Shopping In Hazlemere In The Sixties

A Memory of Hazlemere.

I was born in Curzon Avenue in 1953 and moved to Amersham Road in 1958. From a very early age my mother used to send me to the crossroads to do the shopping for her. Every Friday after school I used to go to Fords the grocers with my shopping list for the week, collect all the goods, pay for them and then walk back via the sweet shop to spend the 3d (that's about 1p) that my Mum gave me. Fords had a grey van which they used to deliver the goods to our house. Often the shopping arrived home before me! Fords was, in the Sixties, one of the earliest supermarkets and had various offers. My Dad won a mini in a Heinz soup competition in 1962 and the prize included a case of all 57 Heinz varieties which he gave to Ernie Ford to distribute to his customers. Hazlemere had good choice of shops at that time including the post office & newsagents, a record shop, a boutique called Maggie Mae, a furniture shop, a chemists, a sweet and toy shop (Duggins) and a general stores amongst them. We did all our food shopping there and only went to nearby High Wycombe, where there were bigger stores like Woolworths and Murrays, for other things.
Hazlemere crossroads wasn't that busy with traffic then and sometimes I'd go up there on my scooter or bike with no worries.There were lots of people about and the shops were always busy.