Duckett’s and Other Butchers

Walking cattle directly to the butchers’ shop on the corner opposite The Albion and how they were displayed. 

In this audio you can hear Penny and Judith. 

The audio is 1 minute and 35 seconds long.

Audio Transcript: 

Penny

Down on the corner used to be a wedding shop and a friend worked in the wedding shop and told me about it and that there’s a kind of little alleyway up the side of it, and that it used to be a, before my time, it used to be some kind of butcher. And they used to walk the cattle to the High Street and then up this alleyway and butcher them. And then they’d be hanging outside the shop. And I always thought that was quite interesting [laughs].  

Judith

On the very corner of South Norwood Hill and the High Street, where there’s an estate agents used to be a Cullen’s delicatessen. And I think it was next door or next door but one to that, coming along towards the Clock Tower, “Ducketts” I think it was called, had a wooden canopy outside and I don’t know whether it was marble, but it was a tiled floor outside under the canopy, and the slaughterhouse behind. They used to slaughter their own animals, and the blood would run onto the pavement, which caused ladies in long skirts to complain about it. They were wrapped in muslins and obviously they’ve been completely drained. But it was a whole heart carcasses. You’d have a whole beef carcass, or a whole pig carcass hung outside under this canopy from hooks.

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 Archives