Fairey Bros.

Faireys were general hardware suppliers and stockists of agricultural sundries (where Peter Crisp's now stands). We purchased all our requirements from them. I can remember having to go in once and get some bolts for an implement repair and the shop assistant, in brown warehouse coat, was such a nice man and so obliging; he went though box after box and put one of each on the counter for me to select, telling me the advantages and disadvantages of each one. When I went out of the shop I knew I had the correct bolts in my brown paper parcel.

I was looking through some old papers recently, when I came across an advertisement of Fairey Brothers, 7, High Street, Rushden. T.P. Rushden 309. They were advertising the fact that they were agents for:

Aladdin Lamps (paraffin) Odourless, Smokeless and Safe

When I was a child, we had one of these hanging in our kitchen over the table, which father had purchased from Fairey's. It was a real novelty, as it had a mechanism of chains and pulleys for bringing it down to light and clean and then return it to what ever height was needed, dependent upon what you happened to be doing at the time.

(I always thought it was a magic lamp, having been brought up on the story of Aladdin.) It was a good idea because little people were not able to knock it over, unlike the conventional table oil lamp. It did have one disadvantage, in that it was not smokeless, we always had a black patch in the middle of the ceiling.

We finally became 'modernised^' in 1948 when electricity arrived in our village - Hinwick.

Note: Telephone numbers had extra numbers added - 309 became 3009, then later extra digits were added again to make up 6 digit numbers!