DANN'S THE BUTCHERS

Can you imagine a shop front full of dead animals in this day and age. LOL.
And G'Day Gill :)

Can anybody decipher the words UNDER the window. I am of the impression that it says something like "All animals slaughtered by RSPCA"

Very hard to tell, but I think you are right

I believe there were two butchers shops, fairly close to one another in Chapel Street. Dann's was one but I can't remember the name of the other one. I used to be sent on a Saturday morning to the other one to buy sheeps heads and half pigs heads for Rosie Wells who used to live next door to us in Northdown Road. I remember walking down the town and lugging these bags of heads up Church Hill, they were really heavy. She used to boil them up to feed her alsations! I can't have been more than 11 years old and she used to give me 2/6d a week for taking her dog out at lunchtime and when I finished school, lighting her fire for when she came home from work at Champions and shopping on the Saturday morning!! Oh how times have changed!

I think the other shop was owned by Harry Ives. At least it was in the 1950s.

Lucky Alsations, in the 1950's my mother used pig heads to make brawn for us, we had sheeps brains on toast, chitlings and sweetbreads and similar offal, none of which you can get now. You couldn't buy a sheep or pigs head now, even if you tried. The scientists have a lot to answer for turning things like that into animal feed and in effect making animals into cannibals.

Hi. I remember Rosie Wells and her alsations, I think that she might have lived on Mount Pleasant in the 1950's.

As for Richard's comments, that was all good wholesome and proper grub, and I loved it all. Nothing like a feed of chitlings and home made brawn, not to mention the cheeks on the pigs head, (called " Bath chaps" where I live now). Youngsters of today would turn their noses up at it. Still, we enjoyed it.

Oh! and one other item which you cannot get now either. My mother use to buy from the fish shop enormous cod's heads which were boiled until the flesh came off, which were then made into fish cakes. AND believe it or not and this is true, as a child I can remember being given the cod eyes to suck the flesh from. Had to be careful though because in the middle was a small hard ball.

I can't claim the "eye" bit Richard, although the rest sounds very tasty. Must have "seen you" through the week!!!! Sorry about the pun.

Yes, the other butcher was Harry Ives and he and my dad went rabbiting about 1950. I remember the back seat of dad's car being filled with rabbits which had been netted after the ferrets chased them out of their burrows. We ate a lot of rabbit pie in those days - up to the time myxamatosis appeared.

I also remember dad going rabbiting, I can remember carrying the ferrets for them once or twice.

Just noticed the name Edwin Warnes, are you the same one whose mother had the shop down by the river? We went to school together in Sid Ray's class. I have often wondered what happened to you.