Hot cross buns fresh from the bakers

Mary’s memories of shopping while looking at a picture of Villiers Road at OVEG Fayre 2012

“If you had gone further up on this side, there was Lovedays on the corner there, on the opposite corner there was Palmers which was a beautiful delicatessen place where you went and they cut all the cheeses and hams, all beautifully off the bone, all cooked on the premises as well.

And then further up the road was Hoppers which was a little shop and they used to have a big double freezer, and she always had sweet peas on there and she used to let you sit on it as a child and they would give you a piece of bread and things like that.  And on the opposite side was the fish shop and that was a little stall, I have forgotten the name of the lady there, but she would sell bread and sweets and things like that.

And then there was the hardware store, and then there was the butchers, and further down in Capel Road there was a butchers and two greengrocers as well, all in this little area but now it’s all gone.

Browns from Bushey … the big greengrocers in Bushey High Street, and in the market, he now supplies people wholesale, and he is doing it on a Saturday morning outside Lovedays.   As a child, Lovedays used to be the only bakers in the area and you used to queue on Good Friday to get your hot cross buns, he only cooked them on Good Friday, and you queued in the morning to get them.  And in the bread shortage, you know when there was the big bread shortage, he used to sell dough to us all, shrewd man”

Thanks to Francis Frith for permission to use this photograph