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New Heritage Society exhibition to focus on 1930s Burton Latimer

30th July 2019

Burton Latimer Heritage Museum exhibition

Burton Latimer Heritage Society’s next exhibition ‘1930s Burton Latimer: The End of an Era‘ opens on Saturday 7th September 2019.

This exhibition will look back at pre-war Burton Latimer – the days when everything a household needed, from baby clothes to coffins, could be bought here; when there was a shop on practically every street corner and at least 34 in Kettering Road and High Street alone; when more people came in to work here than worked elsewhere, mostly in the four shoe factories or five clothing manufacturers.

It was the days when cows were herded along the streets (there were 13 farms); when milk and bread was delivered to the door by horse and cart (there was a choice of eight bakers and six milkmen and there were five butchers’ shops); and there were two blacksmiths to shoe the horses.

For entertainment you could see a new programme three times a week at the Electric Palace Cinema – or visit one of the five pubs or four clubs, or dance at the Preston Hall or Co-operative Hall.

It was the time when the dustman came to your back door to empty your dustbin and take it back to the horse-drawn ‘ash cart’ to dump it in an old ironstone quarry that acted as a tip. When Burton had its own gas company, waterworks and sewage farm – and when the doctor sent a quarterly bill ‘for services rendered’, and when working people paid into a Friendly Society in case they had to take time off work on account of injury or illness.

And eating out?  There was one shop where you could also get ‘a cup of tea and a bun’ and five fish and chip shops, one of which had a ‘supper room’.

The exhibition will serve to jog the memories of the older generation and perhaps give new residents and the new generation an idea of what life was like years ago. The exhibition, which is free, will be open on Saturdays and Thursdays 10am to 1pm until December 7th.  Alternative arrangements can be made for groups. A Heritage Society Coffee Morning will be held in the Civic Centre 10.30 – 12 noon on the opening day, September 7th.

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