David Greig’s Shop

Grocers opposite Kennedy’s where Ivy worked just after WWII. Believed to be on today’s 16 High Street.

In this audio you can hear Judith and Ivy. 

The audio is 1 minute and 36 seconds long.

Audio Transcript: 

Judith

David Greigs also sold sliced bacon loose so you could buy half a pound, three quarters of a pound, twelve ounces… a pound of bacon. Whatever you – however much you wanted. Six slices, and they’d take it out from the counter. They sold cheese and they sold eggs, and sliced cooked meats as well. Sliced ham and tongue and pressed beef, things like that. But they also sold tinned food. Vegetables and tinned meat, that sort of thing. They had a pulley system with wires that run across the ceiling and little containers, wooden containers, that you unscrewed and they put the money in it and screw it back up and then pull a handle and it would go whizzing around the ceiling up to the cashier. I remember being fascinated by them and watching the whizzing around. It’s probably standard fittings.

Ivy

Butter, margarine, sugar and tea, was all rationed. Literary rationed, you couldn’t get any more what was on your books than what you had. And then of course you had the pot pies, Samuel King’s pot pies. And it’s the same, you have to count the money up when you finish at the end of the day and that. So and as I say I literally done it from when I left school until I got married, when I was 20…I think 21. And I left school about 14-15.

South Norwood High Street Stories is funded by Historic England’s High Streets Heritage Action Zone programme delivered by Croydon Council. For more information visit www.croydon.gov.uk/southnorwood

Image Credit: Croydon Council