Dunstable Yesteryear: Here stood The Old Vine
No shortage of barber’s shops in Dunstable today, but a few decades back the hairdresser’s run by Ellis and Son was very much in demand.
The photograph here was taken in the late 1950s when the shop (on the left) stood alongside another vanished local business, the Dunstable Building Society.
Both buildings, in West Street, have since been demolished and replaced by modern shops which today include the British Heart Foundation’s furniture store.
The Ellis shop was one of the oldest buildings in Dunstable and its remains, carefully numbered and recorded, were removed to the Chiltern Open Air Museum at Chalfont St Giles. Over the centuries Its Tudor interior had been covered by layers of newer walls.
It was once an inn called The Old Vine. This became the Oyster Bar between 1868 and 1875 before it was converted into an office for the well-known local auctioneer William Derbyshire. It became a hairdresser’s in 1900 until its closure in 1974.
Clearly, the shop also traded as a tobacconist – its window in the photograph is dominated by adverts for Senior Service, Player’s, Craven A and Gold Flake, as well as that gent’s hairdressing staple, Brylcreem. A notice on the door says was open until 7.30 pm on Fridays and it once had a light bulb in its window next to a sign saying “no waiting when light is lit”.
Yesteryear is compiled by John Buckledee, chairman of Dunstable and District Local History Society.