Calne (Sunday 19th November 2023)

It is sad to see this shop at 6 High Street, at the bottom of Market Hill, empty after such a long history.

The building is over 300 years old and resulted from successive improvements to a market stall, until it became a permanent structure. Albert Wilkinson Buckeridge set up the family business in 1876 as a ‘Wholesale & Retail Wine and Spirit Merchants’ that also came to specialise in cheeses in the sixties to compete with newly arrived supermarkets. They had a warehouse at the back of the shop and a nearby bottling plant up the hill.

Deliveries of beer and wine would arrive at the bottling plant in large containers via Buckeridge Steps and transferred into smaller bottles and labelled. These included Guinness, with Buckeridge’s being one of the few licensed to bottle this drink under their own name. By 1975 they had added ‘Cheese, Continental Foods, Cigarettes, Tobacco and Smoking Accessories’ into their advertising. The partnership of David, Paul and Ted Buckeridge who had inherited the family business decided to sell up and retire in 1988, when the shop became Unwin’s.

I best knew the shop as a regular customer later when it became The New Wine Shop, run independantly by David Hitchens (but due to a resemblance aka 'Ian Botham' by Refna), always a generous, affable and expert dealer. He wrote The Gin Sat Nav guide, and The Wine, The Which And The Wardrobe.

When he didn't renew his lease it became The Bear And Pear Drop, a sweet shop run by Karen Grant. The shop had begun 18 years ago at two other sites in Calne, but she ran into bad luck after moving to this Market Hill site here. According the Gazette and Herald, 'in July the council advised Karen that they had been notified there would be building work carried out on the building and they were concerned there would be an impact on the business.
When Karen approached her landlord's secretary, she was told that they felt it was 'the right time to carry out the works as it would be her quiet time'. She was advised that the scaffolding and works around the shop front would be completed in 7 days. In reality the works took 6 weeks to complete, during which time, she was unable to put her tables and chairs out due to scaffolding and health and safety measures.
Karen told us: "On numerous occasions my shop front was blocked off, the builders and scaffolders told my customers I was closed. I had two near misses of plaster and rubble falling, missing my head by millimetres."
"My landlord refused to give me a rent free period for loss of income or any compensation so I exercised my break clause in my lease as I felt he had no consideration to a long-standing reputable business that’s been in the town for 14 years! It’s been an utter nightmare - a hard decision to make as the shop was my dream shop."
Whilst this is the end of the road for the Bear and Pear sweet shop, Karen continues to sell sweets, party bags, sweet bouquets and hampers, gift jars and bespoke sweet trees online - you can find out more by visiting : https://www.facebook.com/thesweetshopcreations'.

They also sold Rowdy Cow ice-cream that was made in the nearby village of Rowde, but sadly the shop closed down before I got around to buying any there.

L.
Sunday 19.11.2023 (1708 hr)

Blip #4000 (#3750 + 250 archived blips taken 27.8.1960-18.3.2010)
Consecutive Blip #004
Blips/Extras In 2023 #205/265 + #089/100 Extras
Day #4986 (1178 gaps from 26.3.2010)
Lozarithm's Lozarhythm Of The Day #3140 (#2980 + 160 in archived blips)

Calne series

Taken with Pentax K-50 and Pentax  smc P-DA 12-24mm F4.0 ED/AL (IF) lens

Lozarithm's Lozarhythm Of The Day:
Kumar Sanu - Ek Ladki Ko Dekha (1994)
This morning's Desert Island Discs featured Prison Reform Trust director Pia Sinha, and unusually I approved all but one of her choices (sorry, Adele). Her second choice was this hit tune from the Bollywood film 1942: A Love Story, which I knew but didn't know I knew.