The Shop
This building which still stands to this day, a private house since the seventies, was for many years the local shop.
In its early days the building comprised two flats - one above the shop and one below, with a bakery at road level: "the old ovens were still in the cellar - they were really big and ornate" recalls Bryony Parrish whose family bought the premises in the early seventies. Marjorie Dixon who lived at the Bottoms in the forties and fifties recalls Mr and Mrs Storey - "Mr Storey used to cobble all our shoes", who lived downstairs under the shop at the time run by Mr and Mrs Routledge who also ran 'the Mission' on Station Road.
According to the 1939 Register taken at the outbreak of the war, the property was lived in by an elderly widow called Lily Carter, 'general dealer, baker and confectioner'.
Other names associated with the shop were Askew, Lines and Gellners.
"I can remember the smell of the delicious pasties made and sold by Mrs Askew"; recalls Margaret Crawley.
The Lines are thought to have taken over the shop in the mid fifties when it was popular with local children who would call in for a few sweets on their way to and from school. A young lad who grew up in Derwent Street and who was a regular visitor to the shop for sweets, remembers the names of people who had not settled their 'slates' being posted in the shop window.
The last family to run the premises as a shop were the Gellners and 'The Shop' at this time is said also to have known been locally as 'Shalom' . "The Gellners took over the shop in the mid sixties, "I think the shop later started to sell records". recalls Stephen Lee.
"I can remember it being a record shop for a short time in the early 60's because we all bought our copy of the Silver Dollars' "Rainbow" there". recalls Joan Laidler - the 'Silver Dollars' being a popular group, three of its members from Rowlands Gill, who used to play at the nearby 'Towneley Arms'.
The Gellner's ownership of the shop coincided with the demolition of the Bottoms and as could only be expected, with the number of local residents in sharp decline, the days of the shop as a viable commerce were over.
The Gellners sold the premises to the Parrish family who made 'The Shop' their home for over thirty years. Mr. Parrish was a teacher at nearby Hookergate School and Mrs. Parrish ran a nursery at the premises in the seventies.