The Shop Around The Corner

A couple of months ago I noticed some renovations starting on a shop which is located just around the corner from our house, opposite my granddaughter's school. In its most recent incarnation it had been a kitchen design and installation business - they installed our kitchen about ten years ago - but it had been closed and empty for a year or so. By some fluke the exterior of the shop had managed to retain a lot of the original features, so I was interested to see what would become of these. I watched the progress of the renovations each day as I took Izzy to and from school and it became obvious that the people working on the shop were 'old school' craftsmen using traditional methods to bring the old shop back to its former glory.

My interest in the place took a leap when one day I noticed that they'd taken down the sign belonging to the kitchen company and had exposed a earlier sign, namely that of "E F Pretswell and Son". This happened to be a name that was very familiar to me as I knew that the original owner of our house, back in 1894, was a Mr Edmund Forbes Pretswell!



I started to do a little research on the shop, looking through census returns and trade directories etc, but was beaten to it by a contributor to a local history website, who posted their findings HERE. The article has prompted a fair amount of response, including some comments from the current owner of the shop and also some from the gt-grandson of Mr Pretswell Snr.

The OH and I can't help feeling a connection with the 'shop around the corner' and we're both greatly intrigued as to what it might eventually turn out to be.

BTW, I couldn't resist digging out the original deeds of the house -