The Shops

Blade & Brush

“It’s been a barber, not necessarily under this name, but it’s been a barber for about 41 years. It was Carlos Barbers for 40 years almost. It was two brothers, Carlos and Enzo that ran it and owned it. Enzo retired back in 2021, and gave it to his niece, because it was originally her dad’s. She doesn’t cut hair and she’s not in the industry. So, she approached Pete to run it for her for a little bit. We bought it off them, and then we’ve renamed it”.

“We inherited a lot of clients who used to come here anyway, which we managed to keep hold of. It was a lot of the older generation that would come in because they’ve known and grown up with Carlos. They’d bring their kids here years ago, but their kids as they grew up went somewhere else. They wanted trendier and the modern haircuts. But we’ve noticed a lot of them are coming back, because we can offer modern and traditional style techniques”.

“We noticed also that we were getting more and more women coming in. Myself and Pete, we are barber trained. We’re not trained in ladies’ hair; We didn’t do a hairdresser apprenticeship. You get some barbers who won’t cut ladies hair. Or on the other side of the coin, you’ve got hairdressers that won’t do shave cuts on ladies. We’ve paved the way for both, by opening the back room and bringing in one of our best friends to do the cuts”.

“We do online bookings, and I always preferred bookings. The last thing they want is to come in for a haircut and to wait for an hour. People have just got busier lives, and the bookings definitely helps”.

Pete and Anthea von Anrep 447 Saffron Lane

Fix My Bike

“Our shop has been here roughly fifteen years... The company was setup about seventeen years ago, as a mobile company. We used to do the repairs at people’s houses. We set the shop up two years later to sell bikes, because a lot of customers were asking ‘where can we come and see bikes?’. So, we needed somewhere for them to come and see the bikes, and use the bikes. And now we’ve evolved, we don’t get the time to do the mobile repair, and everything is done in shop, because we are a busy shop now”.

“We also do tour support. We do work with private jobs, and with charities, where we drive around on the charity events looking after the cyclist. As an example, we worked for the ‘Hope against Cancer’. One of the bigger jobs was [transporting] 60 bikes over to Geneva and [riding] the ‘Italian Job’ route to Milan. I was the mechanic. Unpacking all the bikes, looking after all the riders on the route to Milan and then packing them all up and bringing them home at the end of the charity ride”.

“The type of bikes that people want has changed for us. When we first opened, we had quite a basic range of bikes. The cheaper end of bikes. But as it’s evolved over the years, people come to us, and they want better than they can buy from the supermarket type shops. So, we have dropped the cheapest range… And now it’s evolved where we sell carbon fibre racing bikes that are £2000 plus and mountain bikes that £2000 plus. But the biggest change is the surge in people wanting electric bikes now as well”.

Simon Holyoak 210 Saffron Lane

Bread Basket

The premises was Cox confectionaries until the early 1970s. It became a bakery under Squires and Kinton Ltd. They were a local bakery company with several shops in the city. Joyce’s bakery came in existence in the mid-1970s. It was Joyce’s for nearly 30 years before it became The Bread Basket in 1996. It was originally run by Mary Taylor and Bev Touch, before Kerry took over in 2023.

“I purchased the business last November. But I worked here previously, on and off, I would say for four years, something like that. I’ve always worked with food, and obviously I know the girls very well because I used to work with them. And then I just thought I’m gonna go for this. I was a pudding chef at the school, cos I left here to go and work in a school, and I just thought ‘I’m gonna come back!’ “.

“We get our cobs brought in. I think some of ‘em get some from somewhere else, but you know we’ve always had these, so I stick to him, because everybody likes them. We come in, in the morning and it’s all about prep, we have to get everything ready, get the hot food on for 8 o’clock, turn on the heat and things like that, just really get ready for the day”.

“It can get a bit chaotic. ‘Cos one minute you could be absolutely dead and the next minute it’s absolutely bonkers. The other Saturday we were quiet, so I decided to bake cakes, then the next minute it’s bonkers, you can’t breathe for a second. Its busy mostly on the weekends, Thursday, Friday, Saturday”.

“We do deliveries and things now, and we do hot food, like we do shepherds pies and lasagnas. Deliveries through Just Eat. We do a lot of catering. Parties. Weddings”.

Kerry Whetstone 581 Saffron Lane

Millenium Fish Bar

“We’ve been here since 1998. I believe Lucky Supermarket was here before, but it was run down –

nothing in it. It was all emptied and battered. It needed all refurbishing. It was this size, but we did have to put the shop front in. It wasn’t a shop front, it was like, small windows, a little door, like an old-style supermarket”.

“It is a family business. Me and my husband. My kids used to be here. We actually came here from Mario’s Chippy on Braunstone Gate. Mario was my dad, is my dad, so we’ve done a lot of years in chip shops. So, Friday’s fish day, the rest of the week, you can’t really judge to be honest. You might get somebody turn up and say, ‘Can I have 20 pizzas for a birthday party?’. Or you might not sell any pizzas that day. So, it’s just hit and miss on what you’re going to sell really, you can’t know. But chips are still the most popular thing. It’s still a chip shop, yeah, we still sell lots of chips”.

“When we first came, we started off quite small in what we had in equipment. We didn’t sell pizzas. We didn’t do deliveries. A lot of things move on. We do deliveries, we do pizzas. Also, when we first started, it was families from the estate, from the area. Now it seems more mixture of people and not just families. So, business and people, that’s real changes. Yeah, we’ve been here a long time now, so a lot of people know us. And there’s people who travel actually, like football days you get people from quite far out. But they always say, ‘Ah brilliant, we look forward to coming here’ “.

Hambou and Stross Martin 553 Saffron Lane

TFG Copy Print

“Well, basically, when we came here, we opened up as a furniture gallery, sold pictures and furniture and soft toys, which Jane made. But we also had a photocopier. We did a little bit of copying, but not much. They kept coming and asking us for copies and eventually I got so fed up with it and said, ‘put a copier by the door, and they can do a self-service job, and then [we can] still sell furniture’. We were importing the furniture from Sweden and Denmark, and restoring it and suddenly, everybody wanted copy, So the furniture moved further and further out, and eventually one day I said, ‘well, we've got to decide. What to do?’. And that's when we decided”.

“It starts with ‘can you just type a letter for us’... Well, we don't really do it, but we will do it. Yes. Ok. So, they’re back… ‘Can you run me off 100 copies of it?’ ‘Well, yes, alright’. And that's how it built and built… The funny thing about print, the bigger the job, the less profit you make. It’s as simple as that. The machines are getting faster, more efficient, and capable of producing higher-quality copies”.

“The technology changed. We embraced it. I mean people don't remember Letraset and stuff like that. We went on to Koy typesetting, which came out on a strip. And then, of course, suddenly the computer turned up. And that was like a whole new world. Our first computer was £995, this must have been 30 or 40 years ago. I thought well, that's the first and last computer I'll ever buy. We just didn't know where it was going to go. We just did not know”.

Keith and Jane Benskin 196B Saffron Lane

Saffron Eyecare

“The business has been at this address since July 1996. Before we came here, the business was not an optician. I think it was a greengrocers. And then before that, I’ve been told by a lot of the patients that it may have been a haberdashery. We did find some mannequins upstairs in the attic at some stage. I think it’s related to that”.

“So, from July 1996, we established from scratch as an optician. Prior to that, I think in the immediate area there was an optician further up the road that had closed down, maybe a year or two years prior, and so there was a demand for eye care in the immediate vicinity”.

“In this immediate area, it's an ideal place for people just to come and visit the local opticians. I mean you’ve got a community-based shopping parade. A Chip Shop. You've got a pharmacy. You’ve got somewhere to cut your hair, somewhere to buy food. So, the whole parade is very dynamic”.

“I started off in optometry in 1989. I did three years at uni. Graduated, went to Manchester for one year of additional training. And then from ’92 to about ’94, I was based in Coventry for a company called Dollond & Aitchison”.

“We’re offering ear care services at the practice. And we’ve also invested a lot in technology over the last couple of years, because it’s a moving field... The technology in terms of lenses, that’s changed. Myopic management, which is a buzz thing with younger children nowadays. I have two to three colleagues that are dealing with frames. The latest trends and what to buy in. It’s not something that I have hands-on control of, and I don’t think they’ll let me have control”.

Rizwan Jasat 441 Saffron Lane

Bettinson’s Kitchens

“The business was established 100 years ago. January 1925. My grandfather, John Thomas Bettinson, purchased the business. My father then took over the business in 1940”.

“It was originally an ironmongers… built in 1896 for a chap named Mr Hawkins. So, it stayed pretty much the same until my grandfather took it over. In fact, stayed pretty much the same until my father took it over. After World War Two, he developed the property and the business, diversifying into electrical goods and, later on, opened an electrical shop next door, which Mr Cook later ran”.

“The ironmonger basically handled all the metalwork, all the nuts and bolts, literally, screws, all those sorts of things, tools, and hand tools, and later on power tools. Also, sold such things as dolly tubs, and mangles for the houses, and dustbins, ladders, and things like that. Pots and pans as well, yes. I’ve worked here since 1970”.

“We diversified into the kitchen business in the 1980s. We were moving house in Oadby and decided we needed a new kitchen and ended up going to a Trade Show. While we were there, Elaine my wife, chose the kitchen she wanted and went around a distributor stand, they said ‘What do you do?’. We told them, and they said, ’Have you got any space?’. We said that we’ve got a showroom upstairs, so they said, ‘Why don’t you sell kitchens?’. And we still work closely with that distributor now, 37 years later”.

“One of the main changes is moving onto quartz work surfaces now, which are a lot more durable than the laminate. Which is a lot more affordable than granite and marble worktops used to be. Not cheap, but a lot more competitive in price”.

John Bettinson 212 Saffron Lane

Morgan’s Locksmith

“The business has been here since 1990, so 34 years. We were based in 21 High Cross Street, from 1717 till 1990. We moved because we were outgrowing the building”.

“The business has always been a locksmiths, but it used to do bells as well. The locksmiths used to go out on their cycles, because obviously the transport wasn’t there. So, they used to go out with their tool bag, and do jobs, we’ve moved on from there”.

“Originally it was owned by the Lewis family and then, it was bought by the Morgan family in the 1800s. Just before the Second World War, my family, which was my grandad, and three uncles began to work there. Mr Morgan had two daughters, and they did not want to carry on the business, so my Grandad and one of my uncles bought the business… It’s been in our family since then”.

“My dad came into the business after he’d done his National Service in the fifties, and then they - my mum and dad – bought it in the early seventies. And then I joined a bit later on, and then my brother joined a few years after that. I’ve been here forty-one years, man, and boy”.

“So, we’ve always kept it as Morgan’s because everybody knows it as “Morgan’s”. There’s no point changing the name, because it’s been around such a long time”.

“The locksmiths’ business has changed, it’s always on the move, I mean there’s always the mechanical side of it. But it’s changing a lot into access controlling, electronic stuff, and alarms and CCTV that all works off apps and things like that. No wires required. But there’s always a mechanical lock at the end of it. We still do a lot of mechanical work. We still cut a lot of keys”.

David Hall 575 Saffron Lane

• Next page: Acknowledgements and Thanks