My 1904 picture of Gillingham High Street is historically interesting on several fronts, not least because it features the town’s first car and its rather significant number plate.
The dark green and black Humberette is seen parked outside E R Stickland’s cycle shop and ironmonger’s.
It appears to be of great interest to Gillingham’s Edwardian residents, judging by the large crowd gathered on the other side of the road.
Stickland’s ironmonger’s shop (now Crocker’s) and Gillingham’s first car in 1904
The car belonged to Mr Stickland and carried the registration number BF 89.
It was registered on January 4, 1904, very soon after the introduction of vehicle registration the previous month.
The allocation of BF numbers to Dorset did not go down well in some quarters due to the inference that the county’s early motorists were ‘bloody fools’.
By the time the sequence had reached BF 162, Dorset had been issued with an alternative and vehicle owners could apply to the county council to switch from BF to FX.
Many did but Mr Stickland stuck with his BF number.
The other striking thing about these pictures is how little the shop has changed in 117 years.
The original balcony survives complete with pillars and ironwork and even the shop windows appear the same.
The bicycles have gone but the shop’s use as a ‘traditional ironmonger’s’ is retained.
This rare example of shop front conservation owes much to former ironmonger and local historian Peter Crocker, who still owns the property and organised its authentic restoration in 2012.
Peter, now aged 77, tells me the building dates from the 1870s and the ironmonger’s business was founded by Edwin Roberts Stickland, his great-grandfather, in 1882.
The shop has changed remarkably little in 117 years
It later passed to Peter’s grandfather Jack Stickland.
Peter himself worked in the shop as a schoolboy, became manager in the 1960s and bought the business in 1972.
Although he retired in 1996, it is still called Crocker’s.
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“As we move effortlessly into Autumn there are some excellent titles coming into paperback that didn’t get a fair shake due to the stop-start 18 months we have just had, so I thought I would bring them to your attention again. William Boyd is one our best loved novelists, and has written a fascinating book set in the sixties. James Rebanks (barrister-turned-farmer) continues to write about the challenges of balancing modern farming and sustainable husbandry in the wild and beautiful Yorkshire countryside.” – Wayne
A producer. A novelist. An actress. It is summer in 1968, the year of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. There are riots in Paris and the Vietnam War is out of control. While the world is reeling our three characters are involved in making a Swingin’ Sixties movie in sunny Brighton. All are leading secret lives. Elfrida is drowning her writer’s block in vodka; Talbot, coping with the daily dysfunction of making a film, is hiding something in a secret apartment; and the glamorous Anny is wondering why the CIA is suddenly so interested in her. But the show must go on and, as it does, the trio’s private worlds begin to take over their public ones. Pressures build inexorably – someone’s going to crack. Or maybe they all will.
As a boy, James Rebanks’s grandfather taught him to work the land the old way. Their family farm in the Lake District hills was part of an ancient agricultural landscape. And yet, by the time James inherited the farm, it was barely recognisable. The men and women had vanished from the fields; the old stone barns had crumbled; the skies had emptied of birds and their wind-blown song. English Pastoral tells of how rural landscapes around the world were brought close to collapse, and the age-old rhythms of work, weather, community and wild things were lost. And yet this elegy from the northern fells is also a song of hope. Of how, guided by the past, one farmer began to salvage a tiny corner of England that was now his, doing his best to restore the life that had vanished and to leave a legacy for the future.
Sherborne’s independent bookshop Winstone’s has won the ‘British Book Awards South West Bookseller of the Year’ four times and was winner of the ‘Independent Bookseller of the Year’ national award in 2016. Owner Wayne Winstone is one of the three judges for this year’s Costa Prize for Fiction. This year Wayne was selected as one of the top 100 people in the Book Trade’s Most Influential Figures listing.
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House prices, and whether they will rise or fall from now on, is a very hot topic for general discussion across all sectors of society.
Rightmove statistical analysis says that the ‘upper end’ of the housing market is starting to cool down, whilst the first-time buyers and second-time movers market is still showing record highs in prices coming to market.
To be precise and to quote our Rightmove colleagues:
New record highs in price of property coming to market in the mass-market sectors, made up of first-time buyer properties, up by £1,328 (+0.6%) in the month, and second-stepper properties, up by £975 (+0.3%) in the month
Cooling of the upper-end four-bedroom-plus sector, down by £4,699 (-0.8%) in the month, with buyers no longer making larger stamp duty savings
Overall result is that the national average falls £1,076 (-0.3%) this month, the first price drop recorded in 2021
Buyer demand remains strong, suggesting an autumn bounce in prices and seller activity:
Demand stats for the first week in August are up 56% on the same period in 2019, and down just 17% on frenzied post-lockdown 2020
With homes selling faster than ever, there’s a strong incentive for owners to come to market, with “sell before you buy” proving the best tactic for many to secure their next home in this fast-moving market
The above seems complex and is based on extensive Rightmove data. If you really want to know what is happening to the local market in general and work it out for yourself, here is a little insider tip from Meyers:
Get Figure A:
Go onto Rightmove.co.uk and type in your chosen Town in the search bar
Click on a price range you might be interested in i.e £400,000-£600,000
Click on type of property; Houses or Bungalows etc
Click on the box to include those ‘Under Offer or Sold STC ‘
The above gives you the total amount of houses seen as available in that price range; make a note of the number.
Get Figure B:
Now un-tick ‘Under Offer or Sold STC’ whilst keeping the rest of the search criteria the same.
This will give you the total number of houses that are still available ‘for sale’ within that price range and of that type. Make a note of this number too.
Finally:
Now divide B by A and times by 100 – you will see whether or not we are still in a buyers or sellers market.
For example if there are 91 houses on the market at a certain price range, and 22 are still available for sale (making the sum 22/91 x 100) then 24% of houses are still for sale.
0-35% availability = a sellers market
35%-65% availability = a flat market
65%-100% = a falling market
In other words, right now we are still in a ‘sellers market’. By having a play with the above across different house types you can see for yourself which market we are currently sitting in, regardless of whether or not house prices are beginning to re-adjust themselves on a weekly or monthly basis. You can use this calculation to see for yourself when might be a good time to try to sell your home.
Curious what your house is worth? Whether you’re ready to sell or just plain curious, the next step is to get a local estate agent to give you an accurate valuation.
If you think of Somerset (and apparently a lot of people do these days), you probably picture delicious farmhouse Cheddar and cider (or better still, Somerset Cider Brandy), Lorna Doone’s Exmoor, birdlife on the Somerset Levels and donkeys on the beach at Weston-super-Mare … but there is so much more.
The illustration on the front cover is a wood-cut by the distinguished artist Howard Phipps, who lives on Cranborne Chase.
The media is currently preoccupied with Somerset as a Notting Hill-in-the-country rural idyll, where a South African billionaire has reinvented beautiful Hadspen House and its gardens as The Newt, close to uber-fashionable restaurants at Bruton and celebrities “living the dream” (until the cows walk down the lane or the cockerel crows at dawn).
Somerset is, and always has been, much more complicated and interesting. Deepest Somerset, the latest book by journalists Fanny Charles and Gay Pirrie-Weir, is a wide-ranging portrait of this county which is still often overlooked by those on the headlong dash to Devon and Cornwall. There is an introduction by His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, reflecting on the importance of the connection between people, farming, food and the landscape.
A Somerset cheeseboard – a selection of Cheddars and other cheeses, on a board by Somerset wood-turner Dave Appleby.
As well as the beaches oat Weston or Burnham-on-Sea, the coast is also the construction site of the massive nuclear power plant at Hinkley Point. The dramatic gorges and rocky hills of the Mendips bear the marks of 2,000 years of industry, from lead-mining through coal-mining and iron ore extraction to the continuing quarrying of stone.
Many people know and admire the, beautiful Perpendicular church towers of Mells, Evercreech, Isle Abbots, Huish Episcopi and more – but how many have also spotted the curious, ugly and utterly fascinating little hunky punk carvings around the church roofs?
A few years ago, apple orchards were being grubbed out and cider was a mass-produced shadow of the real thing. Now there are artisan and craft producers all over the county, led by Julian Temperley at Burrow Hill, the man who won the right to call his apple spirit Somerset Cider Brandy, a famous victory over the EU.
The best known cheeses are the traditional farmhouse Cheddars made by the Keens at Wincanton, Tom Calver at Westcombe, Montgomery’s at North Cadbury, Barbers at Ditcheat and the Trethowan brothers at Hewish. Newer delicious continental style cheeses from Marcus Fergussan of Feltham’s Farm, including Renegade Monk and Rebel Nun.
Cider apples at Worley’s Cider. Photograph by Len Copland
Fanny Charles spent a day learning about cheddaring at Keen’s, makers of one of the world’s greatest cheeses. Chef Philippa Davis, who lives at Shaftesbury, has not only created delicious new recipes for the book with Somerset ingredients, but also learned about cheese making at White Lake, producers of delicious and award-winning cow’s, goat’s and sheep’s milk cheeses.
Newer products, but all with an ancient heritage, include Porlock Oysters, Somerset Charcuterie and Somerset Membrillo. Ruth Kimber, from a well-known farming family near Wincanton, looks back on a long life as a dairy farmer.
A giant illuminated float in one of Somerset’s famous Guy Fawkes carnivals. Photograph by Len Copland
Other contributors include Sir Cameron Mackintosh, Michael Eavis, the Lord Lieutenant of Somerset, Mrs Annie Maw, Costa Children’s Book Award-winner Jasbinder Bilan, conductor Charles Hazlewood, garden writer Abigail Ballinger, whose husband runs Bailey Hill Bookshop at Castle Cary, Mulberry founder and champion of spelt grain Roger Saul, National Hunt champion trainer Paul Nicholls, folk singer and historian Eddie Upton and the bird photographer Carl Bovis.
There are beautiful photographs by David Blake, Len Copland, Ian Sumner and Matilda Temperley, and archive pictures, including horrifying scenes from Ilchester Gaol at the time of the Monmouth Rebellion and the persecution of the Quakers.
From the fashion designers Alice Temperley and Terry Macey to traditional potters John Leach and Rob Ellis, from the horse hair factory at Castle Cary to a biotech project at Watchet, from hunky punks to Hinkley Point – dig into Deepest Somerset.
Deepest Dorset, Deepest Wiltshire and Deepest Somerset are all funded by a charitable foundation, with proceeds going to charities in the county. So far more than £65,000 has been raised with the Dorset and Wiltshire titles. Proceeds of Deepest Somerset will support the work of Somerset Community Foundation, the Children’s Hospice South West and the Farming Community Network.
For more information or to buy Deepest Somerset, visit www.deepestbooks.co.uk or telephone 01963 32525.
