Tag Archives: St. James Street

Phil Kelsey, Palma Ault, Shops: St James Street. 1940s

Mrs  Brown’s was next to the chapel; she was a little old lady. She had this little front room and she sold all sorts of things, from buttons, to needles, to thread, to postcards, a proper little haberdashery turn out.
She used to shuffle through.  You went in, she was never there. Of course, some of them…, one nipper in particular, he used to get in there. He got caught in the end, rifling. She never had much money there ever, but there was always a bit of change in the till. Phil Kelsey b 1920

Mrs  Brown’s shop opposite the Church in St. James Street, sold cotton, tape and dolls with a china head and soft body.  She was always dressed in black and sold apples from her garden in the autumn.  Palma Ault nee Holloway 1927

Ron Wallis: 1940s Free Time

My out of school hours were all taken up with helping Dad with the farm, playing around the farm buildings, so I never did mix with those Yarmouth chaps.  I knew them well enough.  I had some very good friends.  The radio specialist down at Yarmouth – Westons – Reggie Weston, the son, was probably my best friend at Yarmouth School, and the other one who was a very good friend is Roger Smith, Bill Smith was his dad and he was a Yarmouth postman and lived in a little cottage just off St James’s Street.

 I was needed  back at home helping with the milking, and in summer I spent quite a lot of hours driving the tractor.  It took me back last weekend when I went to watch the ploughing match.  From the age of nine I was driving a tractor.  To start it, you had to wind it up, make sure you didn’t have your hand round the back.  Ron Wallis b 1935