Road).
In 1921 Beatrice (Trixie) was recorded in the census as assistant grocer and George as a baker and grocer.
By 1939 George, age 64, had retired, Beatrice, age 61, was a general grocer and their children Mollie and Georgina still lived with them; the latter, aged 23, was an assistant helper. Beatrice (b. 1978) and Mollie (b.1913) are shown here outside the shop in, perhaps, the 1930s.
The shop in 1963. Beatrice’s name is above the door on the sign that is advertising Spratt’s Bonio and Ovals dog biscuits.
Georgina married Frank Birch in 1947, George died in 1948, Beatrice died in 1950 and Georgina was running the business] until first Georgina and then Frank died in 1968. This ended the Bradley family’s association with the grocer’s business which John and Joyce Coley then ran for a few years.
The premises belonged to Hagley Hall estate, were later sold and the shop became Hagley Antiques, as shown here, from about 1974 to at least 1984.
It was later converted into a private house, as shown here in 2001
Other grocery businesses have been recorded in censuses and business diectories as follows:
“The Recollections of Miss Mona Hickman and Other Memories of Village Life in the 1820’s”, published in the 1920s by E L Grazebrook, gives ths account of a grocer’s shop in School Lane:
At the house called “The Hurst” (then such smaller) was a little general shop where they sold not only tea, candles and soap, but books, ribbons, pins and cottons for the customers in Petticoat Row (this was the nickname given to the row of cottages near Rockingham Hall).
Mary Wright (aged 59 in the 1851 census) – baker and grocer, may have been the keeper of the shop mentioned above. See also censuses of 1861 and 1871.
Mary Mansell , druggist and grocer (see Pigot’s directory 1835)
Violetta Whittaker (see 1851 census) age 80 – grocer and higgler (pedlar) living at the “Corner Shop”.
William Morris (see 1851, 1861 and 1881 censuses) – corndealer, grocer, higgler (pedlar) and shopkeeper at his house on the corner of Monument Lane and Hagley Hill.
Henry Marsh (see 1861 and 1871 censuses) – grocer on Stourbridge Road.
William Hipfield (see 1871 census) – grocer on Birmingham Road.
George Grant, shopkeeper (see Kelly’s Directory 1876)
Sutton S Howe (see1881 and 1891 censuses) – aged 43 – grocer and his son Sutton S Howe aged 17, grocer’s assistant, and Edward Ingram aged 23 – baker. They all lived together in a location which is probably on the site of or the same premises as used by Violetta Whittaker (d. 1857).