| Editor |
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Years ago, the newsagents at the top of St Peter's Hill, next to the YMCA, used to be run by Frank Iliffe. He was a very jovial, jokey sort of man, usually wearing a nice tweedy jacket. I can remember when we used to call in for a few sweets, or "pretend" cigarettes he would be very nice serving us. I think Mrs Iliffe also used to serve in the shop though I can't remember her so well. Did she have a problem walking?
Mr Iliffe let me have a go on his typewriter.
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| phil |
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, hi .i remember going into this shop in my teens and asking the guy for 20 seniors.when i went to pay i had left my money at home,he said thats ok pay me next time youre in.but every time i went past his shop i had no money.i never went in his shop again because the longer it got the more embarasing it got.but after that i never bought anything i could not pay for except my house.so thank you Mr Illife for that.any relatives out there i owe you 20 seniors..
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| Lynda |
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I remember the shop, on a Sunday afternoon in the summer, my mum would take my sisters and me for a walk across the meadows and we would call in to buy a block of ice cream for tea, Mrs Iliffe would always wrap it in a few layers of newspapers so that it would not melt before we got home. We always understood that Mrs Iliffe had a wodden leg.
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| Mike Laughton |
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I remember Frank Iliffe well. He was a sports fanatic and when I first knew his shop it was a tobacconist and cricket supplies shop. It had a unique smell. A mix of tobacco and linseed oil.
In those days, you couldn't use a new cricket bat straight away. It has to be treated with linseed oil and bound with a fine cord to protect it. (This is why crickets bats are always brown instead of white on old photos). Frank ran a cricket bat binding and linseeding service as well as selling cricket bats and accessories.
Frank also had one of the nicest gardens in the town. It was a walled garden across the road from his shop on the other side of the Green Hill behind the British Legion Club.
His garden stood on what is now part of the Warren Keep site. The garden had a big lawn with a pavilion with a verandah, several fruit trees and flower and vegetable plots.
I may be mistaken but I seem to recall that during the war Frank had been Stamford's Captain Mainwaring - an officer in the Home Guard.
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| Paul Oleksow |
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My grandparents ran this shop as a confectioners and tobacconists from about 1932 until around 1940, my grandfather was also steward of the Stamford and District Club, which became the YMCA. Frank Iliffe ran the shop as a sports shop until around 1950 his wife Gladys, my godmother, then took the shop over as a newsagents and tobacconists, the also ran a Foyles library service with the books on shelves lining the wall to the right of the door as you went in. Gladys never served in the shop the lady was Miss Nell Connington a friend of the family, she had a false leg following an injury to her knee whilst playing hockey at school.
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| Roger Partridge |
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Back in the 1960s Frank Iliffe's shop was a meeting place for several boys from Stamford School waiting for their buses to arrive to take them home to distant villages. It was quite normal to find them in the shop puffing away at their "illegal" cigarettes (some were under 16). One such youth actually became Head of School
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