Photographs reproduced by kind permission of Mary Freeman, granddaughter of Joseph & Amy Skey (above) and daughter of Ernest Skey (the boy pictured on the right below)

This shop on the corner of New High Street and Bateman Street was one of the two main grocer’s shops in the High Street of New Headington village for nearly a hundred years, from the 1880s to the 1970s. It does not appear on the 1876 map of Headington, and first becomes apparent in the 1881 census.

In 1881 the shop was occupied by the young baker Joseph Cross, with his wife and child and two other bakers: his 18-year-old brother and an employee. In the mid-1880s he Cross family moved to a bigger baker’s shop in St Clements.

Valter's Directories for 1887 and 1889 list Mrs Pearce as the grocer here. The freehold of the property (along with four other properties in New High Street) was auctioned at the Britannia on 25 May 1887, with the following description in Jackson's Oxford Journal four days earlier:

Lot 2.—A FREEHOLD CORNER HOUSE, with Grocer's Shop, sitting room, washhouse, three bed rooms, yard, and Garden, in the occupation of Mrs. Pearce, at a rental amounting to £13 per annum. Also TWO similar Brick-built and Slated COTTAGES adjoining, one in the occupation of James Brooks, and one unoccupied, the rentals of each amounting to £10 s. per annum.

By the time of the 1891 census 39 New High Street had been taken over by Edward Douglas (50), who is listed there with his wife Mary and their six children. Their sons James (21), Luke (18), and Joseph (14)were farm labourers, while George (15) was an assistant grocer. Their two youngest children Albert (11) and Selina (5) were still at school. The shop had no private pump or well for a water supply, and his wife Mary who worked as a laundress did not work from home and is recorded as being employed. From 1895 to 1898 Mrs Mary Douglas was listed as running the shop herself.

In the directories for 1899 and 1900 G. R. Stevens is listed as the shopkeeper here. The 1901 census lists George R. Stephens [sic], a single man of 25, living here alone as the shopkeeper.

From 1902 to 1914 Joseph Skey was the proprietor of this shop. He is shown in the above picture with his wife Amy and their only son Ernest (who later had a shop of his own in Windmill Road), together with a small friend. The sign above the shop reads “Skey’s Cash Grocery, Tobacco & General Supply Stores”, and at the time this picture was taken, in about 1905, it appears to have sold just about everything. Larger items such as buckets, baskets, brushes, and pails hang outside, and there is a baby bath in the upstairs window. The shop-front is plastered with advertisements for Bovril, Lipton’s Tea, Tower Tea, Colman’s Mustard, Colman’s Starch, and Reckitt’s Starch. The people of New Headington (who had to wait another ten years for a piped water supply, twenty years for gas, and even longer for electricity) are urged to “Use ‘Natural Daylight’ lamp oil”. The “specials” listed on the blackboard are “Finest preserving sugar” at 2½d per pound, hams at 5d-5½d per pound, and tomatoes at 5d and 7d per pound.

From 1915 to 1921 the shop was run by “Adams Brothers”, which in practice meant Sidney Adams and his sister Emma Jane, as their brother Frederick was serving in the First World War.

They were followed by Edwin Thomas Garner briefly in 1922, then Ernest Nash from 1923 to 1930, and George Webb from 1935 to 1947.

C.J. Nicholson bought the shop in 1947, and remained there until 1961: see his son's reminiscences.

C. J. Nicholson outside his shop at 39 New High Street in the 1950s

J. F.L. Simms had the shop until 1973. It then closed, and was converted into flats in the early 1980s.