Today we lament the closing of our village shops, forgetting it is we who are ultimately responsible by choosing the supermarket. The demise of the village store is not a new phenomenon; it has been happening over many years. This is the story of a little Provisions Store in the village of Fontmell Magna and the people who ran it until it closed about sixty years ago.
It was not unusual for small village shops to be a part or corner of a cottage. What is unusual about this shop is it had no shop-window in which to display its wares, just a glass-fronted entrance door above which was a shabby little sign reading “E. BECK, PROVISON STORES.” The thatched cottage, judging by the solid grey-stone and faded bricks, some of them built into a herringbone pattern, dates from the late seventeenth to early eighteenth century.
We know from the 1841 census the cottage was occupied by George and Sarah Hart and their one-year-old daughter Anna. George Hart was a cordwainer (a shoemaker) who would walk 40 miles each way to Bath to collect leather for his business. The following decade was eventful for the family: George opened a bakery on the premises and during this time three sons and two more daughters were born.
In those days Fontmell Magna was a busy place familiar with toil and enterprise for it had a vibrant local economy. People were employed on the estate and in the woods, as well as in the brewery, malthouse and foundry.
Few cottages could boast any baking facilities. Cooking was usually done in a large iron pot suspended from the ceiling by a chain over an open fire on the hearth. Everything went into the pot: swedes and turnips from the fields joined garden vegetables and bacon from the family pig. Occasionally a rabbit or a hare might add to the feast and some might even have known the taste of venison. Poaching was not unknown in these parts.
The Harts were an enterprising family. The 1861 census confirms George Hart continued to repair footwear and make boots, helped by his 16-year-old daughter, Kezia, who is described in the census as a shoe binder, while his older daughter, Anna, made straw bonnets. Sons George and Samuel, respectively 18 and 14, were employed as agricultural labourers. The youngest children – Mary, Stephen and Frederick were still at school.
The 1871 census reveals that sixty-year-old George is concentrating on his shoemaking business and is leaving the running of the bakery to his sons Samuel and Stephen, who are assisted by their sister Mary. During the next decade there are further changes at the bakery, which expanded and was selling provisions. Ten years on, George is back assisting his son Stephen with the bakery as well as working a five acre farm. George’s wife Sarah passed away in 1883 aged 71.
It was not unusual for people to bring to the bakery their cakes, tarts, pies and their meagre joints to be baked in George Hart’s oven. Over the following few years it is likely the young daughters of Tom and Jane Beck would have been sent to the store on errands for their mother and for two of them the bakery-come-village shop was to play an important part in their lives.
At the age of 80, George was still making boots and farming his five-acres. Stephen Hart is 39 years of age and, still a single man, he had sole responsibility for the bakery and provisions store. George Hart passed away in 1898 at the age of 87. About this time another bakery opened in the village.
With the advent of the 20th century, Stephen is running the bakery and shop alone; his brother Frederick, a tailor and a widower, is living with him. Stephen is an officer of the village Methodist Chapel.
The Beck family were also members of the Chapel. Tom Beck and his brothers John and Joe and his nephew Charlie from Iwerne Minster would lead the carol singers as they went round the village. Tom also played the cornet and was the unofficial village barber, charging a penny a trim; in the winter one of his daughters would hold a candle for him. Tom was employed as an estate woodman.
In 1901 Tom and Jane’s daughter Emily, who was born in 1877, was working away from home at Bournemouth, where she was a domestic servant in the household of an Auctioneer and Estate Agent. Her sister Bessie, who was born in 1882, is still living at home with her parents in their little cottage beside the millpond.
When Emily returned to the village she became Stephen Hart’s housekeeper and moved into his cottage and soon became involved with the running of the provision store and sometime after 1911 she became Stephen Hart’s business partner.
When Stephen passed away in 1927 Emily decided to close the bakery side of the business and concentrate on the shop. Her younger sister Bessie had been helping to run the shop and looking after their aging parents. Tom Beck passed away early in 1928 aged 81 years. Bessie and their mother, Jane, moved in with Emily but about eighteen months later their mother passed away, aged 82 years.
The enterprising sisters started a guest house in addition to the shop and they continued throughout World War II and the fifties. Early in the sixties the sisters bade farewell to their last guests, served their last customers in the shop, and retired.
Village shops used to sell everything from bread, cheese and bacon to cards, buttons and bows, often all over one counter. Shopkeepers usually provided the comfort of a chair for customers while they prepared their purchases and passed on the latest news and gossip circulating in the village. In places like Fontmell Magna these scenes are distant memories.
Emily and Bessie Beck gave a lifetime of service to the village of Fontmell Magna and they were both in their eighties when they retired from their business. Emily was a Sunday school teacher at the chapel and Bessie kept it looking spotless and was part-time organist there for 50-years.
Emily was known as Miss Emmie – she died in 1969 aged 92; and Bessie died in 1977 having reached the age of 95 years.
We have placed a photograph of Emily and Bessie Beck in the photo section.
