141-142 High Street
Current
141
High Street
United Kingdom
" Quality secondhand furniture, also quality furniture wanted for cash, House clearance. Large show rooms."
07771727970 Chris
History
In 1865 the shop belonged to Mr John Watson Ling who ran the shop as a Plumbers and his occupation was listed as a Gas Fitter. By the 1880's his son Mr John Guild Ling had turned the shop into an Artists Colour and Paperhanging Store and if you look at the 2nd picture you can just make out Ling on the blind. In 1900 the shop is recorded to have changed hands and Morlings and Culham Ltd had moved in and the shop had become a Plumbers Merchant with an entrance in the High Street and Gun lane. The 1932 Kelly's Directory, it had Hailey's Furnishers running their business from the shop, in the phone book it was listed as follows: -Hailey C. & J. Ltd. Furnishers, ironmongers and wallpaper merchants. Tel. 3271/2. You can see in the 3rd picture taken in 1998 that the building had become Reflections Snooker Club and then by 2019 Tandem-Steve's Cycles
CREDIT: Lowestoft High Street, The Butcher, The Baker and The Candlestick Maker by Crispin Hook 2016 Get the book
Architecture
This is numbers 141 and 142. A wonderful shop it's Morling and Culham, plumbers and decorators. A plumber wasn't necessarily somebody who just put in pipes back in the day, plumbers could, was just a catch-all term for a general stores really including plumbers could plumb in lead windows. They also supplied gas and paraffin lamps.
There's no electricity at this time and Mr Cullum being a plumber and plumbers would install gaslights... he's advertising his wares, in these four very very large gas lanterns over the shop front. In dark winter's afternoons he'd go out and light the gas lamps which would be quite bright and powerful shedding a lovely warm light, gas light tends to be a nice warm light. A bit noisy, a bit hissy. So if we move on today we know these are numbers 141 and 142 because they're actually helpfully marked there. But if we look at these columns on the left & right, if you want to use the correct term, are called a pilaster, and at the top of each one, sometimes you have to look for clues when you're looking at more recent photographs, a shop might change so much you think well surely this isn't the same place, but if we look here at the top of the these pilasters here these two horizontal lines with two little balls in the middle, we've got the same on the other side. If we come to a much later probably 1970s photograph of that same shop, it looks completely different, it's difficult to think that's the same one, but again if you look at the pilaster there you can see the two horizontal lines and you can just about pick them up on the other end as well so although the shop front has changed beyond recognition we still know it is the same property, the fancy gas lights have gone.
Haileys was a sort of decorators shop, it would be in many ways selling comparable items to that Morling and Culham were selling back in the day. CREDIT: Ivan Bunn from transcript - Poetry People - High Street Histories
Add new comment