Last Staines greengrocer quits town

Aug 28 2008 By Ed Saunt

Charles Salmon

Staines' last independent family greengrocer is to close for good on Saturday - after 97 years and three generations in the town.

Charles Salmon is calling time on his Broadway shop almost 100 years after his grandfather Tom started selling rabbits and onions at Staines market.

He's been working in the family business for half a decade and is amazed at the reaction from his loyal customers.

He said: "I have had customers in this week who I started serving 50 years ago who were in tears. It's been amazing some people who have never said more than two words before have been saying how upset they are and wondering what they are going to do."

The shop, which was the last greengrocer left in Staines, has been sold to a family who are planning to convert it to an Indian restaurant.

The Salmon family owned six different fruit and veg shops and ran a market stall in Staines during the 1960s and 1970s but the empire has diminished as supermarkets have taken over, leaving the shop opened by Charles' father Tom in 1958 as their last outpost.

The shop was damaged in a fire in October, the day after Charles' six cows were killed as part of the foot-and-mouth culls and the double disaster made the 62-year-old rethink his options.

He said: "Those two things last year really knocked me sideways and a sat back and thought about things. With the supermarkets coming up and up, they just murdered the small parades of shops.

The closure of Charles Salmon is a watershed in the history of The Broadway and Stainash Parade - a small area of shops that once was home to two butchers, two bakers, two grocers and two greengrocers.

And Charles will now have the rare opportunity to consider what to do with his spare time. For a man who was born in the back of his parents' greengrocers in Thames Street and is used to waking up at the crack of dawn to go to markets, he knows it will be strange not handling fruit and veg every day.

"It's been a way of life for me for 50 years," he said. "I wake up every day at 3am even on holiday so I'll have to adjust and I'm going to have a rethink of everything. It will be like a long holiday I guess.

"I like fishing and gardening so I'd like to do more of those and I hope to replace the cows I lost last year."