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Interview with Bob O'Hare,
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Chelwood Avenue, Childwall, Liverpool.
- Bob O'Hare
originally comes from Anfield.
He and his wife Brenda ran the B and B Food Store on Chelwood Avenue for 25 years until March 2005. Originally Bob worked for the Crossville Bus Company and then ran a mobile, (large van with groceries for sale) in the Bell Vale area before eventually buying the B and B food store.
- "It's
actually 25 years since we first opened the shop. Before then I worked
on the Crossville and Bowring Park Road was a dual carriageway. We would
travel all the way from the Pier head to Prescot. At the Rocket Pub junction
in the 1960s there were two roundabouts, where the present Rocket Pub
stands today there used to be an older pub and there used to be a men
only bar in it! The Navy Club has always been there as far as I can remember
where that is now you've got the big bridge going over, in the past that
was a much smaller bridge with just 2 lane traffic, it was known locally
as Hunters Bridge, because Hunters cooked meats used to be where the Rocket
Trading Estate is now.
Driving down to the traffic lights where they are today there was an old pub there called the Broad Green Abbey and it was right on the corner at Thomas lane which also had a men only bar in it. Over the other side of the present M62 Motorway there were very large Victorian style houses backing on to the railway embankment. When I actually moved into the shop all those places had gone, many demolished when the M62 Motorway was built.
Rocket Pub 1973
Broad Green Abbey
I can remember
many years ago there use to be a large school at the bottom of Chelwood Road
and corner of Childwall Valley Road. It was Childwall Valley High School for
girls and we used to get a lot of the girls come in at dinner time for sandwiches,
crisps and pop. Also at that time workers from Vernon's Pools, based in Court
Hey Park used to come in to the shop for their sandwiches and groceries. We
used to get a lot of people in from Vernon's at that time.
Childwall Valley High School
But eventually both Vernons and the Lucas factory workers were gone, and so we had fewer customers, but on Vernons old site they decided to build 60 houses (Grangewood Estate) and I thought they would come into the shop but it didn't work out that way.
On Lucas's old
site they where going to build a Kwik Save but the local residents got a petition
to stop it and as it turned out the Turnpike Pub was built there, and on the
old girls school site around 1987 they started to build a new estate of 400
houses, and as they were being built lots of workers would come into the store.
I thought once the 400 houses were completed I would get a few more customers
because they were close to the shop but again unfortunately the majority had
cars and went elsewhere.
Chelwood Avenue Shops. click to enlarge
The outside of the shop used to have a small delivery road serving all this block of shops, it was a through road from Bowring Park Road to Chelwood Avenue, and was basically only for vehicles delivering to the shops along here. The same thing was on the other side of Chelwood road shops at that time, until later when the council decided to make the opposite side into a small car park for about five cars and it's been like that for around 20 years.
On this side
of the road outside this shop there used to be a grass verge and you would
get cars parking on both sides which would block the road outside the shops
on this side many a time, that's the way it was for years and years.
About 20 years ago Mr Gould had a chemist's on the Bowring Park Road corner
which is now a sun bed shop, and upstairs he would also sell or rent aqua
diving equipment. When Mr Gould went Mr Shar took over and after about 4 years
he then sold the shop to a Mr Morgan who then sold the shop onto Mr Porter,
many years later he would move to Hartsboune Avenue Clinic where he still
is now (2005).
There used to
be Doctors in Bowring Park Road, near the chemist and when the doctors closed
down they put 'Porta cabins' (a large portable office) on the green outside
the shops and that then became the doctors surgery, the electricity supply
ran over in to the chemist shop. They stayed there for about 4 years and until
it became a green again and the council put it what looked like giant staples
into the edge of the green to prevent cars from parking and blocking the road
again.The
Butchers shop has also been here for many years on this side of the road as
well as the Post Office.
20 years ago over on the other side of the road the off-licence was the old
fashioned type, were customers would get served over the counter and they
used to have kegs of ale there were you would get ale straight from the box,
the shop now called 'Lets Party', has been run by many people, before it was
a flower shop, a chandlers and a used T.V. shop but was originally owned by
a fellow called Williams and it was a very good fruit and vegetable shop.
The hairdressers was there like it is today, Cathy's been there for about 18 years and the newsagents have always been there also.
I use to go to the market in Edge Lane around 6.30 am in order to stock the shop for the day. I also used to buy bacon from a firm from Widnes and in those days you had to bone the bacon out yourself, so although I wasn't a qualified butcher I did learn to bone out bacon for the convenience of our customer's and we would use a big bacon slicing machine out in the garage at the back of the shop.
You had to bone out bacon in those days, we would sell shanks,
slices of gammon, brawn, bacon ribs, I remember everything was a lot cheaper
in those days, bacon that would cost £2. 20 a pound today would only
cost 99 p in those days, pork pies would cost only sell at 19 pence and a
two pound bag of sugar for 45 pence. For sausages there where chipolatas,
tomatoes, Cumberland, pork and then beef, we also used to sell about 90 dozen
eggs a week years ago and now (2005), it's a lot less.
Photographs taken early 1990s click to enlarge
For instance Brookside Producer Phil Redmond phoned me a few years back. (Brookside was a soap drama) Out of the blue one day he rang the shop and he asked; do you watch Brookside and I said my wife watches it, I said is this a wind up?, he said they have a new set going with shops and what we are doing is starting a new character called Bev and he asked if I could tell him how the VAT (Value Added Tax) is worked out on the till and so I told him!
Another day Terry
out of Brookside came in a couple of times and bought some bacon, (Mersey
T.V. studios are only down the road near Childwall Abby) and he and also Barry
Grant who has also been in Liverpool One and The Bill, called in, I remember
another lad called in the shop for his groceries, that was Mick, I thought
he was a very good actor.
The shop has also been used as a set for a Hollyoaks programme (Channel 4
/ Mersey T. V. soap drama still aired in 2005). A few years ago we were contacted
by Mersey T.V. and they asked if they could use the shop for an episode and
so they came along, and Brenda and I closed the shop up while they set up
their film set with lights and wires everywhere, two large outside broadcast
vans were parked at the back of the shop all day while the interior of the
shop was set up to look like there had been a fire with lots of smoke.
An actor lay on the floor for what seemed like hours while they filmed. Two
other actors stood outside the shop then on cue they raced in to rescue the
man on the floor. They took over four hours for a shot that lasted about thirty
seconds!
As I said before there have been many changes in this area over the years; the next generation of customers probably won't have any shops like this one in the future. I would take a customer's order and drop the groceries off if they lived locally.
Now I've decided to close the shop after 25 years and make life a lot easier for me and Brenda. We'll miss the shop, our friends and all our customers."
Bob O'Hare. Recorded
in March, 2005.
Message
to Bob and Brenda.
Dear Bob and Brenda B.B.,
Just a line to wish you both well and to let you know what your corned shop
has meant to us over the past 16 years.
The promise of going to Bob's shop always guaranteed a response.
Lost shoes always found, hats and gloves on nearly the right child.
I often got taken for a child minder but it was only me and my gang of five.
On our daily trip to Bobs either for fresh Roberts bread-they were convinced
the Bob baked it himself and long after they started school they only had
Bob's bread for a packed lunch. We would call in on our way to the park for
the stuff to have a picnic, or on our way home for cake mix and ice cream.
The kids learnt to count by moving all the tins of spaghetti and beans and
soup around the shelves, much to Bobs delight but he kept his cool at least
while we were in the shop. We would have a constant supply of boxes, that
once we got them home would become garages or dolls houses.
Long before the kids arrived Bob took me with him to the market on several
occasions for flowers to make the button holes for my daughter's weddings.
We once had a young visitor from America who was fascinated with the corner
shop, my grandchildren were very proud to take her into Bobs because they
knew were every thing was. Try that in one of the supermarkets. Along with
the lollypop from the butcher and the good humour and patience
allowing them to learn and communicate with adults, to say nothing of the
talking Christmas tree, the shop has been part of their childhood and will
be missed.
We wish you loads of luck - Margaret and the Gang of Five
All photographs
copyright Wendy and Dave Roberts.
Rocket Pub, Broad Green Abbey and Childwall Valley High School Pictures ©
Edward Barker, (1991) 'In and around BroadGreen', Childwall, Liverpool ISBN
0951846302
Hollyoaks screen capture © Channel four tv.
