Coleford Library Group 6/1/15.
The group meet in the library on the first Tuesday each month from 11am till noon.

So we started chatting

Shopping in Coleford- “biggest shop we had in Coleford was Trotters and they catered from babies to the very elderly ..and I remember when Trotters closed down… you could not buy a piece of elastic or tape in Coleford anywhere” -This where Fairways is now.

Years ago Scott’s shoes shop used to be a sweetshop. Cullis’s moved there.

There was department store Mr Fowler worked for him before he set up his own shop. When he had ther nails and everything laid out that was when we started to believe we were getting something in Coleford.

The 1st supermarket in Coleford was where Sue Ryder is now, ‘Oak’ something it was?

One shop near crusty loaf we called the ‘Indian china’ – I think that was a part of Burtons, next door was the butchers. Pat Boulters grand parents and his father were always there.

And in Newland st there was the big house I remember when a family lived there and opposite was the office of Coleford Guardian they never bother to clear the windows now.

You used to pay 2 old pennies for Guardian I used to go down there for my Dad, always on a thursday

I can remember things but not names…I can see Edna Healey (Edmunds) and there were two sisters, the Miss Popes, I can picture them plain as anything in their green tunics outside Trotters holding their hockey sticks from Bell Grammar School.

You Couldn’t ask for the wrong thing in Trotters,

The lady in the Scotts shoe shop was very pleasant when I went in the other day.

“In the centre just opposite the Midland bank by the Feathers this side you had Barters fishmongers and fruit and veg. Then there was Badmans the Jewellers, then you had Blanches the Chemist, then you had Gilbert Peters the butchers, then you had Trotters- Where the Millenium gates are now that used to be the Blacksmiths that’s where they used to take the horses to be shoed.”

You can listen to a recording of this conversation through the radio option soon