Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Long association with town started above grocery shop
In times past, Ashford was blessed with many specialist trades located in and around the town, that helped to shape its history and success.
But there are very few that can match the longevity of the wellknown Headley Brothers, which are today based in Lower Queens Road.
Headley’s long association with the town dates back to 1881, when brothers Herbert Dimsdale Headley and Burgess Henry Headley began printing in a small room above their father’s grocery shop at 46 High Street (now Mcdonald’s).
They were aged just 18 and 15 years old respectively.
Two years later as the business expanded they moved next door to 44 High Street where the brothers also opened a stationery shop.
It was during this time Herbert Headley felt the desire to produce a local newspaper with a strong emphasis on temperance and morality. So he consulted a friend who worked on a paper called The Review based in Norwood in south London, and eventually they produced a paper called the Kent Examiner and Ashford Chronicle.
A newspaper press was installed in the basement expanding the range of publications the firm could produce.
Interestingly enough, the friend Barham Boorman went on to produce our sister paper the Kent Messenger and also to lay the foundations and successes of the Kent Messenger Group.
Other publications were produced for a number of years including the Headley’s Guide to Ashford and the Kent County Timetables and the business continued to thrive.
The High Street shop was the first in Ashford to generate and use electric light and for a time a light was provided outside no.44 for the benefit of the town.
Six years after the company expanded to new premises in Edinburgh Road, a disastrous and mys- terious blaze destroyed the site on September 14, 1906. Hardly had the smoke cleared when Burgess Headley set off to buy new type and machinery, and it is a tribute to his energy and powers of organisation that within a fortnight all the employees, about 120, were back at work again.
It was decided to build new premises on a fresh site at the base of Lower Queens Road, and within two months of the fire work had begun on constructing a modern north-lit building of brick on a concrete floor. It is these premises which were completed in April 1907 that the company still operates from.
The original 46 High Street premises was the family grocers shop and the business continued well into the 1970s alongside the major chains that by that time had started to dominate the town centre.
But in 1976 the much loved grocers shop closed, and the building was redeveloped and eventually reopened as the company’s new retail stationary shop, much larger than its predecessor at no 38. The company left the High Street in 1989.