Acton History Group Essay Competition

The prize-winning essay reproduced

The overall winner of this year's prize for an essay on Acton history was announced recently. Tia Sugden, a currently in Year 6 at Berrymede Primary School was presented with her prize during a school assembly.

The subject for the 2008 competition was: "Shops in Acton and Ealing in the Victorian age."

Here is Mia's excellent essay - pictured right and reproduced below. I'm sure you will agree that there is lots of interesting local historical information and Mia has done extremely well to research her subject and to bring it to life for readers.

Acton is a busy place but was it always like this?

Let's go back to the 1890's when the biggest shop was Beauchamp's Acton Market. This shop had a grocery, bakery, fishmongers and a butchers. Beauchamp's also had miniature carts which would go down the streets and sell food to people in the houses.

Up the high street there was a small shop called Molliscorium which belonged to Mr A. T. Overall. In this small shop of his he sold saddles, whips, horse collars and sundry leatherware. We do not sell these items any more for in those days they mainly went on horseback.

Let's go ahead to 1904 when Warren and Beck (owned by Mr Warren and Mr Beck) was on Mill Hill Grove. Underneath Warren and Beck was Drapers which sold fabric for women to make clothes out of.

In 1914 there was a very small shop in Berrymead Gardens called Rowland and Sons. Rowland and Sons had carts with seventeen gallon churns of milk on them (nobody would want to push that around all day). Rowland and Sons also had a supported shop sale called Nevills Bread who also had carts.

Back to 2008 which is not as interesting to me as it used to be.

November 6, 2008