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This comes from Jennifer Venville Nicol (Venville being her maiden name), now living in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, who lived in Hidson Road very close to Stockland Green, Erdington in the years following World War II.
I lived just off Marsh Hill. On one side of Marsh Hill were Bramley's sweet shop, Howard's the hairdressers and Trappett's the grocer and greengrocery store.
Crossing over onto the other side of Marsh Hill was a petrol station. Not many people had cars in the area during this time, of course. However, Marsh Hill was a busy road and eventually the petrol station became more and more popular.
Past there, one came up to a small shop located in the front room of a Victorian terraced house. This was the shop of Mr. Mainwaring.....we always called this shop 'Up the Steps', since it had steps. It was a very tiny shop and there were several of these kinds of shops in the Birmingham suburbs in those days.
I worked in the wholesale grocery business later on and learned quite a lot about these businesses. Often the only way that you could tell there was a shop in a front room house location was the advertising signs, of the various goods available, put in the windows. Sometimes so many you couldn't see inside.
Mr. Mainwaring was always in a rush and seemed to be always calling his wife to help, not by her name but by shouting 'Wanted' at the top of his voice. As a child I thought that might be her name!!!!!
Further along on the same side was another sweet shop but this was much more of a general sweet shop and was also a corner location that was a little bit larger than Mr. Mainwaring's.
This store was crammed with every kind of sweet and chocolate of the time and at Christmas they had all their top shelves filled with huge boxes of chocolates with beautiful decorations and bows on them.
They also sold ice cream that was doled out in the classic cones and wafers. A good selection of pop was also available. The shop stayed open quite late and was very often the only shop open on a Sunday (thank goodness). There was always lots of things for a child to buy for a penny or so.
Jennifer Nicol, British Columbia, Canada, 2001
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