More Than a Shop - a Talking Tour of Chester

More Than a Shop: A Talking Tour of Chester is a historic walking tour by Cheshire Archives and Local Studies. 

In the early 1980s the Chester Archaeological Society recorded older residents’ recollections of life in the city throughout the twentieth century. These oral history recordings were recently digitised thanks to the British Library’s National Lottery Heritage Project Unlocking Our Sound Heritage and the expertise at the north west hub at Archives+ in Manchester.

The tour is self-guided, so you can choose which sites you want to visit and in which order (our suggested route is mapped out below, or you can pick up a printed version from our Record Office). 

There is also the option of listening to the recordings on our brand new listening kiosk, just drop in to our searchroom between Tuesday 21 June and Thursday 23 June during our normal opening hours (9am-4pm). We are based at Cheshire Record Office, Duke Street, Chester. 

We hope you enjoy a bit of retail therapy on a talking tour full of memories of shops past - lets get started! 

1:    Welcome to Cheshire Archives & Local Studies where this converted warehouse holds miles of shelving full of records that document almost 1000 years of Cheshire life. Some of these records are oral histories recorded on cassettes, and tape cannot be trusted to survive for decades. Without the National Lottery Heritage Fund project run by British Library and the expertise at the north west hub at Archives+ in Manchester the voices on our talking tour would have been lost. 

Cheshire Archives & Local Studies · Cheshire Record Office

2:    Setting the scene – Brook Street: A schoolgirl in the 1920s, whose route to school took her along Brook Street and Frodsham Street, with vivid memories of the sights and smells of shops at Christmas – but look out for the cows! She also remembers cows being driven from the cattle market where the bus station is now along Brook Street and Hoole Bridge to the railway sidings on Lightfoot Street. 

Cheshire Archives & Local Studies · Cheshire Record Office

3:    Frodsham Street: ‘Two things couldn’t pass at the same time’ – much like today – chemists, shoe shops and bookshops – how much is that doggy in the window? 

Cheshire Archives & Local Studies · Setting the scene – Brook Street

4:    Foregate Street: Hear all about ‘Porky Pie Duttons’ where Marks and Spencers is now – with a sweet factory in the back!

Cheshire Archives & Local Studies · Duttons, Foregate Street

5:    Eastgate Street and Eastgate Row: We now find ourselves in the heart of Chester’s shopping experience for over 200 years. Hear first how Browns, Bollands and Phillipson and Golder jostle for position – and then more details about what would have greeted you at each shop.

Cheshire Archives & Local Studies · Expansion of Browns in the early 20th century

6:     Browns first...

Cheshire Archives & Local Studies · Reactions of existing customers to the expansion of Browns

7:    …and then Bollands...

Cheshire Archives & Local Studies · Bollands Window Displays & Wedding Cakes

8:    …and the curious figures from Venice that promoted the stationer and bookseller Phillipson and Golder. 

Cheshire Archives & Local Studies · Phillipson & Golder

9.     Can you imagine taking a seat when you enter a shop and items being brought to you – or even brought to you sitting in your car outside. Welcome to the world of Minshull and Meeson.

Cheshire Archives & Local Studies · Minshull & Meeson

10:    What would Browns customers or Mr Minshull and Mr Meeson have thought when F W Woolworth moved in across the street where Next is now? There is no ‘shopwalker’ and browsing is encouraged – and plastic goods arrive. And Woolworths expanded throughout the twentieth century filling the space between Eastgate Street and St Werbergh’s Street which leads us to the Old Market.

Cheshire Archives & Local Studies · Woolworths

11:    Chester is about to open a new market replacing the new market mentioned here. But it is the old market that is brought to life – the china seller who smashes the items he doesn’t sell to the crowd entertain this young lad!

Cheshire Archives & Local Studies · Old Chester Market

Bringing History To You!

Dan Edmonds is the Community Engagement Officer at Cheshire Archives and Local Studies - quite a challenging role to take on amidst Covid restrictions!  His post is supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and this is a snapshot of the valuable work he has been doing as part of our ongoing 'Cheshire Archives: A Story Shared' project.

Since starting at Cheshire Archives six months ago, my work as Community Engagement Officer has been an interesting journey. This is my first job in the Cheshire region, having been based just across the border in sunny Manchester for the past decade. It’s been a great opportunity to learn about the different groups of people which call this historic region home, find out what they want from an archive, and to help introduce our service to new groups of people.

As readers may well be aware, we are currently in the midst of applying for funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. We hope to use the project funding to set up two new history centres - one in Chester and another in Crewe - as well as to develop new ways of making the collections we hold accessible to more people across the region.

My role in all this has been to meet with community groups, arts and heritage organisations, and members of the public. The aim has been to find out what people know about our service already, what kind of events, educational programmes, and activities they would like to see us host, and to find out how we can support and work alongside other organisations doing valuable work in the region.

Some of this has involved running surveys, focus groups, and discussions with people we want to work with and reach out to. This hasn’t always been straightforward given the pandemic and the restrictions on meeting in person! Often when you run consultations like these, it’s best to attend meetings of other organisations and ask their thoughts face-to-face, but that simply hasn’t been an option for several months. Instead we’ve run a battery of focus groups and discussions on Teams and Zoom, asked culture, heritage, and community organisations to run online surveys with their members and service users, and talked with individuals who run these groups about their perspectives.

We’ve had some really positive discussions, learning about what people find interesting about their local area, the different ways we can use the arts to bring local heritage to life, and finding out how we can help local communities through heritage-based events and activities. We’re looking at how we can use Audio-Visual workshops to teach young people about the history of the River Weaver, how asylum records can throw light on how women’s mental health is talked about today, how our historic maps and naturalist collections can shine a light on historical and contemporary biodiversity, and how histories of migration in Cheshire can help us understand the importance of different communities in shaping the region, to name just a few!

We’ve also been learning about ongoing and exciting new initiatives that we can support – from services which partner volunteers to talk with isolated elder members of the community, to providing resources for ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) and BSL (British Sign Language) classes in the region. We’ve been looking at how we can work with voluntary organisations who train young people in cooking and cheffing, drawing on our collection of historic cookbooks and recipes. It’s been really interesting speaking to organisations which represent marginalised communities, and hearing from them how we can reshape our activities to ensure that we are as inclusive as possible.

We’ve also been running events, both to bring archival materials to new audiences, and to trial new ideas we have about how to make our collections relevant to larger numbers of people. We’ve headed down to Chester Market to talk to members of the public about what our new history centres and digital services should look like, we ran a drop-in ‘Document Repair Shop’ to demonstrate what the conservation process looks like in practice, and we’ve worked alongside staff from the University of Chester and Cheshire West and Chester Museums to set up a memory-gathering day and pop-up display about Brown’s of Chester. It was wonderful to speak with so many former employees and one of my personal highlights was to see impromptu reunions between members of staff who hadn’t seen each other in years!

 

Most recently I’ve been preparing for our online cookalong, hosted by theatre chef Leo Burtin, which drew on some of the recipes and remedies that we hold in our collections.  The Taste of History event was attended by around 30 people, with many cooking along on the day. We saw some truly impressive ‘ragoos’ and syrups being prepared, and heard about a whole host of family recipes and remedies which were important to people! It was wonderful to see how Cheshire’s culinary traditions could inspire people in so many different ways.  And I’m currently developing reports on our consultations that can go in our final bid to the Lottery Heritage Fund. It’s certainly a busy time, but also a very exciting and rewarding one!

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