George Pike advertises

George Pike was one of Market Lavington’s butchers and he placed an advert which appeared on the front page of the same paper we featured, with a Lavington and Devizes Motor Services advert, earlier this month. Click here to see that post.

The paper dates from September 1924 and here is the Pike advert.

Advert for George Pike the butcher from September 1924

As we see George Pike had branches in both Lavingtons but he was a Market Lavington man. At least one descendant still lives in the village.

His main business was meat, of course. Canterbury lamb refers to Canterbury in New Zealand.

Perhaps it is George’s willingness to buy eggs that makes this most interesting. This was clearly a time when egg production was on a smaller scale than it is these days. We know, for example of three different small poultry farms on the sands. Mr Phillips kept poultry at the top of Northbrook, George O’Reilly had the poultry business at Cherry Orchard and the Misses Chalmers had the Crossways Poultry Farm. There would have been others as well as many a householder keeping a few laying hens.

Mr Pike was inviting all such people to sell him their eggs and he offered top market prices.

It is always interesting to note phone numbers. This butcher had Lavington 26.

 

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Clover Leaf Ice Cream

We have recently been given another advert from Harry Hobbs’ shop which stood more or less opposite the Green Dragon on Market Lavington High Street. This one is a metal sign on legs which could have been set in the ground or perhaps in a stand. It advertises a brand of ice cream which is not familiar to us.

Advert for Clover Leaf Ice Cream from Harry Hobbs’ shop in Market Lavington

We understand that Harry Hobbs shut down his grocery business in about 1960 although he continued to be the newsagent for some time after that. This sign, battered as it is, probably dates from the 1950s.

There is an ice cream company trading in Reading in Berkshire called Lucky Clover Leaf Ice Cream. There’s an outside chance it could be the same company but the clover leaves shown on this advert sign are clearly three leaf variants and not the supposedly lucky four leaf clover.

Maybe there is somebody out there who can tell us more.

Memorabilia from Ken Mundy’s shop

Whenever our curator gives a talk to a group, particularly within Market Lavington, he always likes to include a photo of Ken Mundy. Ken was a village character – the local cobbler and shoe shop keeper with all sorts of claims to ‘fame’. Amongst these were his refusal to have mains water laid on which meant that well into living memory he could be seen walking down to Broadwell and collecting two buckets full of water which he carried home using his yoke.

Older lads used to congregate at Ken’s of an evening. No doubt he gave them the benefit of his wisdom.

Ken remained a bachelor boy and so had nobody to pass his things on to. Some, by various routes, have found their way to our museum in Market Lavington. Amongst them is this little advert board.

Sign from Ken Mundy’s shoe shop on High Street, Market Lavington

This is just a cardboard item and has a good clear message about the work of the cobbler. If you are baffled because this is described as a St Crispin’s Slogan then you may not be aware that the saints Crispin and Crispinian are the patron saints of cobblers and other leather workers. These two, who may have been twins, were martyred for their faith in 285 or 286 AD. They had worked as shoe makers although the truth is that there are very varied versions of their life so most of it is just speculation.

We have seen this sign before on this blog but it seemed like time to remind our readers of Ken Mundy. We’d love to hear any memories you might have of Ken.

Weetabix

We have another advert from Harry Hobbs’ shop today and we think this one may date from the 1930s or 40s It’s a simple sheet of card which could fold and it is for Weetabix. This is a product which we can still buy, of course.

Weetabix advert from Harry Hobbs’ Market Lavington shop

The red outlined font, the slogan and the font for it point to our estimate of an early date.

But of course, do tell us if we are wrong.

Once again, thanks to Pat and Eric for finding these items and passing them to the museum.

A Persil Advert

This is yet another advert from Harry Hobbs’ High Street shop. This one was designed to be used with its product – a giant sized box of Persil.

1950s Persil advert from Harry Hobbs’ Market Lavington shop

Persil is a laundry detergent and when it was introduced, in 1907, it was the first such product to combine bleach with the detergent chemicals. It reached the UK in 1909. The name Persil actually is derived from the two compounds of sodium which went inter it which were sodium perborate and sodium silicate. It was, and still is, a widely used washing product but of course, the style and constituents have changed.

So has the price since Harry Hobbs’ advert was on display. This may have been in the late 1950s. The cheapest we could find a present day Persil family pack – to do 35 wash loads, was £6. That £6 would have bought 192 of Harry Hobbs’ giant size packs.

We believe it is relatively more expensive now as well. Perhaps it is as much as four times more expensive. But maybe the product from more than half a century ago had less to contend with than today’s washing product.

It’s a wonderful item – like all the ads from Harry’s shop.

Water Biscuits

What do many of us like at the end of a meal? Well, for some of us a bit of cheese goes down well – with a crispy biscuit to hold it. Harry Hobbs obviously sold water biscuits in his Market Lavington High Street shop for amongst the adverts we now have there is this one.

Advert for Carr’s Table Water Biscuits from Harry Hobbs’s shop – about 1953

This is for table water biscuits by Carr’s of Carlisle and it shows a variety of cheeses and a platter of water biscuits.

The slogans say, ‘The perfect biscuit with cheese’, and ‘Set the seal on a perfect meal’.

It’s a large advert and one wonders how space was found to display it in a smallish shop.

This particular ad has an actual clue as to its date.

By appointment to the late King George VI.

King George VI died in 1952 so this dates from after his death.

It’s another lovely advert to remind us of past times.

Round the Bend

We have had many new items in the museum this year and that’s fantastic both in the museum and for this blog. We do like to make this blog a bit random – rather like our Museum Miscellany which will be on October 4^th this year, in the Community Hall in Market Lavington. Tickets are on sale now and can be purchased at the Post Office in the village.

We could also remind you that there is a ‘search this site’ facility on the blog. Just type a word into that box and you’ll get a list of all of our posts which contain that word. That’s very handy for genealogists searching for a particular name.

Amongst those new items this year we still have some of the Harry Hobbs’ shop adverts top look at and it is one of these we’ll look at today.

Domestos advert from Harry Hobbs’ shop in Market Lavington

This item is large – about 90 cm long and quite tall as well. The picture shows it is a bit battered and we hope our friends and helpers at the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre will be able to make this item a bit more secure.

Our Mrs Mop type character can be seen about to use Domestos and a couple of scary and scared looking germs are rushing off in hope of escape.

This advert has a base with a circle marked for the shopkeeper to place a bottle of Domestos to complete the display.

This lovely item is not yet on display, partly because of its condition. But at least we can display it photographically just here.

 

 

It’s a breeze

We love our old adverts from Harry Hobbs’s High Street Shop. We love them even if we are not 100% sure what the product advertised actually was. This one is for a product called Breeze.

Advert for Breeze at Market Lavington Museum

This card ad, for a product which keeps you beautifully country fresh, is cleverly made. It can be stored flat but with a bit of careful work the base opens out into a semicircle and the waterwheel becomes three dimensional. The advert becomes free standing then.

But what was Breeze? We believe it was a soap and the product was around in 1955. Adverts from that era seem to feature the words ‘country fresh’.

Before that it had been a Unilver washing detergent introduced in 1947.

Cleansing products with the name Breeze are still marketed by Unilver.

Pat-a-Fish

We are looking at another advert from Harry Hobbs’ shop today. Most of these adverts date back to the 1950s. We wonder if this one is from the 1960s.

Advert for Pat-a-Fish crumbs from Harry Hobbs’ shop on High Street, Market Lavington

This is an advert for breadcrumbs. Our curator says his mother would have been horrified at the idea of buying breadcrumbs. Any bits of stale bread were used for that task. In fact, our curator recalls, it was his job to break the bread up into smaller pieces and put them in a Moulinex grater. Apparently, he loved winding the handle and watching the wonderfully even breadcrumbs fall out of the bottom.

But maybe the busy working wife without a willing son might have found it quicker and easier to buy breadcrumbs – particularly when invited to by a rather sexy, lipstick wearing fish with a catchy little phrase – ‘crumbs! they’re good!’ to encourage her. And as our curator remembers, the crumbs he produced weren’t golden and golden crumbs certainly sound grand.

We feel very lucky to have these old adverts. They do bring back memories and get museum visitors talking about their own past.

 

Say McVitie’s!

This is another of our adverts which came from Harry Hobbs shop which used to be just opposite the Green Dragon on High Street.

This one is different from all the others in being made of thin sheet metal folded around cardboard. Like other ads, it is delightful.

1950s advert from Harry Hobbs’ 1950s shop

We have quite a posh 1950s family – the lad even sports a bow tie. Mum has her tea and the girl of the family is persuading the family parrot to beg for a biscuit. Not any old biscuit, of course. The parrot must learn to give the name of the correct manufacturer.

Once again we have an item to bring back memories of a past era – already this ad is much loved by museum visitors.

Why not come and see this ad and others for real. Our museum is crammed with memorabilia – all about Market Lavington and Easterton, but of course, some items, like these adverts, have a much more general interest.