a couple of restaurants. And pubs and fish’n’chips. There was still a small fishing industry and the Royal Naval College and the Merchant Navy were big employers. There were few incomers except for retirees. Now Dartmouth is a hub for yachties, bursting with restaurants and art galleries. The question is, does Dartmouth retain its draw and charm after the transformation? In the early 1960s, my husband Peter left Dartmouth


50 years of Dartmouth Retail I


Half a century in Dartmouth - a survey, street by street, of how shops and businesses in this small but important West Country town have been transformed in a lifetime.


t’s the mid 1960s – Dartmouth is a self sufficient town with butchers, clothes shops, tailors, electrical shops and garages; a few tea shops and


for university and the glittering futures away from the town. Fifty years later, we have returned to live here, coming home to a gem of a town, a little town in which you can get almost everything for everyday life, and a lot more besides. Peter had of course kept in touch with the town, visiting family, bringing the children, coming on holiday. But during our first months with a home back in Dartmouth my husband and brother in law punctuated every stroll around the town with comments like “oh, that used to be the workshop of Couch and stoneman” or “that was the electricity showroom”. Dartmouth now doesn’t have a garage or an


electricity showroom, so we fell to thinking about how the businesses and shops of Dartmouth had changed over the fifty years of a life spent mainly elsewhere. The map of businesses and shops produced by By


The Dart provided a brilliant starting point; and in the past year or so we have carefully mapped all the


photographs by kind permission of Dartmouth Museum


By Hilary sunman


businesses and shops in the town in the mid ‘60s. We have used memory – often fallible- “no, it was a tobacconist not a barber”- , and the brilliant resources of the Dartmouth Historical Research Group who have an inventory of all the businesses in Dartmouth on index cards with information going back as far as the 19th


century, although our interest is a shorter


timeframe, more of a snap shot. Other sources are photographs in the Museum and records in the 1965 telephone directory. What has changed? Well, fifty years ago there were almost no yachts; sailing was a very rich man’s sport in those days and the river was more devoted to working fishing boats and pleasure steamers. There were marine services, boat builders and chandlers but more for working boats than pleasure boats. The chandlery in Newcomen Road was a fish monger; and Seahaven next door, now full of sporting and sailing gear was Elliots the Baker. There were 11 butchers – now only one. Four fishmongers then and two now. The greatest continuity is in pubs and restaurants; most of the cafés, pubs and restaurants in 2014 were cafes, pubs and restaurants back in the mid 1960s, only the style has changed. In the 1960s, men’s outfitters and ladies dress shops


were quite distinct, as were hairdressers and barbers. Now apart from House of Hawkins in Foss street (which was a bakery in 1965) there are no men’s outfitters, but many shops – Joules, Weirdfish, FatFace and the nautical clothiers – Henri Lloyd, Musto – have both men’s and women’s clothes. Another sharp contrast with the past is that these are all national chains, not the case 50 years ago.


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