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Village Voice February/March 2021
ASK THE VV
HISTORIANS
Ask the VV Historians your questions
about local history, people, and places
Miles Green and Ron Saunders both share a
passion for local history, and they are regularly
approached with enquiries.
Ron has a particular interest in local people in
the two World Wars, census returns, births,
marriages and deaths. Miles is well known for
his many local history books and articles.
Together they have agreed to research and
respond to any questions you may have and
their research will be featured in VV.
Please send your questions to the Editor:
vvoiceeditor@aol.com
Recent enquiries have been about Pughs
Wood, and the Cottage Bookshop, and here are
the answers!
The Cottage Bookshop
Several people have asked about the
history of the bookshop building
Nearly three years ago, the owner of the Cottage
Bookshop in Elm Road wrote an article for
Village Voice (Issue 185) recording his sadness
at having to close the shop.
It has since been sold and a long-contested
planning application has been approved to
convert it from a shop into two cottages.
The original building started life as an early
Victorian brick cottage with a slate roof. It was
a private house to start with, but subsequently
harboured successively, a fish shop, briefly
Barclays Bank, an electrical shop,
a shoe repairer, since 1961, a
bookshop, and now back again as
two private houses.
The earlier article remembered
that Fred Baddeley, the creator of
the bookshop, had started in 1961
with a display of two dozen of his
grandfather’s books laid out on
the staircase of the then cobbler’s
shop, sold 12 books at 1 shilling
each on the first day, bought the
cottage a year later, gave up his
job and opened the bookshop
which eventually held a stock of
38 www.pennandtylersgreen.org.uk