Grandma’s grocery shop in front room
“MY GRANDMA used to run a grocery shop from her front room.”
Brenda Billson, 85 of Loughborough was born at number 34 Moira (or if you lived there you called it ‘My-ra’) Street in Loughborough, and spent nearly all her life there.
She only moved across the road when she got married to her husband Derek who, funnily enough, only lived around the corner.
So it is safe to say that Brenda knows the area pretty well.
Brenda told Looking Back the name of nearly every single family and house that was living in Moira Street in the 1950’s when she thinks the photo that was in Lookin Back a few weeks ago was taken.
Brenda said that it was a lovely “tight-knit community” in Moira Street and that it was the kind where you could leave your door open all day long and never expect a bit of bother.
Brenda’s grandmother, Kate Hall, had her own grocery shop that sold fruit and vegetables and even had a counter, but even more fascinating was the fact that it was run out of her front room.
Brenda said: “I spent a lot of time in that shop helping my grandma, she was lovely and it was a really popular shop, it was perfect during the war because we used to get loads of sweets, and with rationing it meant we got more than we were meant to really.
“She must have had it for a long time because she had it before I was born.”
Brenda took Looking Back on a tour down Moira Street in the 1950s saying: “So we start on the right hand side opposite the Coopers Arms, so in the first house you had Peggy and Alec Whitelaw, then next door the Axtens family, then the Hicklings, then the Shayler family who was two old ladies. Then the Edwards, and then the old bakery and someone called Hall lived there.
“Then there were five houses that were set back a little bit, and they didn’t face the road and that is where my husband Derek Billson lived.
“Then after those houses were the Kelham and the Downs families, then it was my grandma’s shop, then it was two cottages, then it was the jitty down to Wellington street and then it was houses all the way down to the bottom.
“In those houses the first family I think was the Platts and then the Squires, and then the Chipleys, and the Smiths, and then the Lines family was the last family before the button factory at the bottom of the street.”
And then Brenda took Looking Back all down the other side of the road too.
She said: “On the right hand side you had the Coopers Arms, the Grapes family, the Bosomworths, the Coles, The Upton family, the Mathams, the Barradells and then Blackwells yard.”
Brenda also recalled the Moira Box company that was on the street, and as its name gives away, it is where they used to make boxes and also a button factory, that became Newbold and Burton shoe manufacturers.
Do you recognise any of the names from Moira Street? Maybe you used to live there. Maybe you know others who lived in the area, or have any old photos of the street too?
If you do please contact Liam Coleman on 01509 635806 or email liam. coleman@trinitymirror.com