Metadata
WORK ID: YFA 985 (Master Record)
| Title | Year | Date |
| NO.9 SHOP: LYON'S GROCERS SHOP, MARKET WEIGHTON | 1957 | 1957-01-01 |
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Details
Original Format: Standard 8 Colour: Colour Sound: Silent Duration: 19 mins 38 secs Subject: Working Life Transport Rural Life |
| Summary This film records the work of a local grocery store in Market Weighton. The film was made by the owner of the store. |
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Description
This film records the work of a local grocery store in Market Weighton. The film was made by the owner of the store.
The film begins with a statue of two lions, followed by the title:
‘The House of Lyon, Grocers since 1802. At your service. A glimpse into the past. A peep at the day-to-day working of this old established Market Weighton firm. Cast: the staff of Thos. G. Lyon & Son. Director: H. W. Lyon. Technical Advisor: J.A.J. Hay. Photographer: Tom Greenwood.’
The films shows...
This film records the work of a local grocery store in Market Weighton. The film was made by the owner of the store.
The film begins with a statue of two lions, followed by the title:
‘The House of Lyon, Grocers since 1802. At your service. A glimpse into the past. A peep at the day-to-day working of this old established Market Weighton firm. Cast: the staff of Thos. G. Lyon & Son. Director: H. W. Lyon. Technical Advisor: J.A.J. Hay. Photographer: Tom Greenwood.’
The films shows a poster for Mary Lyon, Family Grocer, Market Place, Market Weighton, and an order form 1973 for William Lyon. This is followed by photos of the front of the store, from 1914, 1924, and 1930, as well as the inside and outside in 1932, before going live to the present shop showing the stocks of food on display. The shop workers are seen at work behind the tiled counter. Some of the items shown include: ‘Rinse’, ‘Omo’ and Fairy Snow’. In the freezer ‘Birds eye’ products can also be seen.
Intertitle: ‘Lyon’s travellers make an early start’ Two shop vans leave – they have ‘Rely on Lyon’ painted on the side – and head towards a road sign for Howden, Broomfleet and N Cave. One of the vans pulls up in a street, and a man with a briefcase gets out and goes into a house. Another road sign shows the A614 with the second van passing. The man gets back into the first van and the man visits another house which has a garden. At another house, the man is shown collecting money from a woman inside the house, and looks to be selling several products before leaving. (The woman in the film is Edna, the filmmaker’s daughter.)
Intertitle: ‘Orders are assembled and packed ready for dispatch’ A woman is shown behind the counter putting Macfarlane and Langs Bourbon biscuits into bags and weighing them. Then various wrapped items are placed into a box. Next mushrooms are weighted, cheese cut and bacon sliced. Behind the scenes many shop assistants are busy packing boxes for delivery. Each box has a hand written list of items.
Intertitle: ‘Loads of satisfaction for lots of customers’ The boxes are loaded onto the back of a small lorry. The lorry leaves with its load, and we see one of the vans pass the Hotham Arms pub. The lorry delivers a box to a customer.
Intertitle: ‘Behind the scenes. Preparing for busy days ahead’ The shop assistants are busy weighing and bagging flour and sugar and cutting up large pieces of lard. A man is taking inventory in a warehouse, counting boxes of canned produce and bags of Sow and Weaner ‘Blue Cross’.
Intertitle: ‘Office Work in Progress’ Two men examine some brushes, and several other men who are working on various papers and accounts. A woman on a switchboard takes a call, and there is a room with several other women doing administrative tasks. One woman is printing and stamping paper sheets.
Finally, the statue of the lions is shown again with the logo ‘Rely on Lyon’.
Context
This film is the earliest of several films made by grocer Tom Greenwood that have been acquired by the YFA. The others, all made in the 1960s, show Market Weighton Railway Station and sidings being closed and demolished in 1965, Market Weighton Fair in 1966, steam locomotives at York Railway Station and York Railway Museum, and days out at Bridlington, Flamborough Head and Filey Bay.
The shop was actually owned by the family of Tom’s wife, Edith, neé Lyon, who had connections with the...
This film is the earliest of several films made by grocer Tom Greenwood that have been acquired by the YFA. The others, all made in the 1960s, show Market Weighton Railway Station and sidings being closed and demolished in 1965, Market Weighton Fair in 1966, steam locomotives at York Railway Station and York Railway Museum, and days out at Bridlington, Flamborough Head and Filey Bay.
The shop was actually owned by the family of Tom’s wife, Edith, neé Lyon, who had connections with the premises from before 1800. Together Tom and Edith traced back the history of the shop to the early 18th century, and this makes for a fascinating glimpse into aspects East Riding history. In 1714 it was owned by a yeoman, John Baker. It stayed in this family during the 18th century when John Lyon, a weaver for Sancton, came to live there as a tenant, who bought the house in 1801. It was John’s eldest son, another John, who first became a grocer (also a draper and rope maker). The back part of the premises at this time was part of a farm. At one point, in 1872, Edith’s great grandfather, William Lyon, took the family to the US to live. But for some unknown reason he returned after just a couple of months to take back the shop as, “family grocer, tea dealer, Italian warehouseman, and Provision Merchant.” Before long William died, along with two of their children, leaving his wife Mary to run the shop with her sixteen year old son, Thomas who was to take it over. Thomas handed the shop on to Edith’s father, Harold William, in 1909, with the name changing to Thos. G. Lyon & Son in 1914. After the end of the First World War Thomas and Harold would go around the neighbouring countryside by horseback and motorcycle delivering provisions, which included butter, chickens and eggs, from the farm they also ran. Edith, her father, and her siblings were all born in the shop. In 1928 they were able to extend this service having acquired a car, and also put a petrol pump at the front of the shop. In 1932 the family moved out of the shop into a new house on Londesborough Road, and the shop was modernised and new warehouses were added. Edith’s recollections of running the shop during the Second World War provide a glimpse into what rationing meant for those on the ‘other side’, i.e. those having to run a shop. Rationing required that everything had to be precisely weighed, and this took more time for less money. Edith’s father was Chairman of the ‘Invasion Committee’. This has added significance because Market Weighton was used as a model of what to do in the event of invasion for the whole country. Hence they were visited by top naval, army and air force chiefs. The ‘top office’, as it got called, of the shop was where the ‘Invasion Committee’ met, with their maps and other documents. Edith and Tom took over running the shop in 1953, with Edith’s father retiring in 1959, when the shop and business was sold to Herbert Baldry, a potato wholesaler who had a fruit and veg shop just up the road. The name remained the same, and a restaurant was added to the second floor. It was sold again in 1965 to Walter Wilson, and passed on to Hull and East Riding Co-operative Society in 1972. They made extensive changes to the shop to make it more suitable for a supermarket, and there were further renovations in 1995. For more on Edith see the obituary in the Market Weighton Newsletter (Refererences). Apart from the insight the film provides on a village shop in the 1950s, just before the onset of the age of the supermarket, it also shows some of the household items that were common at that time. Those who were around in the 1950s will remember some of the famous brand names, which seem to have been around for a long time. In fact it is perhaps surprising how many well known brand names date back to Victorian times – from England, Bovril and Tate and Lyle; from Scotland, McVitie’s and Robertson’s; from the US, Heinz and Kellogg’s – to name just a few. Many are still with us, including some that are being sold in the Lyon’s shop: Peek Frean Bourbon biscuits (the first cream sandwich biscuit), OXO, Heinz soup all date from 1910. But some others that the shop sold at this time are no more: such as, ‘Rinse’, ‘Omo’ and ‘Fairy Snow’. It is not easy to follow the history of these household and food products because there have been so many mergers of companies that started out as small family businesses. Thus McVitie & Price and MacFarlane Lang, as well as Peak Frean’s, merged to form United Biscuits in 1948. Moreover, products might change their name but hardly change what is in them; or retain their name whilst greatly changing what is in them. Advertising archives, which include ads for Omo and Fairy Snow from the 1950s, give an indication of these changes (see References). But perhaps the biggest change is the demise of the small shop and the rise of the supermarket. This has been added to by the shopping mall and retail parks with one-stop shopping and Sunday opening. Now there is the added competition of e-commerce. A recent Inquiry by the All-Party Parliamentary Small Shops Group, ‘High Street Britain: 2015’, found that, “‘traditional’ local small shops or independent convenience stores are disappearing rapidly. Once a ‘tipping point’ is reached many small shops could be lost instantly as wholesalers no longer find it profitable to supply them.” It claims that there is a possibility that they will have disappeared completely by 2015. Yet these remain very important for the local economy, especially in small towns and villages. The Inquiry quotes a Friends of the Earth study that found that on average just over 50% of business turnover was returned and invested back into the local economy.. But these trends might be swinging back to some extent the other way. The government has introduced stronger impact tests for further development of big stores to test the negative impact on the diversity of the high street, helping to protect small shops. It was often immigrants, especially the Ugandan Asians of the early 1970s, that kept many small shops open that would have closed, working very long hours to do so. In fact it is still often new immigrants who are keeping alive the small shop, bringing diversity and imagination, and a culture where the shop is a place for locals to see each other. In places like Market Weighton, or just up the road in Pocklington, the small shops are still surviving, and it would be hard to imagine these places without them. References Much of the information here has been taken from a manuscript written by Edith Greenwood, which provides a much more detailed account of the history of the shop and the Lyon’s family. A copy of this is held with YFA. Maurice Baren, How it all Began: the stories behind those famous names, Smith Settle, Otley, 1992. Advertising Archives Television Adverts 1955-1990 All-Party Parliamentary Small Shops Group, High Street Britain: 2015 Market Weighton Town Council Newsletter, Winter 2011 |
