E W Grimes And Co Ltd: Granddaughter loved the shop

The Rev Robert Price

MEMORIES of her family’s popular drapery store came rushing back to Commandeer Grimes’ daughter, Lady Trisha Robins, of Duffield, this week.

She recalls being taken there as a youngster, in the 1940s and 50s, when her grandmother Emily ruled the roost, her father was the managing director and her aunt, Marjorie Grimes, was a director.

“I was never involved in the business but I used to love to go there and became friendly with a lot of the staff. It was a lovely family business with a nice atmosphere.

“I remember my grandmother was a little deaf and used to speak in a loud voice, so I would try to avoid her in the shop because she seemed to be talking at the top of her voice,” she laughed.

Among the staff members she recalls are the secretary Miss Branson; Miss Brewster who used to make hats as well as do alterations; Miss Chinery in the dress department; and Mr Bennett in the dress material department.

Her father, she said, was very hardworking but his heart was, perhaps, not always in the business.

“He had been a Naval man all his life and it must have been a huge change to come back to run things,” she said.

Lt-Commander Grimes was a Derby School boy and joined the Navy towards the end of the First World War. He served for 25 years, quitting to run the store at the end of the Second World War.

Between the wars, in 1932, he married Gertrude ”Patty” Price, daughter of the Rev Robert Price, popular vicar of St Giles’ Church, Normanton, in the late 1920s.

After settling in Derby, he became a Conservative councillor on the town council, a magistrate and twice fought Derby South Parliamentary seat against the MP, Philip Noel-Baker. He was awarded a CBE for his political and public services and died in 1990.

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