Rapleys Corner Shop

A Memory of Crawley Down.

The shop on the corner as pictured was called Rapley's Corner Shop owned by Mrs Rapley in the 1950's, and as a child I used to help Mrs Rapley serving and re-stacking shelves with stock after school and on Saturdays. I loved doing it and spending time talking to people as they came in for their groceries. In those days the sweets were in huge jars and were measured out by the ounce into brown paper bags! I remember eating dairy ice cream blocks in between wafers, the ice cream was really creamy and wrapped in paper then and the wafers kept in big glass jars! Cigarettes came in packs of 5 and 10 then too!!