‘I BECAME AN EXPERT IN BUTTER PATTING!’

Former Kent Police Superintendent Roy Ingleton, 90, from King Street in Maidstone also served a three-year apprenticeship with Vye’s.

He joined their branch in Rendezvous Street, Folkestone, in 1946 and stayed with the firm until the early 1950s when he received his National Service call-up papers and went off to fight in Korea. “The schools in Folkestone were pretty rough and ready at the end of the Second World War and I was glad to reach the age of 14 which meant I could leave school,” he said.

“My father had different ideas, however, and would not let me leave school until I had a sound job to go to, preferably with an apprenticeship.”

He recalls how butter arrived at the store from New Zealand or Australia in wooden boxes of 56lb. The large block had to be cut up to meet the 2oz per head weekly ration - and the pieces ‘patted’ into shape with a pair of wooden paddles.

“I became an expert in butter patting!” he said.

Mr Ingleton also remembers biscuits being placed at an angle along the front of the counter, so that customers could see what a ’Garibaldi’, ‘Nice’, ‘Custard Cream’ or ‘Lincoln’ looked like.

He said: “There was no heating apart from a small, domestic oil stove which was brought out if there was a cold snap, but the manager believed that a shopdoor should always be kept open so as not to discourage potential customers. “On the other hand, there was no refrigeration other than the coolness of the cellar and quite a lot of stock was lost because of this.

“A few years later, in a freezing cold foxhole in Korea I could have done with that little oil stove!”