Photos - Selwyn Shute Castleton Stores
Affectionately known as 'Seldom Shut'.
Selwyn Shute, Castleton Stores, 74, Newton Road Mumbles.
(That's Selwyn serving a customer)
Selwyn Shute and his wife, Dilys (née Kift), took over from A George & Son and the shop became affectionately known as 'Seldom Shut.' In their advert in the Oystermouth School Centenary booklet in 1978, they recalled serving carrots instead of sweets to the schoolchildren during both world wars. This business remained open well into the 1980s.
Viv Grant-Shute: What a surprise, someone kept a shopping bill from my parents' shop from 1959. This was written before I was born and it has brought back lots of memories! There were no calculators at that time, all done in your head! Mum used to spend hours adding all these bills! Thank you for sharing'.
Cheryl Leend Looks quite expensive until you remember that 1 shilling is 5p!
An invoice dated 15 Jan 1959. Note the prices!
Do you remember using Pounds, Shillings and Pence as shown in the invoice?
The shop when trading under its previous owner, A George & Son, Family Grocers
In the 1920s, Joan Edwards Jones (née Marshall) enjoyed visiting the grocer's shop run by two brothers, Charlie and Jimmy George. She described that 'At one end was a bacon counter and at the other end, through a doorway, was the sweet shop — well patronised as a tuck shop by the children from the Council school. Jimmy George was a smoker and could often be seen with a cigarette between his lips, while slicing the bacon. I was fascinated by the length of the ash on his cigarette, and wondered where it was going to land!'
A George and Son was at the junction with Castle Square on the left, but otherwise, this view of 'Castleton' shows that the road was still mainly houses. Photo: Viv Grant-Shute.
The site of the Shute business, taken recently. Photo: Viv Grant-Shute.
Living above the shop
by Viv Grant Shute
Selwyn Shute, Castleton Stores, 74, Newton Road Mumbles.
The photo above was taken close to Christmas in the late 60s. The Christmas Trees are for sale and we children are hoping that we get a decent one at home, rather than the one nobody wants to buy (Mum often improvised with bits from other trees to 'fill it out'). Lots of happy memories of customers, the young and the old in the shop getting ready for Christmas, but for my parents and all my 'Auntie's' and my Uncle Arthur, it was the busiest time of the year! Turkeys lined up (with a few feathers sticking out - we did pull them out each time we walked past them!). Gammon hams prepped and ready to go into the oven, long strings of sausage, bacon by the pound, eggs by the dozen, extra milk bottles all lined up, thick double cream, Green Meadow butter, Brussels pate, cheddar cheese and a rather smelly Stilton cheese! Potatoes by the sack, boxes of carrots, tinned & frozen peas, jars of cranberry jelly, boxes of Paxo Stuffing and of course, the Christmas Puddings all piled up in bright red boxes with tins of Birds Custard Powder close by. There were the exotic boxes of Figs & Turkish Delight and beautiful big boxes of chocolates. Displays of walnuts, brazil nuts, peanuts, oranges, tangerines & apples which somehow magically on Christmas Eve found themselves in Christmas stockings dotted all over Mumbles.
I just realised that my parents and all those who worked in the shop (and other local shops) contributed in a big way to making lots of local families Christmas Day a very special day - and yes even though the shop was closed on Christmas Day, I still recall my Mum and Dad answering the urgent knocks on the door saying . . . 'I've forgotten this or that do you still have any' . . . once Mum threw a Christmas Pudding out of the dining room window, just before we were going to sit down to have our Christmas dinner!