The Co-op, The Green, Martham
The Co-op store next to the Village Green was opened on 17th August 1933 as reported in The Journal on Saturday 19th August 1933. The article is shown on the right. The two photos below show the crowds that attended the grand opening and the Yarmouth British Legion Band mentioned in the article.
The opening of the new building was celebrated in 1933 but it was not the first Co-op in the village. Another shop existed as early as 1928 in the small building next to Yew Tree Cottage on Back Lane.
In 1928 it was listed in the local telephone directory as being the Co-op which was a general dealer with the telephone number ‘Martham 30’. There is also an entry for it in Kelly’s Directory of 1929 when Arthur Leonard Bowles was the manager. Arthur was born in Great Yarmouth in 1904 and joined the Co-op when he left school. He gained experience working at the Caister-on-Sea branch before moving to Martham and when the new Martham store opened, he became the manager and stayed until at least 1939, perhaps longer.
The new building can be compared with what was there before by looking at the two photographs below that date to around the 1930’s. At that time the site was part of the garden of Ivydene – the house in the centre of the photos. Later the site had the white looking buildings on it as shown below on the right.
The new Martham branch of the Co-op came under the auspices of Great Yarmouth Industrial Co-operative Society Limited that was established in Great Yarmouth in 1888. The Great Yarmouth premises moved several times before finally being located in Middle Market Street (Road) in 1899. In 1932 the word ‘Industrial’ was deleted from the society’s name and in 1971 the Great Yarmouth Society merged with the Co-operative Society in Norwich. It then became the Ipswich and Norwich Society in 1993 before becoming the East of England independent Co-op in 2005.
The shop ran the same advert in the Martham Carnival programme on 8th July 1936 & 6th July 1938 a copy of which is shown below. This gives a good indication of the wide range of groceries and goods it provided as well as daily deliveries of milk and bread.
Below is another fine photograph of the store not long after it had opened with the white building to its right that nowadays is where the entrance to the car park is. Note that flags are flying above the roof in this photo so it may have been taken in about 1937 to celebrate the Coronation of George VI.
The photo on the right shows some of the staff and their window display in 1953.
The branch undertook local deliveries and below are four photos showing some of their vans. Note on the first two the telephone number had been updated to 2441 to reflect automatic dialling numbers that were introduced in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s. The other two photos include Walter William Hubbard (1909-1998) who was a bread roundsman.
My thanks to:
David Stretton for supplying most of the photos on this page.
Archive@heritagetrust.coop for their help advice.