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3 Great Norwood Street (formerly 1 Great Norwood St)

For very many years this was a butchers shop and in 1841 it belonged to William Hanks, a master butcher. Later in the 19th century, trade advertisements for the shop claimed it had been founded in 1824, when Great Norwood Street was newly-built. Around 1854 the business was in the hands of a butcher called Robert Filmer, who participated in the town’s Christmas Meat Exhibition of that year.

By the time of the 1871 national census the shop had been taken over by Thomas James and his recent bride Mary Ann. His father, also called Thomas James, was a farmer at Naunton, in Toddington, where Thomas was born in 1842.

1892

Thomas and Mary Ann lived here in Great Norwood Street with their children, for several years, before moving to Vineyard Farm in Charlton Kings. Thomas not only owned this butchers shop but was a keen agriculturist who bred sheep and cattle at Vineyard Farm and later at Pigeon House Farm in Southam. He was an active member of the Gloucestershire Agricultural Society and died at Southam in 1919. ​

The James family became well known butchers in Cheltenham, with Thomas’s and Mary Ann’s sons continuing the business and their nephew, Leigh James, also running a butchers shop in the Bath Road.​

1906
1908

In August 1907 Thomas’s son, Thomas junior, who managed the shop, tragically died at the age of 35 from complications arising from influenza. Known as Tom to his friends, he was a well-liked man who had been an active member of the Cheltenham Swimming and Water Polo Club. His death was a further loss to the family, his elder brother Jack having died in South Africa five years earlier. ​Tom’s widow Eva May James continued to live above the shop and was described as a “butchers shopkeeper” in the 1911 census. She was assisted in the business by Tom’s younger brother Ben Leigh James, who was a butchers salesman. He was born in 1880 and in 1901 had been a trooper in the South African Police.

Gloucestershire Echo, 29th November 1950

During the First World War Eva May married Ben Leigh James and by 1930 they were living in a large house called Macolm Ghur in Bath Road. Ben was elected as a Conservative councillor for Park Ward in 1934 and in 1936 was the Chairman of the Cheltenham Meat Traders Association. Tragically Eva May died suddenly at home in November 1937 and her funeral was held at St Stephens church in Tivoli.

In about 1938 the shop passed to Eva May’s and Ben’s son Thomas James. In 1950 the shop claimed to be Cheltenham’s oldest family butcher. This advertisement of that year reminds us that Britain was still in the grip of food rationing, 5 years after the Second World War, and that customers were required to register with local shopkeepers to spend their ration.

Ben Leigh James died at Cheltenham General Hospital in 1964, aged 85. His son Thomas continued to run the butchery business here until the early 1980s.

This property is now home to a florists shop called Bloomers.

Bloomers

For more information click here.

Researchers: Jill Waller & Stuart Manton (June 2020)

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