Shoppers delight of Cemetery Road

BACK in the 1940s Cemetery Road was a shoppers' delight - they could buy virtually anything they wanted.

For a glimpse into life on Cemetery Road during the present century, I was fortunate enough to meet a Mrs Holt who moved there during the late 1940s. She said: “It was a place where you could shop and buy virtually anything you liked. A Mrs Dean started a hardware shop there during the war, I think with half a dozen buckets and two scrubbing brushes.

“Later, she had an enormous amount of stock and when you shopped there you had to be careful because you'd be continually bumping into things. I also remember a tailoress, well that's what I called her. She used to sit cross-legged on a table doing her sewing and I actually saw her cut a suit out without a pattern.

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“At one time funerals were regularly seen coming down the street to the cemetery. There were several monumental masons on Cemetery Road where you could buy tombstones.

“You could get most things on Cemetery Road, perhaps not clothes, but most other things.”