94 - Charles Edwards (Worcester) Ltd.
Wine and spirit merchants


This was on the corner of Church Road and Morse Road, in a rank of buildings constructed in the 1890s. By the 1920s it was the Fred Williams 'fried fish bar'. In the late 1930s it had become a wine shop, operated by the Western Vintage Wine Co. This firm had actually traded from 96 Church Road, next door. It was a Charles Edwards (Worcester) Ltd wine shop in the 1950s and 1960s. Into the 1970s, it was known as Stallards, wine & spirit merchants.

Andy Jones: "This was just along from where I lived, at the end of my Road but as I was then interested in sweets and toys I did not pay it much attention! I do however recall it had a 'pub style' sign. The picture on the sign was the trademark of the port and sherry firm Sandeman. This was a stylised figure in a very long black cloak and a black broad brimmed hat."

By the early 1980s the wine shop had departed and the premises was used by S E H Television, a television repair business. Into the '90s and the shop had become Church Road Appliances, with fridge/freezers and vacuum cleaners to the fore. After this the shop was, for a short time, used by the Ingleside Feline Sanctuary Charity. It then closed as a shop becoming a private dwelling before an extensive rebuild around 2006. The old shop windows, door and fascia boards were removed and the building was converted into flats.

Picture

In the 1940s the former Bishop Mervyn Stockwood, then Vicar of St. Matthew's Moorfields, lived above the wine shop. St Matthew's large vicarage on Whitehall Road had been requisitioned for war purposes. Stockwood found the rooms above the wine shop had some advantages. He said it was much easier for parishioners to walk through a shop door, virtually unnoticed, than to call at the detached, imposing vicarage.


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