Mrs Patrick's Wool Shop

I was working at Lee Mills yesterday.  It was a very cold day, below freezing outside when I got there, and like a fridge inside, so I worked upstairs as much as possible.   (Putting hat, coat and fingerless mittens on whenever I had to go down to the ground floor where the magazines are.)  So I was mostly sorting pattern leaflets.

A lot of the pattern leaflets are stamped with the name and address of the yarn shop that originally sold it, so there are shop names from all over the country.  I was musing that all of these yarn shops probably closed long ago.  The local yarn shops that exist now have almost all opened over the last ten years or so and have no connection with the earlier ones. 

Some of the shop names sound quite quaint and antique, like "Edythe", The Wool Shop, Norwood High Street.  Some are slightly odd, like A.W.Brown - Oriental Goods of every description - 16 Crown Lane Morden.  And the descriptions of what they sell are nicely old-fashioned:  Wools, Art Needlework, Hosiery, Etc.;  Art Needlework and Linens; Drapery and Knitting Wools.     

 And then I spotted one that I recognised:  "Patrick's", The Wool Shop, 16, Crookes Road, Broomhill, Sheffield, 10.  That was my local yarn shop when I was a teenager!

It was a tiny shop, converted from the front room of a small terraced  house, though I guess there was a stock room behind it.     It closed a long time ago, probably in the 1970s, when Mrs Patrick retired.  It might then have been a hairdresser's for a while, but then became a pet shop, and still is.      

Broomhill is a busy area with lots of little shops and restaurants (Patrick's/Paws Here is on the very edge of the shopping area).  It seems to be thriving, with so many university students living in the neighbourhood.  Everybody knew, when I lived there, that John Betjeman  (the Poet Laureate) had described Broomhill as "the prettiest suburb in England", though I never understood which bit he could have had in mind.  Now that I can ask Google, and find his poem "An Edwardian Sunday, Broomhill, Sheffield",  I see that it was the large Victorian houses and not the shopping area that he was thinking of, although they are not very typical of most of Broomhill - the small terraces like Mrs Patrick's are more common.  Poetic licence.