Published in Windlesora 33 (2016)
© WLHG 2018
One hundred years ago, Peascod Street consisted of dozens of family-run shops providing all the town’s basic need – butchers, bakers, fishmongers, grocers and greengrocers, hardware shops, tailors and milliners and many more. In most cases, the family lived ‘above the shop’.
Over the years, many buildings have been demolished and redeveloped, completely changing the appearance and character of the street scene. There are however a few survivors, and one of these is to be found in Lower Peascod Street at number 66.
In the 19th century it was variously a boot and shoemaker, a tailor and an umbrella shop. C Prior the Confectioner arrived soon after 1916, and by about 1933 it had become Eric Handcock, Optician, and that business was there until about 1968.
A photograph of number 66 taken in 1919 shows C Prior, the confectioner’s shop, with wooden window frames and high-quality sign-writing. Catherine Prior was a young widow whose husband had died at the age of 26.
Standing in the doorway with her twin brothers Bertie and Edgar, is fourteen-year-old Gladys. She could not have foreseen that her son John, in addition to all his other achievements, would one day become President of the Windsor Local History Group.
Nearly one hundred years later, the shop front is almost exactly the same, albeit with several layers of white paint.
Windsor Local History Group 