Cowden Stores

My grandparents lived and worked in Cowden. I spent all of my holidays with them from an early age from about 1965 to the late 1970s. My granddad worked on the railways and then with Leighs builders (Edenbridge) and after he retired he was the gardener at Chantrills. My grandmother (Mrs Pocock) worked at the Cowden stores and I spent my days with her there - helping to make up the orders that were delivered by Mr Weightman in his van to customers for quite a few miles around. I used to cut the leaves off the cauliflowers in the vegetable store at the back of the shop and weigh out the potatoes. Right at the back of the shop in the stores, there used to hang sides of bacon, ready to be sliced to order in the shop. I loved the smell of the coffee beans being ground and put into blue paper bags. I can honestly say that these were the happiest days of my childhood, I loved being with my nana and I loved being in the shop.
In the photographs shown, there is an enamelled sign, which I have. I also have a painting of the stores which was bought by Mr Weightman and then given to my grandmother. When she died, she left it to me, with a message that she had written on the back. I'm not sure who painted it, but they left out the mounting steps which are outside where the butcher's shop used to be. I also remember the post office which was across the road. There you could buy plimsolls, wellington boots as well as postage stamps.
When my brothers and I used to stay, we often used to play football with the local kids in the rec - we'd play practically all day and evening, there could be up to 30 of us. The swings were the old ones that looked like gallows.
The school was still open then and my grandmother was a school governor and used to help out by reading with the children. Of course, this is the school that my mother and her sisters used to attend, way back in the forties and fifties.
Well, I could go on forever about Cowden. I live near Manchester now and have 2 children who remember visiting my granparents when they were little. Of all my childhood homes, Cowden is the place that can still appear sometimes in my dreams.