(Sorry for being one day late this week of this popular Saturday Guessing Game series. It takes a lot of time to obtain photos from various sources, while also trying to untangle Christmas lights, get a friend to jump start our car – thank you chippy minton for your help, and send out Christmas cards that sort of thing. We hope you enjoy the photos today.)
Our loyal reader Mary Peterson sent us these images which she took in September 1984. Thank you Mary for these great photos.
Do you recognise any of these places? Who used to run these businesses? How has the area changed over the years?
1) Paul’s Patisserie – well we know this shop is no longer a patisserie. What new business has just started there yesterday? Or what’s before that?
2) Shops and cars – these cars look classic. Could you comment on the trades and the vehicles of the time please? These days we see more of SUV and MPV models!
3) Cigarettes, magazines, toy cars… These days are shops allowed to advertise cigarettes like they used to before?
Shop 1 –
Shop 2 –
4) Esso garage. Where was it and what is this place like today?
Share your stories prompted by these photos with us.
Put your answers and thoughts in the comment below. Thank you.
I owned two of the ‘classic cars’ in the picture. The BMC Austin/Morris 1100 with the hydrolastic suspension. Comfortable but clapped out at 60,000 miles. At 20,000 miles I changed the oil and a handful of metal fragments came out with the oil, that cost me a lot of money.
The yellow Citroen Diane was a great car, 2 cylinder, I got it up to 73 mph once. Cornering was like going about in a sailing dinghy. It served for 120000 miles then everything failed at once, alternator, exhaust valve, brake pads, tyres but I still got £10 from the scrap yard.
P.S. the pictures in No 3 are two different shops. I was surprised to see the jars of sweets in the second one. I didn’t remember at all that they sold those.
Thanks Mary.
Hi Mary
I would love to publish some of your brilliant pictures in a FB group I run for people who were at Thornden. Could I take a closer look?
Thank you
Wolfgang
Like you Mike, we owned a 2nd. hand Morris 1100 (a red one, so it went faster) for many years here in West Oz back in the 80’s … it was a marvellous machine which gave us virtually no trouble … it passed to our eldest daughter when she got her licence and then back to us a few years later, finally being sold to the daughter of a friend, who in turn had it for several years …
My passion, however, has always been, and still remains, to own a Citroen 2CV … I was fascinated by them when I went to Paris in the 60’s, wondering what on earth these corrugated iron cars and vans were that kept passing our Mercedes Coach whilst on the way to a tour of Moet And Chandon at Epernay … there are a couple here locally, both well looked after I am pleased to say … incidentally, I had never heard of the ‘Dyane’ until today … looking at pictures, I still prefer the lines of the original 2CV.
The first 1 of second set – certainly remember the cars but not the place. From the right Ford Escort estate Triumph Dolomite I think, not sure of the third one; another Escort a “proper Mini ” then possibly a Ford Cortina.
Next photo looks remarkably like the row of shops where we met Janet in Hiltingbury Road – parking a lot easier then than now!
Had a white BMC 1100 like the photo; sadly the body was no better than the engine, rusted out very quickly and ended up in the scrapyard!!
All around the Ashdown Road / Hiltingbury road area this week!
Pauls->Sugarose->Marahalls-> ? Beauty shop
Don’t recognize the predecessor of the Tesco local, next to it used to be curtain and wallpaper shop before becoming model shop and now beauty shop, Post office (shop 2) the same and bakery is now Ashdown Oriental takeaway
Hiltingbury Rd shops least changed in function though some names have. Hairdressers, Andersons (shop 1), Bay Leaves (gradual migration from food shop to cafe), Chemists
Garage now flats along with Tabby Cat
ah yes, the unloved and unmissed Scraggy Cat.
Hi Bob,
Thanks for your comment. Yes there was a Marshalls bakery. Last year there was a parking issue around the bakery and we wrote an article about it:Parking in Hiltingbury.
I had coffee with Mary and Roger yesterday at Bay Leaves Larder. It happened that the beauty shop opened on its first day and there was a lot of visitors in the shop. We went in to explore Bellissima Nails & Beauty and it was absolutely lovely and it felt luxurious.
The first picture in #2 I think is Ashdown road – there is a Tesco Express there now. The yellow car on the right looks like a Ford Escort or Cortina estate, followed by a Triumph dolomite(?), a white DAF or Fiat, a red Ford Escort, a green Mini, and a Ford Granada.
The second picture looks like Hiltingbury Road – the block of shops near Hiltingbury Junior School. A Datsun (possibly a Cherry) on the right, then a Vauxhall Chevette, a Morris 1100 or 1300 (the body shape was the same for both) and a bright yellow Citroen 2CV. The dark blue car behind the 2CV may be a Mercedes and there is a brown Citroen estate further down. My mum had a second-hand Morris 1100 in the 1970s, until it rusted away.
These are all cars I remember form my childhood and would date the photo as late 1970s or early 1980s. Show me a similar line up of modern cars and I wouldn’t have a clue!
I don’t know where the shops in #3 are but they are similar to just about any small newsagent / tobacconist / sweetshop of the 1970s/80s.
I think the Esso garage is in Oakmound Road – there is a second-hand car sales place there now. They are doing a free wine glass promotion, which I remember from the mid-1980s so I’m going to date the photo to that period. The lack of unleaded fuel also suggests that it isn’t much later than that.
More blasts form the past are 4-star and 2-star petrol, an Access credit card sign – now Mastercard, and petrol priced in gallons. We’re all weeping when we remember that petrol used to be just £1.85 per gallon – that’s about 41 pence per litre.
*Oakmount Road, and blasts from the past 🙂
The garage is, I think, the one that was on Hiltingbury Road, next to where the Tabby Cat (Later The Ashdown) Pub was.
The people who owned (?) or ran the Esso garage lived next door to my parents in Hursley Road service road, opposite at that time, another garage, Simpkins Garage, on the corner of Pine & Hursley Roads.
The shops are around the corner from the said garage, & I agree with previous replies.
All this area was, when I first came to Chandler’s Ford, Nissan huts, known as The Seventeen Families Camp, using huts erected, we understood, for US forces prior to the D-Day invasion.
Army/service families were housed here as there was such a shortage of housing in the post-war period (Nothing changes then!).
Paul’s Patisserie was there for many years, though I didn’t know as far back as 1984 when you state these photos were taken. There is obviously a shop to its left, so I think it was at some point extended to take in that shop. When I knew it (from late 90’s/2000) it had two doors, and there was often a queue right out of the left-hand door at busy times. People exited out of the right-hand door with their goodies.
The picture of the row of shops reminds me there was a small supermarket next to Bassant’s chemist for many years – cannot think of the name at the moment! It was subsequently run by Charles Baynham for a short while before it became Bay Leaves.
At the Ashdown Road shops, I too remember the model shop, I thought the wallpaper and decorating shop was where Tesco is now – may be wrong though! The baker on the extreme right was called The Krusty Loaf.
The inside of the first shop is Andersons News, still very much thriving and selling much more than just papers and magazines. The shop has been extended since this picture, The laws about sale of cigarettes have been tightened up, particularly in the last 5 years or so and shops are now required to have cigarettes behind closed doors, not visible.
The Esso garage was, as others have said, in Hiltingbury Road, and it and The Tabby Cat pub made way for the Ashdown House flats. In fact you can just see in the photo a tiny bit of the top of the building which is the flats above Tesco. They did car repairs too, as we used them. I know it is not in Oakmount Road as we were living there in 1984. There was, and still is, a car sales place there, but it never sold petrol.
It’s great we still have a wide range of small individual shops in Chandler’s Ford.
Excellent comment. Thank you Pam! Thank you for your friendly service at Andersons News for many years.
I had a Saturday morning job for about six months from June to December 1978 working for Paul Lockobol in the bakery at the rear of Paul’s Patisserie.
I had a Saturday job working with Paul Lockobol in the bakery at Paul’s Pattiserie (June to December 1978).
OMG, the cream Triumph Toledo was my mum’s car! Registration number GKW 324N. I remember pushing it MANY times! We lived I Richmond Close and then Sycamore Avenue. These were our local shops for years! What a wonderful blast from the past!
Shop 1 looks like Anderson’s which was on the Hiltingbury Road up near the turning for Nicholl Road. I believe shop 2 is Brewsters which was in the same parade.