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Rushden Industrial Co-operative Society
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Home Deliveries
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The Grocery mobile shop
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| Over the years different commodities were delivered to the home. A few of the services offered by the Co-op were bread, milk, coal and general groceries. For coal and order needed to placed and paid for. Milk and bread could be paid for in advance by buying tokens from any shop or from the main offices behind the High Street store. In rural areas the mobile shop would call on certain days, but if you lived in town you could take a note book with a list of requirements into any shop, and either collect later that day, or the delivery would be made to your home. Whatever you purchased was noted to your member's account number so that at the end of each half year your dividend or share of the profits could be worked out and paid out on "Divi" day. |
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Mr A Bradshaw inside the mobile shop, probably around 1960 - and two satisfied customers leaving with a basket full of groceries.
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Two early milk delivery vehicles
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Milk Lorry from the 1950s used for moving large quantities of milk from the dairy in Newton Road, to the grocery shops.
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Mr C Joyce making home deliveries of milk in 1968, pictured outside
The White House in Grove Road.
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| Orders for Coal or coke would be placed at the main office in Rectory Road, and it was then delivered in large black sacks each holding a hundredweight. The lorry side was dropped down and the driver turned his back to the sack and grasped the handles at the top of the bag and pulled it over to rest on his back. He wore a leather-backed protective coat, and carried each sack to the outhouse where he leaned over to allow the coal to fall into the store. He would shake out the bag and return it to the lorry, and collect another bag, until the whole order was safely stowed away. |
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The coal and coke delivery lorry.
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The old coal office near the station was demolished in 2004
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The little building front left in this photograph was the Co-op Coal Office. It stood near the main Co-op Office block and was where the main car parks in Rectory Road are today. Behind the office was Orchard Place, where two rows of cottages with gardens faced each other. There were ninteen cottages in all.
click here to see who lived in the rows in 1910
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The Co-op Coal Office front left - and one row of the Orchard Place cottages behind. The CWS Factory offices right of the picture in 1957.
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