Firstly - I have been asked which shop it was that was owned by Mr & Mrs Slaughter. It was Central Stores which was later run for many years by Oscar and Elsie Whiting together with son Richard. It was demolished to make room for the Co-op Extension.

I cannot leave the Co-op corner without mentioning Charlie Dowsing and his bread round. Although I don't recall bread being sold from the grocery shop, the Co-op delivered bread etc. all round Mersea. Charlie, a native of East Mersea used a horse drawn covered van, the horse being stabled behind the grocery shop and the bread came out each day by motor van from Colchester. Many a lift was cadged on Charlie's bread van coming home from East Mersea.

During the war, Charlie and baker's boy Ron 'Charky' D'Wit were delivering in Mersea Avenue during an air raid. They were at the back of the houses serving Mrs Woolf and Mrs Cudmore when a bomb fell in the road. They went out to find the front of the pair of houses had been sucked out by the explosion leaving the the bedrooms exposed and the front gardens full of rubble. Then they noticed the van and horse had disappeared, it was eventually found in Firs Road. The van had no back doors, just a canvas curtain and the bread was well covered with dust and rubble. Charky told me this tale when we were working together some years later and when I asked what they did then; he said we just dusted the loaves off and carried on.

Going up Kingsland Hill, the first little shop on the right started life as Ladbrook's tearooms. During the war it was a pair of shops run by Albert Rash and his wife, who sold greencrocery from the right hand side while Albert had a gents hairdressers in the other one. During the war our two young local barbers Johnny Hart and Freddie Wass were called up and Albert was only gent's hairderesser. He was kept very busy especially when the army were on the island and the waiting area was often choc-a bloc. With the war over and Johnny and Freddie back in business, Albert retired not wanting to take work away from the young men who had been away fighting for their country. He had served us well.

The shops were later converted to a Milk Bar by Glennie Cock and Joe Dawson, then after a spell as a private bungalow it was demolished to make room for an extension to the Old Forge Filling Station. A little furthur on came Leonard Mills's greengrocers with son Arthur delivering around the island in a yellow four wheeled cart and then on the corner of Rainbow Road we found Ernie Vince's butchers shop. Ernie eventually sold out to the Coop and his brother Sid became the butcher. The shop is now a Chinese takeaway.

Next to Ernie's shop was a small wooden shop where Johnny Hart started his business. I remember it as Lena's ladies hairdressers and it was later moved down the road to where we now have the filling station and used as a coal office when Phil Underwood had a coal yard there. At the back of the coal yard was a forge (where the filling Station gets it's name) this was worked by Tom Bailey, a tall man who cycled up to work each day from East Mersea. I used to go with Basil Underwood to watch Mr Bailey at work.

East side of Kingsland Road. Ernie Vince butchers is on the left of the picture, on the corner of Rainbow Road. Johnny Hart hairdressers next door.

On the opposite corner of Rainbow Road was yet another little wooden shop run by Sam Weller who sold sweets etc. This was run for a while by Richard Whiting around 1955 and was later taken over by Susan-May ladies hairdressers who built a new salon and house on the site.

At the top of the hill came A.H.Cornelius (Arthur Henry Cornelius) cycle shop. Always known by his nickname 'Snuffy', which was inherited by his son Frank when he took over the business. As well as selling and repairing cycles the shop also sold Esso petrol and ran a Vauxhall hire car.
As lads we used to go to Snuffy's for our our catapult elastic. This was square sectioned black rubber and there were often quite lengthy arguments as to which thickness was the best. It probably depended on the strength of your arm at the end of the day.

Opposite Snuffy's was Oswald French's shoe shop. He repaired shoes and sold new ones and I recall watching as he finished off a repair by polishing it on his lathe with brush type wheel. The shop was later taken over by Mr Jones and after a period as a newsagents is now a private house.

On the corner at Upland House was a workshop belonging to Cliff Smith. He sharpened and repaired lawn mowers as well as doing other light engineering jobs and had a small petrol engine to run his machinery. Cliff was a big man and had a small Singer car with curtains at the windows which always seemed too small for him.

On the other corner, the shop which is now the Spar Shop was Mrs Tredget's Drapery and Clothes shop where everything was priced to the odd threefarthings. I can hear her now saying 'That will be be two and eleven three please Mrs Green. Next door was Mr Cook's newsagents in a small corrugated iron shop which we later demolished and replaced with the present shop which is now Moore's Estate Agents. Up until that time, Queens Corner was dominated by a large horse chestnut tree and a tree surgeon from Lexden took it down at the same time as we were working on the shop.
Mr Cook had long since left the shop and after a short spell with Mr Hadley it was taken over by Alec Garnham who had the new shop built. I am still in touch with a relative of Mr Cook living in Dorset.

Published in Mersea Life, February 2013, page 47.