A Stroll round 1960s Saltcoats

[down south]

My father was such a regular customer at Fullerton's he ran an account there for a time, and here's a typical few-months' purchases from 1963 :

Purchase Tax was what they had in those days instead of VAT, but wasn't charged on such a wide range of goods. The stamp on the receipt was also some sort of tax; I'm not quite sure when it applied, but I think stamp duty on houses is what's left of it these days .

A few more prices from other bills around the same time:

Packet of Hoover bags 4/- Tin of Mansion Polish 3/3d
Light bulb 1/10d Clothes line 5/3d
Pair of pinking shears 13/-
1 pint Magicote gloss paint 11/2d 1 paint brush 10d
2 flower pots 1/8d
Wheelbarrow £ 2 17s 6d

I won't translate these into modern terms, because it would make the prices seem trivial, which of course they weren't; left in old-time £sd they sound much more like the value they appeared at the time.

Susan

[morag]

Susan, reading the mansion polish item immediately brought the smell of it back to me! (and the weekend routine of polishing the furniture!)

[down south]

The picture below , seen before in another topic, gives a good view of the stretch of Dockhead Street we're on at the moment; you can see signs for the Braes Bar and Pullars of Perth sticking out at the right hand end, and the view goes all the way along to Woolworths and Boots at the left, where we'll be heading.



The scene is from 1973, with the street temporarily turned over to pedestrians only for Glasgow Fair, and a couple of the newer buildings further along were only built at the turn of the sixties and seventies. But next door to Fullerton's, which shows up prominently in the middle , the next shop we're coming to is a building that must have been new round about the start of the sixties ; Grant's furniture shop at No 60, part of a bigger chain.

Certainly I don't remember a time before it , or what was there then; probably something more interesting than Grant's, so maybe Sam or somebody else could tell us something about what used to be there.

Susan

[wellparkno9]

Hi, I think it was Nelson the Baker that was there before Grants Furniture shop But I'm not sure,Sam.

[down south]

Here's one thing you can't do on Google Streetview ; stroll along Dockhead Street. ( Or Countess Street, for that matter ).

So let's proceed to the next shop: No 58 , Crawford's card shop. Another one which I think dates from around the start of the sixties; an excellent shop I remember it as being, and the business is still going today, presumably on the same spot.

Next along, up till the late sixties, at No 56, was a fishmonger's called Wright's, with steps up to the entrance. Then in 1969 after a complete renovation it was replaced by a branch of Galbraith's, the Ayr-based bakery firm. By that point one or two of the previously-existing bakers' shops in town, like Mackay's which used to be opposite, and Herdman's along the end of the street, had closed, so there was room in the market for this one. ( Mind you, Sam's mention of Nelson's, which I'd never heard of, had me thinking what an amazing number of bakeries there must have been in Saltcoats back around the fifties; there seemed a lot even in the sixties, but several more have already been mentioned that were gone before then. )

The opening of the new Galbraith's ( "" famed throughout Ayrshire for its high-quality baking " ) on 27th June 1969 was reported in the Herald; it was their 15th Ayrshire shop, and the new manager was Mr M Watt. It boasted a new Dutch manufactured refrigeration unit to store " the fresh cream cakes for which this firm is well known ", and a "make and take away " counter from which customers could purchase soup, sandwiches and pies. All standard stuff in bakers shops today, but the last word in modernity in 1960s Saltcoats.

Susan

[morag]

When I worked in Saltcoats(Clydesdale's, late 60's), we used to get sandwiches, soup, etc., from what I thought was Citi bakeries, across the street. Maybe it was Galbraith's?

[down south]

The next shop at No 52, with another of those tall red sandstone buildings above it, was a chain grocery which as far as I know went over to self-service quite early in the sixties . But then I didn't take much notice of it, and can hardly recall ever setting foot in it.

Not surprising then that I'm a bit vague even about the name of the place. I'd always thought it was the Maypole; but in my 1967 phone book it turns out to be Massey's, one of several listed locally, with no Maypoles mentioned at all. I know there used to be a branch of Maypole Dairies in Saltcoats, there are several non-detailed mentions on-site ; and if I knew the name presumably it must have still been around in my time.

So perhaps someone can answer the question as to whether this shop WAS ever the Maypole Dairies before it was Massey's, or whether that was somewhere else.

Susan

[Penny Tray]

Susan,

Maggie will maybe come in with regard to the Maypole. She has previously mentioned that she drove their delivery van. I can remember the shop but can pinpoint in my memory where it was. Old age again.

[down south]

On the front cover of the Mc Sherrys' " Old Saltcoats " there's a picture of the Maypole Dairies back somewhen like the 1920s ( with a young Owen Kelly as one of the shop assistants posed outside ), and I see that in those days it was at No 49, which is just opposite where we are now. And most of the references to it seem to suggest it was still over there in the fifties, bracketing it with other shops on that side. So most likely it closed somewhen in the early sixties, and Massey's was yet another different grocer.

Susan

[wellparkno9]

Hi Susan, I remember the Maypole at No.49. My two cousins worked there.I think it moved over across the road in the late '50's or early '60's and went self service and changed its name to Massey's, Sam.

[down south]

Thanks, Sam. I did wonder if something like that had happened ; I expect people went on calling it the Maypole even though the name had changed, hence my confusion.

But moving on now to another shop where I'm on much firmer ground: Wilkie's, for very many years the leading independent grocer in Saltcoats . Or " consistently the best " as their slogan went in advertisements such as this one from 1959 :

phpSK5CTKAM.jpg (10.9 KiB) Viewed 40 times

The proud boast of Frozen Food was quite a new one then; products like frozen fish fingers had only begun to be produced a couple of years or so earlier. But even smaller local grocers like Wilkie's, and Murchie's in Ardrossan ( whose adverts of the time also give frozen food prominent mention ) were eager to start stocking them.

But that touch of modernity aside,Wilkie's was very much the traditional grocer's shop when I first knew it as a small girl back at the end of the fifties, out shopping with my mother who bought most of her groceries there in those days.

All down the left hand side as you went in ran a long counter; there were a few things out on display racks in the middle of the floor ( which had a black-and-white diamond pattern ), but most of the groceries were kept on, under or behind the counter and you were duly served with them, often by Lindsay Wilkie himself, who was the member of the family who always seemed to have the leading role in the shop back then. We've already met him and his brother Couper ( who carried on the business later as a delicatessen in Hamilton Street ) on page 10 of the Stroll :

viewtopic.php?p=70788#p70788

The end of the counter near the front sold the dairy produce, where a bald, thin elderly man seemed forever to be patting butter into blocks with paddles in the traditional way. At the opposite front corner was the greengrocery , most of it stored in a range of wooden cubbyholes, and in charge of that was a cheery round-faced grey-haired lady , my favourite of all the Wilkie's people in those days ; the others who come to mind are vaguer in memory.

Does anyone else remember her I wonder, or have further memories of Wilkie's back then ?

Susan

[maggie T]

Susan I remember a wee lady that worked in the shop.Did she wear her hair up in a french roll,If its the same lady
she was a cheery person.
MaggieT.