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183 Bath Road (formerly 4 Norwood Terrace)
The Cratchley family occupied premises on this site for much of the 20th century, having moved to Cheltenham from Stroud in the 1890s. In 1911 Ebenezer Samuel Cratchley was running a furniture and antique business from his home in Swindon Road, assisted by his wife Harriett and their elder children Samuel and Lily. By 1922 they had moved to 4 Norwood Terrace and by 1930 Samuel Cratchley was running the business from here. Ebenezer died in 1939 but Samuel, and later his younger brother Birt (also known as Bertie), continued dealing in second-hand furniture from these premises for about the next 20 years. This wasn’t much of a shop, rather the furniture was displayed in the front room of the house for customer inspection. The company also had a warehouse in nearby St Philip’s Street.
The Cratchleys were here until the late 1950s and sometime later the house on this site was severely damaged by fire and was demolished. Bertie died in 1985, aged 80. This is now the middle shop of three new units erected in 1990, when it was leased by The Video Nest, a video tape rental company. It formed the left hand part of Bargain Booze Video Nest until this was split back into two shops in October 2014 and this part became the Milano Cafe and now Lucy's. Researcher: Marilyn West Updated: Stuart Manton (February 2020) |
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