Spinning yarns of yesteryear

I WAS interested to read the article about Izi’s nightclub at Witney closing (Oxford Mail, September 4).

There have been other businesses in that spot over the years, including Margaret Amies, a clothes shop, and Bartlett’s Stores, one of the first larger stores in the town before Waitrose and others came.

Small businesses are closing all the time – they seem to call it progress.

It is the same everywhere – rents are going sky high, doubling at times.

Supermarkets now sell everything that small shops sold before.

In Witney, dear Miss Delnevo’s little drapery shop had to close as she passed away in her 90s, I believe.

She ran it to a great age – well done, bless her. It is a shop the older generation miss.

I was a victim in the 1990s. I ran Secretarial Agency and Services in a little office and was told I had the best photocopier in town.

All around me shops were closing: the old Co-op in Market Square, Saltmarsh and Druce, a lovely shop, Leighs, the wonderful ironmongers, and Evenlode Press.

I dealt with a small private printing business, run by Mr Benfield, which closed when the digital era came in.

As computers arrived, my own business went downhill and had to close.

When I opened in 1970, the rent for my office was £8 per week!

BARBARA CLEARY Witney

 

Casting a light on fire story

MY COUSIN, Nicky George, recently visited Oxford and I accompanied him to St Giles Fair which brought back many memories of when we were children.

We were both born in 1945 and grew up in Oxford so had much to talk about.

We had refreshments at the Four Candles, which overlooks the Old Fire Station.

Nicky mentioned that he could remember when the cinema caught fire overnight.

He could imagine the firemen playing cards and the building next door going up in flames! I could not remember this, but it must have been reported in the Oxford Mail and wonder whether you might bring to light what really happened.

MARY AVERY Summer Fields Abingdon

Editor’s note: As we recalled (Memory Lane, February 18), the ABC cinema in George Street, Oxford – formerly the Ritz – caught fire during the evening of March 11, 1963. The likely cause was a cigarette or pipe dropped by a cinemagoer setting fire to a seat. The alarm was raised by a policeman and a passerby who saw smoke coming from the building after the cinema had closed for the night. Damage was put at more than £30,000.

Grandad who played for City

I WAS interested to see Mike Akers’s photograph of Oxford City Reserves in the 1930-31 season, with the Oxfordshire Senior Cup and the Bradley Oxfordshire Hospitals Cup (Memory Lane, August 26).

I have discovered that my great grandfather, W Mullins, is in the middle of the front row.

GLEN STONE Oxford

 

Capturing moment of crash back in 1955

THE picture of a lorry crashing through the windows of Elliston & Cavell in Magdalen Street, Oxford, in 1946 (Memory Lane, August 19) prompted me to find a set of three pictures I took a few yards from there, at the junction of St Giles and Magdalen Street.

The photographs were some of the first I took with my prize possession, a Brownie 127 camera, in about 1955.

A British Road Services’ lorry had crashed into a Ford Popular and shed its load.

The photographs recall the two splendid white telephone boxes that graced the tourist spot of Martyrs’ Memorial, but which are now replaced with two modern BT open boxes. Why were these ever removed?

It is worth noting the crowd using the steps of the Memorial to gain a grandstand view of the proceedings, with scaffold covering the ladies’ toilets nearby showing renovation taking place.

DAVID BROWN Jordan Hill Oxford

 

Shops are now sadly missed

THE letters about the Cadena Cafe in Oxford (Memory Lane, August 12) brought memories flooding back.

Does anyone remember the name of the cafe opposite the Cadena that sold Oliver & Gurden Oxford cakes? Or Lyons’ tea shop and another cafe upstairs at Carfax?

Besides the tea shops, there is so much more that has gone: Grimbly Hughes, Milwards, the knife shop in Market Street, next door to Arthur Roles, the seedsman.

And what happened to Timothy White’s, the hardware store, Taylor’s cash chemists and Macfisheries with its pond to hold eels?

In those days, Cornmarket Street was dominated by Woolworth’s and Marks & Spencer, both on the east side, and those looking for almost anything could go to Cape’s, Webber’s, Elliston & Cavell and G R Cooper.

I'm sure there are many more places that have gone that others remember with nostalgia.

DERRICK HOLT Fortnam Close Headington

 

Oxford Soldier on 1953 parade is named

A READER has identified another of the soldiers who paraded through Oxford in July 1953 (Memory Lane, July 29).

Sergeant Paris, who is believed to have come from Banbury, was the man to the right of the officer in the centre of the column (pictured magnified below).

As we recalled, the soldiers were mainly National Servicemen serving with the 1st Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry.

They were pictured crossing Magdalen Bridge before heading for High Street, Carfax, Cornmarket Street and St Giles, where the mayor of Oxford, Councillor A B Brown, took the salute.

The soldiers, who were due to be posted to Germany in a few days, were exercising for the first time their right to march through the city, a privilege conferred on their battalion when it was given the Freedom of Oxford five years earlier.