In Callington

25th Apr, 2013 at 8:35 AM

I'm guessing that every town in the land once had a shop like Trewartha, Gregory and Doidge, and now... not many do. But Callington still does! Yet, oddly, people do not seem to flock to Callington to wonder at it. Everyone locally seems to feel that Callington as a town is a bit sad. I feel a town with a shop like this has a lot going for it.

Trewartha, Gregory & Doidge of Callington

Trewartha, Gregory & Doidge of Callington

I particularly liked the display of Things We Keep Hidden Behind the Counter.
A display of bolts and hinges

It is such a great shop. When I went there to buy a broom, there really was someone else who had come in to buy four screws.
I had no idea that you could even buy that many different brooms, and their Terrifying Garden/Landscaping Tool section is definitely the place to go in the event of Zombie Apocalypse. Or if you need a choice of axes or a lopper for non-zombie-related reasons. I bought a pair of new gardening gloves too.

I wish I had had the nerve to take some photos inside. Maybe next time! I would have found this shop terrifying when I was younger, when DIY superstores seemed so much more accessible, somehow. Apparently I've now found the self-confidence to be able to enjoy it.

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Comments

( 11 comments — Leave a comment )

eglantine_br

25th Apr, 2013 10:14 (UTC)

What a delightful and useful place! I bet you can find advice there too about what to buy, and how to use it. World needs more stores like that.

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parrot_knight

25th Apr, 2013 10:22 (UTC)

My paternal grandmother was a Doidge, of Cornish and Devonian stock (well, her father insisted to his dying day he was a Cornishman, though family history research has shown he was born in Cramlington, Northumberland; his parents were from Devon and Cornwall, though) so perhaps I am this shop's kindred...

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philmophlegm

25th Apr, 2013 10:45 (UTC)

That seems entirely possible!

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bunn

25th Apr, 2013 11:05 (UTC)

That sounds like a definite hobbitish third-cousin kind of relationship!

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wellinghall

25th Apr, 2013 10:32 (UTC)

We went round a museum yesterday that had some Victorian ... gadgets ... that were acquired from the stock of a local ironmonger when it closed. In 1974.

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bunn

25th Apr, 2013 11:05 (UTC)

I'm a little surprised that in 1974, Victorian objects were old enough for museums to be very interested.

When we moved here, there were a lot of faded, shabby ghosts of buildings and struggling little businesses that were the heritage of the last 70-odd years, probably, but some of which had deeper roots. As the area has gentrified, many of these have been tidied away.

But TGD is not one of those, it's a genuinely useful shop with lots of good quality stuff in it, even if its image is charmingly old-fashioed.

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wellinghall

6th May, 2013 12:35 (UTC)

Thinking about it, the museum didn't open until 1995; but I don't know where the gadgets were in the meantime.

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jane_somebody

23rd May, 2013 20:29 (UTC)

My parents like going round that sort of museum, mainly for the pleasure of saying "we've got one of those... and one of those..." Not as collector's pieces either, but just household tools and utensils; for example my mother regularly uses her 19th C. treadle-powered Singer sewing machine :-)

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wellinghall

24th May, 2013 15:56 (UTC)

My father is very much like that for garden tools.

adaese was really quite taken aback the first time she saw the toolshed at my parents old house.

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