13. Village Amenities

Since the pandemic we have seen a huge increase in home deliveries. Up to the end of the 1960’s, this is how the majority of the villagers got their weekly groceries.

In Monkton we had the Post Office which was run by Mr Percy Jarvis for several decades. The Post Office then was used by most villagers for pensions, savings, postage and postal orders but sold very little else – sweets and tobacco products. We had a village ‘Cobbler’, Mr Rolf, who lived at 134 Monkton Street. Mr and Mrs Rolf were an elderly couple and besides him mending shoes and boots, they also sold soft drinks, sweets, tobacco products and torch batteries from their living room. You could knock on their door at almost any time of day and buy a quarter pound of sweets. In the 1960’s the caravan site, then called ‘Walters Hall Caravan Site’, had a small ‘Spar’ shop which sold basic items.

Milk was delivered to the doorstep to most houses seven days a week, except for Christmas Day and Easter Sunday. Many of those who worked on Monkton Court Farm and Willetts Farm collected their milk from the dairies in their own milk cans.

Meat, bread and groceries were delivered to our doorstep once or twice a week. Fridges didn’t become common place until the early 1960’s and freezers later than that. Stopping milk from going off before we had a fridge in the height of summer often meant standing the bottles in a bowl of water and putting it in the shade outside the back door.

All our produce came from Minster. Our meat was delivered once or twice a week from ‘Derbys’ the butchers (still in the same shop as Cliff’s). Our bread came from ‘Jacob’s’ bakery whose shop was at the bottom of the High Street opposite the church. Groceries were delivered by Mr Webb whose shop was somewhere at the top of the High Street.

It may seem to some, that the way the food was delivered and kept was very unhygienic. I never heard of anyone getting food poisoning and it was consumed before it had a chance to go off.

Newspapers were delivered daily from ‘Attwells’ in Minster. Our ‘paper boy’ for years was Percy Church. Percy was in his seventies when he finally retired, a regular delivery boy was not found and after a few years, in the 1970’s, the service was stopped.

Terry Marsh

Originally published in the Monkton News (September 2023).