The Co-operative Stores at Loftus; with separate departments for Butchers, Clothes, Shoes, Food, Furniture, etc. Later with branches at Staithes, Carlin How, Brotton and Castleton; it later became the East Cleveland Co-operative. with a bank upstairs. The wheelbarrow outside the butchers department containing sheepskins, suggests the Co-op had its own slaughter-house. Maurice Dower tells us: “The butchers did indeed have a slaughter-house. I had a part-time weekend job delivering orders on a Saturday on a conventional butchers bike with the big basket in the front. During a school holiday in 1958 I also helped out in the slaughter-house, not with the slaughter but the clearing up and processing. I wish I could remember all the characters from that time. Harry (?) was the manager, Danny Plews worked there along with a couple more, one of who was an outgoing man from Staithes, Names escape me must be an age thing. The toilets at the back were well inscribed with lewd graffiti of which Tom Cole was a recipient. Tom worked in the drapery dept. Some happy memories of the camaraderie there.” Keith Cook has updated with: ” I think the manager was Harry Waite. I worked in the grocery warehouse from July 1958 to January 1959 and he was manager then.” John Wilson believes: “the manager of the butchers was Harry Bainbridge.” Norman Patton assisted with dating the image with: “I believe that the Odd Fellows Hall, in this picture, was completed in 1874, which was the same year that the 3rd storey was added above the Co-op food department. (There is a date stone at the peak of the gable). So I assume that the photograph was taken sometime in 1874 or just earlier!”
Image courtesy of Olive Bennett and many thanks to Maurice Dower, Keith Cook, John Wilson and Norman Patton for the updates.
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