The need to build new houses resulted initially in an estate with very few local shops. As one resident remembered, at first the,
“…. milkman came from Countesthorpe, and so had the monopoly for a time. You could fetch milk from Mason’s dairy on Cyprus Road if you took your own jug. There was a mobile greengrocer – an open backed van. On Good Friday a man with a basket covered in a white cloth selling hot cross buns”.
The earliest permanent shops were set up by local people in their front rooms. Resident Pauline Astley later remembered that,
“There was a house with a shop inside the house, called Tommy Newby’s. I mean, he would be closed down now by regulations. I mean, the cat used to sit on the bacon slicer! You know, he used to have to throw it off to put the bacon on…! ... It was a grocer’s and always had boxes stacked up high. You could buy things like treacle loose. He kept all the notes [money] you gave him in an old Woodbine box.
At the top of Saffron Lane… was a hairdresser called The Continental. They knocked down a wall to make a through lounge or salon, and had the kitchen extended to make a workroom. They kept the front door but had the window enlarged so it looked like a shop.
[There was also] a dentist called Mr Cotton’s… the front room was the waiting room. A nurse did the appointments book and took you upstairs to the surgery… in what used to be the front bedroom…”.
