Citylife in Lichfield March 2021

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20 MYM Video Where was Lilian Hipkin's Shop? By Jono Oates ............................ Last month I received a letter from Mrs Lynn Washbourne who asked whether I knew the location of a shop in Lichfield that her mother, Ethel Lindsay, had worked in during the 1930s. The name of the shop was Lilian Hipkin’s and it was a fashionable ladies’ dress shop. Lynn had recently moved in to the area and was keen to know exactly where the shop was. Although I didn’t know the answer immediately, I was very confident that I would be able to find the answer to Lynn’s question. I have access to all of the vintage photographs that form the St Mary’s Photographic Collection, including street scenes and shop front photographs, I can look at the photographs listed on the ‘You’re Probably From Lichfield If…’ Facebook community group which has many photographs of Lichfield from the past, and I also have a copy of JP Gallagher’s book ‘Trades of a City’ which lists all of the Lichfield shops with details of their owners from the 1850s to the present time. My confidence was rewarded when I discovered that Lilian’s shop was at number 16 Bird Street from the 1920s to the early 1940s. I discovered a photograph of the shop front, with two members of staff standing outside the front entrance, in the St Mary’s Photographic Collection and I also found several references to the shop in newspaper advertisements, mainly placed in the Lichfield Mercury, using the British Newspaper Archive. The ladies in the photograph, Eileen George and Isabel Bailye, were part of a team of dressmakers who worked in the upper part of the building. Lynn says her mother told her that they had an excellent view of the city from their vantage point but that they never went into the shop area on the ground floor. Lilian was well-known in Lichfield and in December 1929 she provided the dresses for Miss Violet Garmstone, who played the lead role in the Lichfield Amateur Dramatic Society’s performance of Vanity Fayre. In September 1937 Lilian advertised in the Lichfield mercury looking for two ‘superior girls’ as apprentices for ladies tailoring and dressmaking. Ethel lived on Stockhay Lane in Hammerwich and Lilian lived at Eileen George (l) and Isabel Bailye outside Lilian Hipkin's shop in the 1930s Mountain Ash, 49 Burntwood Road, so the two women would have been near neighbours. Lilian’s husband was William Hipkin who, by 1939, was a retired farmer. In May 1941 Lilian sold number 16 Bird Street as she planned to retire and announced a Clearance Sale in the Lichfield Mercury, with a good selection of spring and summer dresses on sale with many ‘startling’ bargains. The contents of the shop, including three Singer sewing machines, were put up for auction by Winterton and Sons auctioneers in June 1941 and the shop eventually became home to Margaret Salt, a milliner. The shop has had many different uses since the 1940s including a garden shop, an antiques shop, the wonderfully named play-on-words ‘Sixteen Birds Treat’ gift shop in the 1970s and MYM Video in the 1980s. Today it is the Damn Fine Café. Ask Jono! Damn Fine Cafe Ethel Lindsay outside her home in the 1930s If you’ve got a question about a shop or business in Lichfield, want to know where it was or who owned it, want to know about some of Lichfield’s well-known figures, spaces, places, or want to know who did what to who, where and when… In fact, if you want to know anything about the history or people of Lichfield then why not Ask Jono? Email your query to Jono at jonocitylife@gmail.com, or write to him at Citylife In Lichfield Ltd, PO Box 7126, Lichfield WS14 4JS and he’ll try and answer your query in the next edition of the magazine. Please include as much information about the place, or person, that you would like to know about and also include any photographs that might be relevant to the query. *Thanks to Lynn Washbourne and her daughter Kate Carter-Brown for the use of the photograph of Ethel Lindsay. **Photograph of Lilian Hipkin’s shop window courtesy of the St Mary’s Photographic Collection Sources: The British Newspaper Archive; Trades of a City by JP Gallagher
What’s On March/April ....................... John Louis Petit Lectures There are two u p c o m i n g lectures about JL Petit, in which Philip Modiano, author of Petit’s Tours of Old Staffordshire, will discuss his most recent research about this talented Lichfeldian. On March 17th for the Johnson Society AGM the lecture will focus on Petit’s more unusual artistic achievements as a unique pre-impressionist in mid 19th century Britain; while on April 9th for the Staffordshire Archaeological and Historical Society Petit’s opposition to Gothic and advocacy of what would later become progressive-traditionalism will be the focus. Both lectures will be on Zoom. Contact the Societies for further details. 21
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