Greengrocer: Grandad ran grocery store

Joseph Murfin’s grocery store and haulage business, on the corner of Parcel Terrace and Uttoxeter Old Road, in the late 1890s

IN the late 1890s, the shop on the corner of Parcel Terrace and Uttoxeter Old Road was a grocery store, run by my grandfather, Joseph Murfin and his first wife, Alice. They had eight children and, after Alice died, he married Mabel, who worked for him as a maid. They moved to live at 91 Uttoxeter Old Road and had three children, including my father, Ernest.

I found the photograph above in an old, leather-bound family album. It shows the Whitsuntide parade outside the shop.

According to papers and notes written inside the family bible, my grandfather used to supply the horses to pull the drays. He kept them on land at the back of the shop.

He hired horses and drays plus drivers to all sorts of people for haulage, including the council for collecting night soilage and farmers at haymaking time.

On one occasion, he set a load of lads on to transport the hay and there was a terrible rain storm which spoilt the harvest, so they didn’t do anything.

He was also a coal merchant, delivering all round the area.

My dad, who was also called Ernest, went into the family coal delivery business with his father, running it for 50 years.

Grandad wouldn’t have lorries. He preferred horses, so his older son, Joseph, went to work for H M Smith, coal merchants and haulage. The younger son, Wilfred, went to Canada in 1944.

Dad lived in Uttoxeter Road in the 1940s and then moved to Wild Street and later to Chaddesden, in 1975.

The family left the grocer’s shop in the early 1900s. It probably became a post office after that.

When my dad retired in 1975, I took the business over and my son, David, took it over from me in 1999, when I retired. My grandson, Scott, is working with him now, so we’ve had a family business for a good few years.

Grandad was also a leading member of Junction Street Chapel and he is pictured laying the foundation stone in the 1930s. He died in 1933.

Pages linking here