A Family Business

A Memory of Dorchester.

To anyone local to Dorchester this was a familiar scene day in and day out for almost 50 years. My grandfather Ben Courtney started selling 'fruit and veg' in 1947 from hand-carts on the roadside. His son Doug started in 1950 and various members of the family helped out through the week.

This picture shows my Aunt Isabel serving a regular customer with his two sons. Her father Ben is behind in his hat, serving, and her brother Doug is extreme left, carrying a box. My father (Doug Courtney) tells me his wife Joan was not at work at this time because she was expecting me to be born, in the June of that year!

Doug took over in 1960 and Trevetts worked alongside from the mid 1960s. Doug, Joan, Win, Isabel and Glad were the familiar faces that served. I did my fair share, working on busy Saturdays to ease the load. Everything was seasonal, and spring into summer brought a surge of fruit and veg which was eagerly looked forward to from winter time.

I always remember Christmas time was manic, we sold Christmas trees which had to be dug up and hauled to the store by the hundred. Nets and nets of piled up sprouts would disappear as fast as they were opened. Boxes of tangerines were stacked everywhere. A sack-truck-full of brown paper bags would be used in a few days. Most items were sold by weight so every bag was weighed and priced and added mentally to the total with large orders helped by a pencil on the bags.  

It's early spring in this photograph and everyone is wearing overcoats. Working on the 'barrows' as locals called them was hard in foul and cold weather as there were no canopies or covers allowed for many years. Summer-time brought  the problem of wasps who found grapes irresistible. Doug would scold customers for swatting at the wasps, saying they would get angry and sting him later, which quite often happened!

Doug Courtney traded here through the years as the supermarkets appeared, then the trade dropped off slowly and the streets of Dorchester changed forever. Doug finally retired in 1994. Trevetts still worked on for a good many years but the supermarkets take almost all the trade today.