60 High Street

This has become the most famous shop in Stamford just because it is not there anymore!

In 1900, it had been a butcher’s shop for some time and had just been taken over by Richard Henry Brown, a butcher from King’s Cliffe. He and his family lived over the shop and were joined for a while by his nephew who assisted in the shop. In 1910 Brown bought one of the champions at the Christmas Fat Stock Show and the picture shows the shop decked out for Christmas about this time.
In 1911 the family were employing a 14 year old servant, Lilian Grant. She was the daughter of a farmer from Exton and had a 19 year old brother who was a Butcher’s Improver (apprentice working in the trade). Perhaps John Laxton Grant joined his sister in employment with R H Brown before taking on the shop himself?
Brown had a nasty accident in September 1911 when a cow fell in front of his pony trap on Tinwell Road and this might have been a good time to take on a young man looking to advance.

By 1917 Grant was married and the occupant of 60 High Street. Grant was initially given exemption from service in World War I but in 1917 he was given a month’s notice to join up. He appealed to the Kesteven Tribunal arguing that he was running a one-man business that would not survive if he had to leave home and that he had married due to his exemption. He was given leave to take his case to a Central Tribunal and perhaps received a further exemption because he only joined the RAF in May 1918, just after his elder brother was killed. The business survived somehow, because he was not discharged until April 1920 when he returned to run the shop. Like many butchers he also farmed, raising animals for the shop no doubt.

In 1936 Grant moved out of no. 60 but continued to trade at 15a St Mary’s Street until the late 1960s.

The site of the shop became Woolworths but, as the newspaper extract (Boston Guardian 25-1-1936) explains, the 17th century building was saved by York Museum and can still be seen there.
(Grant is incorrectly referred to as J W Grant - it should be J L Grant)

No. 60 continued as a Woolworth store until the financial crisis of 2008 forced the group into administration and all UK stores were closed by January 2009. After standing empty for several years, the building was re-opened as a New Look clothing store.