Grandma's Shop: The true Sheffield eccentric who ran one-of-a-kind store on Devonshire Street

She was a true Sheffield eccentric, who for decades ran a city centre shop unlike any other.

Now Hilda Flower and her unique store on Devonshire Street are being celebrated on stage, in a new one-woman show developed by her granddaughter.

Hilda ran the second-hand shop which had no name and was located between what was the Rare & Racy bookstore and Mr. Kite’s Wine Bar, from the early 1960s well into the 90s.

She did it to raise money to feed the many stray cats for whom she provided a sanctuary at the rear of her shop, above which she lived.

‘Quite a character’

Hilda’s granddaughter Julie Flower, who has fond memories of helping out there every Saturday, told how her grandmother was affectionately known by many customers as ‘Auntie Hilda’ and was ‘quite a character’.

Her rather ramshackle store was an outlier in what was one of Sheffield’s most fashionable shopping parades.

It was also at the heart of a thriving music and counter-cultural scene in the neighbourhood, with one former customer describing how Hilda and her shop - despite her own fairly conventional music tastes - became ‘an essential part of the punk community’.

Julie told how she began researching more about her grandmother and the shop after her brother dug out an old Guardian article about the ‘amazingly mega establishment’.

‘A magical world’

The more she learned, the more fascinated she became, and she decided to develop it into a play.

The result is Grandma’s Shop, a one-woman show described as a ‘comedy-drama about love, memories and the stories clothes have to tell’, which Julie is taking to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this summer.

“I was always conscious she was quite different from most people’s grandmothers but I loved going to help at the shop every Saturday. It was a magical world,” Julie, who runs her own leadership business and is also an actress, writer and award-winning improviser, told The Star.

“The shop itself was quite jam-packed but in a really exciting way. The rooms upstairs were crammed from floor to ceiling with bags of clothes, and she’d send me up to bring things down.

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‘She always had a story to tell’

“All sorts of people came into the shop and she would hold court. She always had a story to tell and she found it easy to talk to anyone.”

Many of Hilda’s customers were students, often looking for some flouncy nightwear to don for the famous Pyjama Jump fundraising event which saw them head out on the town dressed in PJs and nighties.

But she catered for all-comers, including many musicians and other creative souls looking for a bargain, fans of vintage clothes before vintage was the huge industry it is today, and, as the Guardian article explained, shoppers looking for something outrageous to wear to the ‘bad taste parties’ which were all the rage back then.

Hilda loved the shop and her customers, Julie explained, but she was ‘obsessed’ with cats, and they were her reason for running it.

‘The cats and the shop were her life’

The boilerman at the nearby Royal Hospital used to feed the many stray cats in the area and after the hospital closed she saw this as her responsibility.

An article in The Star told how she would buy 110 tins of cat food a week, at a cost of around £20 - considerably more than the £6 she spent on food for herself.

“The cats and the shop were her life,” explained Julie. “She was very sociable in the shop but she didn’t go out much and she once described herself as a bit of a loner.

“Grandma was quite wily. She would never miss a sale. She was very bright too. She won a place at Sheffield High School based on her intelligence but her mum couldn’t afford the uniform so she didn’t go.

‘Very intelligent’

“As well as running the shop, she used to be an agent for the football pools, which were notoriously complicated, but she could do it in her sleep.”

Like many citizens of the People’s Republic of South Yorkshire, as Sheffield was known, Hilda was no fan of Margaret Thatcher.

Julie explained how she even put up a homemade sign in the shop ahead of the 1987 election saying ‘do not vote for this evil woman’, with the then prime minister’s eyes coloured in red.

Most of the items Hilda sold were second-hand, but she also stocked factory seconds.

“Some people who were perhaps exploring their gender identity would come in for the larger stockings, which were factory seconds,” explained Julie.

“In that way she created quite an accessible place for people to buy things they might not have felt comfortable buying elsewhere.”

Appeared alongside Prince Charles

Hilda was well aware she was a bit of an oddball and she even volunteered for a study about eccentrics. That led to her appearing in another newspaper article alongside Prince Charles, who was famous for talking to his plants, and a man who lived his life as Robin Hood. Hilda, whose maiden name was Hipkins, worked for the famous Sheffield mail order firm Graves before getting married.

She separated from her husband before opening the shop with her partner Matt Murray, an entertainer who styled himself as ‘Ireland’s Yodelling Comedian’.

It’s unclear whether their relationship was anything more than platonic but Hilda described Matt in newspaper articles as her ‘common law husband’.

Do you remember Hilda and her shop?

The shop was initially a ‘fancy goods store’, called Matt’s, but that didn’t make much money so they began selling second-hand items instead.

The building was previously a pikelet, or crumpet, shop, and still had the cooking equipment downstairs.

Hilda’s second-hand store closed some time during the mid-90s, with Julie unsure of the exact date, and Hilda sadly died in 2007.

Julie said Grandma’s Shop was as much a live history project as a play. She has loved hearing people’s stories of Hilda and her shop, and she’s keen for more people to share their memories and any photos, if they have them.

Asked what Hilda would have thought of the play, Julie says: “I think she’d just have given out one of her trademark infectious, knowing laughs.

“Whether she courted it or it came to her, she was no stranger to publicity and was quite happy to be this self-styled eccentric cat woman.”

Grandma’s Shop will play at the Gilded Balloon in Edinburgh from July 31 to August 26. Julie hopes to bring it to Sheffield after that.

For more about the play and to share your memories, visit: www.grandmas-shop.co.uk.