View Looking Down To The Spa
A Memory of Hockley.
I can remember all the shops in this picture. Think there was Hewitt's the Photographer, Horsnall Stores and next to Horsnall was INIFER POTTER who are now celebrating their 100th year this year. As regards POTTER's, the picture shown on their celebratory plastic bag shows my Dad, Ernie Jay as the errand boy with his bike, alongwith I presume Mr. & Mrs. Inifer Potter, and my dad's cousin, Arthur Nicholson.
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Around '67 - the time of the release of Sgt Peppers, I used to have a Saturday job at Hewitt's Photographers, working primarily in the darkroom in the alleyway behind the shop, but occasionally helping out in the shop when Mary had to do some shopping herself. The business was started up by Sydney Hewitt, but then continued by his son, Ken, i.e. my boss. Ken's day job was at Marconi's in Basildon, but evenings and weekends would be spent photographing weddings and printing them up in what was probably a converted garage rented from Potters. It was most likely Inifer Potter (most likely in his '80s) who used to knock on the door of the darkroom to check on us. Quite what he thought might be going on I have no idea... maybe he was after the rent??
In those days we might have two, three or more weddings on a Saturday to shoot. Ken, Ian (Baugh) or my father George would go out and shoot the wedding, bring the films back and I would set about processing them in the deep tanks. Typically, by the time they had been to capture one wedding, left the films, gone to the next wedding, returned with the films from that, the proof prints from the first wedding would be ready to go back to the reception. It was well known that collecting orders from the reception was always much more lucrative than waiting weeks for orders to come back... maybe the beer and bubbly helped?
Ken (and his wife Rosemary) were a wonderful couple. He would occasionally give me lifts home in his Triumph TC2000 (smart car then!), and we also saw the first manned moon landing on their new Bang and Olufsen Colour TV. Colour TV was just coming in then, but the general Fergusons, Grundigs, Rediffusions, all had fairly ropey colour rendition. B&O TV's however were the price of a car, but the picture quality was amazing. Some years later, when we moved to Oxford and I was working full time, we too bit the bullet for a B&O TV, which lasted well until a hot summer of 1984 finally put it to rest.
How one shop can bring back so many memories!