It is a shame that last year’s highly successful Frost Fair in Bideford is not going to be repeated this year. However, the good folks at Bideford Archive had a search through their collection of the Bideford Gazette newspapers and found some interesting snippets from Christmas past.

It is interesting to note that some successful businesses had more than one outlet even in the relatively modest ‘Little White Town’.

Tattersill’s had stores in Market Place, High Street, Grenville St and Mill Street. Their Christmas offers in 1910 included not only the usual range of essential groceries but also delicacies such as crystalised fruits, chocolates and other treats.

Heywood, Son and Heywood had two premises in the town, in Grenville Street and Market Square. They were displaying their usual high quality drapery and millinery and ‘everything that a lady or girl wants by way of personal adornment’.   

Our researcher, armed with the 1904 Ordnance Survey map and the list of shops from 1910 advertising their Christmas wares, found it very difficult to identify where the shops had been. One hundred years later, frontages have changed and plots of land have become difficult to identify.

In Mill Street, beautifully decorated windows were reported in Mr Yeo’s clothing and footwear establishment. Galliford’s was selling rich fruit cake, almond iced and decorated, for one shilling per pound. Mr Perkins in Mill Street had a daily display of cut flowers.  There was a saddler, five butchers, a furniture shop, Mr A’Court, hairdresser and perfumier, and two grocers. Mr Young stocked toys, magic lanterns, phonographs, musical boxes, and cameras. Miss Priscott the Milliner had a wide range of hats for ladies and girls. There was also another fruiterer and confectioner and, last but not least, the emporium of E Stewart and Co, where beautiful accessories were temptingly displayed.

Could you buy all you needed in Bideford in 1910?  It seems you could. Picture the scene, shoppers quite formally dressed in their long warm coats and all manner of hats. Ladies in button up boots. Gentlemen checking their pocket watches recently bought from Grimes and Co in High Street. With Christmas and New Year Festivities, private theatricals and parties to look forward to, accomplished young ladies would be practising their carols and songs on the piano bought from J T White’s in the High Street. 

Let’s see if we can recreate this bustling atmosphere another year and share a bit of Christmas magic.