A closer look shows we are once more in the presence of a palimpsest. Two, possibly three, businesses advertised their trade on this wall.
A '/' indicates overlapping lines
Location: Dartmouth Road / Pictures taken in July 2009
With the closure of Woodvale Post Office a few years ago, this painted sign turned into a proper ghost sign.
This was painted over an earlier sign. Only an ampersand below the final letter of "Woodvale" and the number 23 below "Office" can still be seen properly. Could this number have been part of a phone number, in which case it would have been preceded by the three letter code of the local exchange?
Location: Wood Vale / Pictures taken in August 2012
I haven't found anything about the first years of J. H. Dewhurst. However in the early 1920s it was bought, alongside other butchery firms such as Eastmans, by the Union Cold Storage Company Ltd, a company based in Liverpool and founded in the 1890s by William and Edmund Vestey.
Over the decades the number of Dewhurst outlets increased to reach 1,400 by 1977. However from the 1970s they were facing increasing competition from supermarkets. In 1980 Union International, part the Vestey empire, rebranded its butchery subsidiaries as Dewhurst The Master Butcher but this was not enough to save them. Profits and consequently the number of outlets declined steadily throughout the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, when Britain was hit by recession. In March 1995 Dewhurst, which had by then around 400 shops, went into receivership. A few months later a team of managers rescued the firm in a buy-out that involved around 210 shops. In 2005 West Country butchers firm Lloyd Maunder took over control of Dewhurst but they failed to revive the fortunes of the high street butcher's. In 2006, 60 stores closed down and the administrators were called in to sell the 35 remaining oulets.
Dewhurst is credited with the introduction of front shop windows for butchers'. Previously meat used to hang outside, fully exposed to the elements and to pollution.
I am sure that Finney will provide some valuable additional information about Dewhurst, so check the comments soon.
Click here to watch a video that includes many pitures of Dewhurst stores and tools associated with the trade.
Location: Dartmouth Road / Picture taken in July 2009
The growth of the multiple was induced by a number of factors. These reflected changing trends in supply with the move away from domestic agriculture to imported foodstuffs, the switch from craft to factory production and the greater range of consumer goods available in the late Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Multiples also offered competitive pricing by limiting the number of goods sold in order to purchase in bulk goods with a high turnover. In this way, profit margins could be kept low - 0.5 per cent in the case of meat retailing - and the return on capital high. They minimised costs by refusing credit, eliminating home deliveries, adopting fairly simple shop fittings, and introducing strict and standardised branch stock control systems. Such shops, moreover, set new standards in quality and service. Their retailing areas were attractively laid out and kept immaculately clean, with long opening hours that extended from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. on weekdays and to midnight on Saturdays. New sales techniques were successfully tried - such as adopting a uniform shop layout and advertising through handbills and sandwich-board men. (An economic history of London, 1800-1914, p. 136)
 | Si vous le souhaitez, vous pouvez m'écrire en français. |
 | Si lo desean, me pueden escribir en castellano. |
 | Wenn Sie wünschen, können Sie mir auf Deutsch schreiben. |
