Baldwin's Butchers Shop

A Memory of Ewell.

I have this photograph on the wall as it reminds me of my dad, Arthur Edward Elson. He was born in Mill Lane in 1914 and worked as a 'butcher's boy' for Baldwin's which is just visible on the right of the photo.
He delivered meat to customers by bicycle which is how he met my mother, she had come down from Durham and was working for Doctor Eileen Stevenson who lived at Holmfield in Cheam Road.
He worked there until he was called up to fight in the Second World War, in fact they continued to pay a percentage of his wages to his mother Alice, my grandmother, for the duration of the War as she was a widow and survived by taking in washing.
The first Elsons to arrive in Ewell were my great great great grandparents John Elson, a widower from St Martha on the Hill and his wife Sarah Longhurst.  They were married in Ewell on 29th December 1793.