Bob's Stores

The shutters on Bob's Stores were pulled down for the last time on Saturday 16 April 1971. One of the last one-man grocery stores, it had served the residents of Mortlake for 32 years.

The shop stood on the corner of Mullins Path and Church Path and was always known as Bob's Stores. However, it was Leslie Haines who owned and ran the shop. Bob explained that "I was called Bob when I first started working as a grocer at Shepherds Bush. My predecessor's name was Bob so I just carried the name on".

Bob and his wife Irene opened the first Bob's Stores in September 1936, just two days after their wedding. The couple had owned a number of shops on Mortlake High Street at different times, including one at number 68, prior to finally settling down in the Mullins Path store in 1939.

Bob's Stores was a typical corner shop that sold a great variety of goods – tinned meats fish and fruit, biscuits, jars of jams, sugar, tea, cigarettes and tobacco, bacon, cheese, eggs and sweets. But it would also have been the centre of the small community it served, offering comfort, friendship and lots of gossip! It played an important part in people's lives.

Irene also ran the Lonsdale Stores in Verdun Road, Barnes until the early 1960s. Bob and Irene worked long hours – Bob admitted that he had had no time for hobbies and had not had a holiday since they bought their first shop in 1936.

The shop was sold when Bob's Stores closed in 1971, and it was converted into a private house.