Before Supermarkets

A Memory of Norwood Green.

When I was a little girl growing up in Norwood Green in the '60s, I can remember being sent over to the shops to fetch our daily bread order, a loaf of Mother's Pride in a red & white striped waxed wrapper. The parade of six shops provided almost everything we needed, except clothes, we had to walk into Hounslow for those. There was a newspaper (or sweet) shop, a butcher, a chemist, a grocery, a hardware store, and on the far end a greengrocer. My mother would carry her weekly shopping either in a large cupboard box or it was packed for her in her shopping trolley, and then thanked, by name, 'Mrs. Mills'. Once a week, on a Friday after school as a treat, we would collect the offcuts from the vegetables to feed to the horses which were kept in the field on Tentelow Lane.

Both my brother and I went to George Tomlinson's Primary School which was situated at the end of Shaftesbury Avenue. Sometimes we would be walked back home to Norwood Green via the canal, using a locked metal bridge that crossed the Grand Union by Top Locks. Beside the canal, opposite Top Locks Cottage and bridge, there was a Post Office (with another sweet shop) on this lane, Glade Lane. The other route home across the large sports field took us to the old cobbler's shop on Frogmore Green and if we went a little further, past the police station, another parade of shops was to be found comprising an insurance broker, another butcher and grocer 'Strevitts', a Fish & Chips shop and lastly a bakery.

Anything else could be found in Woolworths, in Hounslow.

---

---