To start us off, I’ve included 4 photos of the Louis Allen shop which was at 21/23 High Street, where the new R S McColl shop is now.

As you can see from the outside view, this was an extensive shop which stretched back and contained a myriad of goods for sale, including lighting, crockery, seeds, radios and records. Louis Allen also did photography for people and developed and printed photographs for customers.

This is a whole window dedicated to the sale of seeds. Many more people bought seeds in the 1950s as they had gardens in which they planted flowers at the front and vegetables at the back. Also, there were no garden centres as we know them today, so people grow their plants from seed.

The crockery section was extensive and this smartly dressed lady is being attended to by an equally smartly dressed assistant. It’s likely that the fur coat was real fur and something that you will probably never see today. There’s also advertising for cigarettes in the bottom left corner, while at the top right, there’s  a sign for Swan Brand which was a range of teapots and cups, saucers and plates.

This display of Hoover vacuum cleaners is from the late 1940s/early 1950s. The model at the front of the photo – 402 – was available in 1948. For most people, the first Hoovers were well beyond their budget. One is advertised here at £10.10s.0d at a time when this may have been a weekly wage for some. Hoovers only became affordable for  almost everyone in the 1960s.