Saturday Morning Pictures Ludlows And Williams Grocery Shop

A Memory of Leytonstone.

Leytonstone was a great place to live back in the 50s and 60s. People used to come from far and wide for the wonderful shops. Bearmans was a lovely dapartment store, which also boasted a seperate furniture store, at the top end of the High Road. The Co-op sold an array of goods, from fashion-household goods-cosmetics. We had several shoe shops..Bata....Freeman, Hardy and Willis.... True Form.... Dolcis.... Lilly and Skinner and Russell and Bromley.
Leytonstone also boasted 4 cinemas, within 1 mile - The Rialto, The Rex, The State and The Century, which all showed different feature films.
In Church Lane there was Ludlows the bakers who baked wonderful jam doughnuts, cottage loaves...crusty rolls....farmhouse loaves... and superb Eccles and Banbury cakes. All baked on the premises.
Opposite St John's Church, we had a Home and Colonial Food Store and Liptons Grocers too and in Church Lane there was J Sainsbury, where you could choose your butter and they would pat it for you and then wrap it in greaseproof paper.
Browning Road was home to Israels the greengrocers, which sold prickly cucumbers and hot beetroot and in the summer seedless sultana grapes, which you cannot seem to get any more. On the opposite corner there was Williams The Grocers. A double fronted shop, in two halfs. One half selling hardware, vinegar from the barrel and paraffin for the oil stoves. The other was the grocer's side, where you could have your bacon cut fresh, an array of different cheeses and cooked meats. They also has their own Divi-Tokens.
Saturday mornings was a grand trip to The Rialto, where for 9d you could watch 2 films and an instalment of Flash Gordon and if we were lucky we also had 3d to spend on sweets. We all used to sing the Saturday morning anthem too and used to boo and jeer if the film broke down. Wonderful times.

In the early 60s I used to go with my friends to a cafe called 'The Cosy', which was almost next to the Police Station, where we could get an expresso coffee in a glass cup and saucer and play the jukebox, which was great. All cheap entertainment and harmless fun.

Sunday afternoons were spent window shopping, walking along the High Road, in our Sunday-best clothes, gazing at the items on sale and hoping we could afford to get one of them, one day. At the top end, just before The Green Man, there was a cute little sweet shop called The Candy Bar, where you could get all your favourite sweets by the ounce, and it was also a meeting place for friends too. Especially if there was a nice young man serving behind the counter.

The trolley buses, were a firm favourite of mine, as they glided along so quietly, that is until the pole came off the wire above, whereby the conductor had to get off and with a long pole, kept under the bus, would endevour to put the pole back on the wire. Sadly today Leytonstone is not the place it used to be, with the decline of shopping in favour of estate agents, banks, fast food shops....
Remembered with great fondness..