Bromley Borough Local History Society
Registered Charity
No. 273 963
Bromley Borough Local History Society
Curwood shops
The Curwood Shops
Courtesy of Les Curwood we have received these pictures first of his great-uncle, John Curwood outside his shop at No. 2 Widmore Road and secondly of his grandfather, John's younger brother, George Stanton Ouseley Curwood, outside his men's outfitters shop at 14 Market Square which he ran until 1932.
The latter shop can also be seen, back left, in the pen and ink drawing entitled Market Day, Bromley, by a Janet Simpson, below left. On the right is the old town hall. The date of the picture is uncertain but it can be compared with the set of photos in Bromley 1968 which show the same view with the same buildings still extant at the back.
On the right is a picture of the Bromley Early Closing Cricket Club, which presumably met on Wednesdays.
Below are pictures of Hunt's Stores and other shops in London Road, Bromley, sometime after 26th June 1944 when the blast from two V1 flying bombs wrecked 20 shops and damaged over 700 properties. Hunt's Stores never opened again which was a sad end to a long history going back to at least 1869 when Henry Hunt at what was then No. 6 London Road (Paul's Cottages) owned the property. His son(?) Richard opened a coachbuilders in 1874 (the shop had by then been renumbered to No.7) which he shared with a J. Cooper, plumber and hot water engineer. In 1878 Richard took over the whole shop and added grocery to his coach building, and changing the description of his work to wheelwright. Following changes to the point where Bromley High Street and London Road met, the shop was renumbered again to No. 21 in 1882. In 1885, he continued as a wheelwright but the grocery was taken over by Mrs. Hunt until in 1891 when it became Hunt Bros. Presumably the "brother" was Stephen Hunt who took sole charge of the grocery when Richard and the wheelwright business disappear from the record in 1905.
Incidentally, a new shop was created in 1897 when James Galton opened a coffee house at No.21 and Hunt's became 21a. In 1902, with the change from sequential numbering to odds and evens (as in Widmore Road), the two shops became Nos. 51 and 53 respectively. At the same time the Coffee House became the Coffee Tavern and the following year Mrs Mary Galton took over the catering operation. By 1906 it had become Bromley Hill Coffee Tavern and the shop was shared with William Galton, phonograph and musical instrument dealer until 1909 when it became a tailors.
