Daily Photo: 05/02/10 – Number 16 in days gone by

Number 16 St Alfege Passage is now rather well known for being the B&B run by local actor, Robert Gray. But before it was turned into a guesthouse, it was F. Taylor’s corner shop and as this picture – provided by Robert – shows, it sold groceries, cakes, bread and Wall’s Ice cream.

Robert also gave me a copy of this sketch below which shows the preliminary workings of a painting of Number 16 by the artist, John Christopherson. Robert would very much like to track down the finished painting that came from this sketch.

Daily Photo: 22/01/10 – Pelton Road in the late 30s

Many thanks to Dave Levitt who kindly sent me a great selection of old photos a while back, and I’m finally getting around to using. I’ll hand over to Dave to describe the scene:

View looking looking toward the Royal Standard pub situated in the corner of Pelton Rd and Christchurch Way. No cars just evidence of a horses passing by. I can remember horse drawn carts after the war when I was a child and people collecting the manure for the gardens. My Father was a milkman and I helped in school holidays and thought it was great to drive the horse & cart but of course no driving was needed as the horse knew the route backwards and would happily walk around on it’s own following my Dad. It would get to a bakers on his round, stop and not move until the lady there came out a gave it a bun. The horse knew when the end of the round came and my Father had make sure he was on the cart otherwise the horse was off, really had a fight to slow it down because he knew his day was over and looking forward to its feed.