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In this
part of East Sussex, we celebrate a village shop and shopkeeper of
glorious memory. Thomas Turner kept a general store in the village of
East Hoathly 250 years ago. In his premises, comprising a room and
outbuildings in his own home, he sold just about everything an 18th
century household could desire, from cheese to cucumbers, horsehair and
hosiery, clogs and cabbages, bricks and brandy, and spatterdashes* too.
We know for sure because, for 11 years, this Samuel Pepys of the Shires
kept a diary detailing all the joys and vicissitudes of his personal and
working life.
The 1760s were hard times for trade. In July 1762 Thomas Turner
wrote, “a more duller time for trade I never knew. What shall I do? Work
I cannot! Steal, I hope I shall never think of. Truly I think I shall be
ruined....Oh melancholy time”. Always fearful of the workhouse, but ever
resourceful, Thomas looked for other sources of income and, in addition
to shopkeeping, he made himself East Hoathly’s indispensable multi-tasker
as village lawyer, churchwarden, overseer of the poor, pharmacist, land
surveyor and even undertaker.
He subscribed to various newspapers, keeping up-to-date with
world news like the devastating earthquake “whereby Lisbon and many
other places have been ruined and some slight shocks felt in this our
happy nation and in our colonies in America”.
Thomas Turner lived to see his business thrive and bequeathed shop,
diary and precious land to his five surviving children. His house still
stands in the village street, a stone’s throw from his favourite refuge
in times of stress - The Kings Arms - and East Hoathly’s thriving 21st
century village shop.
In the neighbouring village of Laughton (population 500) the
village shop has traded on the same site for over a century. There are
faded sepia photographs taken around the 1900s of village children
playing with their hoops in the middle of the road, the same road that
now has one of those flashing speed warnings to “Slow Down” and across
which the children must be guided to walk to school.
Laughton’s shop has seen some history too. In the 19th century,
the horse-drawn bus announced its arrival there with a hunting horn.
Sugar and rice were once stored loose and bagged up in coarse blue
paper. Butter in a huge slab was deftly cut and patted into half pound
“bricks” and wrapped in greaseproof paper. The shop boasted one of the
few telephones in the village. It sat on a shop counter and, before the
‘phone kiosk arrived, customers said it was the next best thing to
listening to the BBC news.
During the second world war, rationing brought out the best and
sometimes the worst in people desperate to feed their hungry families.
One woman from another village was infamous for hoarding food in short
supply. That’s how certain goods went “under the counter” for their own
villagers..
Then came the retail revolution. By the early 1990s, the Laughton
shop was struggling to survive. That is when the villagers took matters
into their own hands and, with advice and support from various rural
support schemes and benefactors, they purchased the property and made it
possible for the village to take share-holding ownership of their shop.
On its tenth anniversary, business is blooming. In addition to local
bread, home-made cakes, meat and groceries, ice-creams and home-cooked
curries, the shop has a post office, microwave and coffee machine and,
in the back room, something that would have sent the ever curious and
enterprising Thomas Turner into ecstasies of delight – an internet cafe!
How he would have thrilled to surf the net for beehives and bearskins,
fish hooks and bosom buckles, cabbages and cordial and even
spatterdashes*. And he would feel utterly at home. A real village shop
is warm and welcoming, full of news and gossip and it remains the
beating heart of a community.
PS. The friendly shop at the end of our Sussex lane
disappeared 20 years ago, but the good news is that plans for a proposed
Arts Centre nearby include a shop and post office.
*Spatterdashes – the ancestors of spats - were leggings to
protect clothes from muddy country roads
Laughton Village Shop is on the B2124 at Laughton, near Lewes in
East Sussex.
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Thomas Turner’s Diary, edited by David Vaisey, is published by
CTR Publishing, East Hoathly.
ISBN 0-9524516-0-3
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