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'In its day, Barrows Stores was a very high-class grocers and department store in the heart of the city and although I have heard many references to Masons, Wrensons Home and Colonial, never have I heard mention of Barrows.
I always considered Barrows Stores to be Birmingham's Fortnum and Mason, having started work there in May 1950 as a Trainee Stores Assistant at fifteen years of age and leaving ten years later. By this time, I had become Assistant Office Manager over the Sales and Accounts office with a staff of thirty-five people. All but two of which were delightful ladies of various ages, the two being slightly older gentlemen than myself.
When I left in 1960, the store was next to Dunns Outfitters who occupied the corner premises at the junction of Corporation Street and Bull Street, Barrows being opposite Rackhams. A few years later, these premises were demolished and Barrows moved to a much smaller site further down Corporation Street, the other side of Bull Street opposite what was then Lewis's.
The Cadbury family started the business as a tea and coffee shop in Bull Street but decided to move elsewhere to concentrate on making chocolate and so their cousins, the Barrows took over and Barrows Stores Ltd was established in 1824.
By the time I came on the scene, the original shop had become the goods entrance to the main store. Opposite this entrance in Bull Street was Dalton Street with a fish mongers on the corner but I am not sure whether or not this was McFisheries or Simpsons. Next door but one along Dalton Street was the entrance to Barrows Warehouse but this was not however, just for storage.
When entering the building you were in the garage where the delivery vans were stored and loaded because Barrows offered a delivery service covering the whole of Birmingham area and beyond. In those days, to me deliveries to Wolverhampton, Lichfield and Barnt Green seemed like the other side of the country.
Beyond the garage running along Dalton Street was the order packing department supported by the provisions department where the large cheeses were stored and the sides of bacon hung waiting to be sliced at whatever thickness the order required. The tea and sugar wrapping department took up a large section of the ground floor level together with the dried fruit department where large boxes of glace cherries would be broken open and weighed into 4oz cartons. Large barrels of stem ginger in thick syrup were also opened up and the contents lifted out a few at a time by hand to be placed in decorative glass jars ready for sale. Even now, while writing this letter, the many smells which drifted through the air, come flooding back with memories of these bygone days.
On the first floor was the canteen, the Sales and Accounts Office and the tea blending and coffee roasting department. This was immediately above the area where the tea and sugar were weighed and the weighing machines were filled from here by large hoppers in the floor.
On the second floor was the bakery where the most delicious cakes I had ever seen were made together with all the other products associated with such a high-class department.
An assistant was not let loose on a customer until he/she had progress through all the departments in the warehouse and therefore knew the product being sold and some of us even went to evening classes to become certified grocers. I changed subjects when asked to take position in the office and was then required to take classes in accountancy.
D. Luke |
