.

Butchers

Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire

.

Robert Seymour (centre) and staff of his butcher shop in Silver Street with a display  of meat he had slaughtered for Christmas, about 1902

.

In medieval Bradford butchers sold their meat on market and fair days from stalls set up in the old triangular Market Place between Horse, Fox and High Streets (now Market and Silver Streets and the Shambles.

In more modern times the butchers had permanent shops, mainly in Silver Street, which were open more often. Until the early 20th century they slaughtered the animals on the premises in a yard at the back of the shop. There tended to be butchers who specialised only in pork, making their own sausages and curing bacon.

Slaughter houses are long gone and butchers’ shops have mostly disappeared too. In about 1980 three shops survived in Silver Street: Brian Tripp’s at Canterbury House, Arthur Pike’s at number 9 and the Co-op at number 34; there was also a butcher at Stone’s supermarket in Winsley Road. The butchery counter at Sainsbury’s supermarket in Rowden Lane closed in 2020. There is a butcher shop again in the Shambles, which opened in 2022.

Pike also had a small shop in Holt, which became for a while that of Neil and Martin Hooper of the Church Farm Meats business, Broughton Gifford (from 2018 no longer trading).

.

Canterbury House, 32 (now 10) Silver Street, probably took its name from Canterbury, New Zealand, from where much of its meat was coming, after the introduction of refrigerated ships. John Lewis was there in 1830 and 1848, followed by Samuel in 1867 and Thomas in 1887 and 1897. Thomas Carter took over the shop in 1897 and had been succeeded by James by 1911. More recently, after Brian Tripp retired, the shop became one of Richard Guy’s Real Meat Company outlets, but this did not last long and the company itself was wound up in 2012.