Christmas meats and poultry

22 December 2020

Loughborough Echo, 1st Dec 1961
Bailey and Richards, Church Gate, Loughborough. From ‘Loughborough in Old Photographs, Vol 2’
From ‘Loughborough in Old Photographs, Vol 2’
Green & Co’s stall on Loughborough Market. Note Fearon Fountain in the centre of it. Photo from ‘Loughborough in Old Photographs, Vol 2.’
How about a bit of rabbit? (And is that a cage with live ducks in?) J T Bolesworth’s. Photo from ‘Loughborough in Old Photographs.’

‘At Christmas it was a joy to go round and look at all that meat. The sides, all hanging up in the shop. It was mostly local meat. Farmers used to come on certain days to the Cattle Market which stood where the car park is now in Granby street.’
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‘Frederick Hasenfuss, a celebrated pork butcher and German immigrant, made the most succulent sausages. They were full of flavour and his shop in Bedford Square did a roaring trade. I watched his son many a time filling the scrupulously clean pig intestines with pork, while his pies were the talk of the town.’
Mrs Esmond, born 1920s

‘There were plenty of butcher’s shops. The butcher’s stalls all used to be at the end of the market towards the A6. It was all more or less butchers’ stalls. You could go down to the market if you were badly off on a Saturday night, to any meat stall and get a large family joint for 2/6d. You would take it home and cook it as you’d have nowhere to store it. If you had a larder with a stone floor you could keep things like that in containers.  There was no refrigeration. You just bought according to your family. You could only take so much meat according to your family needs and your ability to keep it.’

‘There were a lot of butchers in the town. I remember Simpsons and Baileys on the corner of Churchgate.’
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‘Halfway along High Street Miss Hilda Dormer ran a pork butcher’s shop. She became Loughborough’s first lady mayor.’
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Extracts from ‘Loughborough As I Remember It.’

Compiled by Alison Mott