A family of greengrocers

Brian Green's father and grandfather were greengrocers in the Leagrave area of Luton and Dunstable nextdoor. His father even bought a farm and started a market garden in the nearby hamlet of Ivinghoe Aston, to "cut out the middlemen". 

Conversation with Brian in April 2024

Brian Green: My grandfather used to live in Chingford [now North-East London]. And the story goes that he lost his money. His partner went off with his money. So he had the trailer. He hitched the trailer to his car and he went to a fruit market in London. I'm guessing it was Spitalfields Market, being 4 o’clock in the morning. He managed to buy some goods and he then got on the road. So we talked about early in the morning.

[In the 1920s, he] came up the A5. And the first place he would probably have got to when it was getting light was Dunstable. Dunstable in those days was a market town. They had a market. So he stopped and he sold his produce there. Now, what he was bringing was produce from London that was getting imported. All you got locally was local produce, and which was very seasonal. So he did a good business because he kept bringing in stuff that was exotic and out of season.

LO: Oranges, bananas? 

BG: Yes, that's what he did. And then in the 1930s, he was offered a shop in High Street North. And he bought that and had a house with it over the top of it. And he moved the family from Chingford into there. 

So he ended up with one shop in High Street North. He then ended up with another shop, 15B in High Street North, Dunstable, and then a third shop in Leagrave. And his sons ran that for him. 

Now, his sons all ended up going into the war, into the army, but they all came back. My father and his brothers, they all came back. Initially, they worked for him in the business. 

Two of the sons then went off and did their own thing in London. My father stayed here running the business in High Street, 15B. And they then had the two shops side by side. 15A, 15B. 

Now, during the war, my grandfather decided to buy a farm in Ivinghoe, Ivinghoe Aston. And he bought the farm with the idea that he would grow local produce and cut out the middleman. I'm never sure how successful it was. 

I can remember going there because, as a young lad, I would get out of the car or the van. I'd run in front of it. I would run up the driveway to shoo all the chickens out of the way so the van could drive up.

LO: Do you remember what he was growing there?

BG: All I can remember, he was growing carrots at one time, so he used to pull the carrots out of the ground and eat them. But he did produce some vegetables and stuff like that. It wasn't a huge farm. 

During the war,  a gentleman called Sid Barnes, who used to live opposite, now, Sid Barnes was actually from Poland and he was in the Polish army. He'd been captured and escaped and he got to England. Now he was going to be sent back to the war because he was Jewish, he'd made contact with my grandfather, as all Jewish people in this area did. And my grandfather said, I'm going to get you to work on the farm that he bought. So because it was now a reserved occupation, Sid didn't go back into the army.

LO: We did see an entry somewhere of someone arguing a court case saying he needs to keep the person who pruned the fruit trees not to be drafted.

BG: Well, this wasn't fruit trees, but this was working on a farm. So this was the same princple.

LO: Did did anyone in your family stay in the fruit and vegetable trade?

BG:  Yeah, yeah, yeah. His two brothers ended up with their fruit businesses in London. My father kept the fruit business going with Mum. And he ran the business in Dunstable until they retired in about '79. 

Initially, they moved to London to work with his brother in their position, and then Dad had a heart attack and they moved back to Luton. 

The shop is still there, but it's now Household Estate Agents in Dunstable. And ironically, the one down at 139 High Street North, which is the other end of Dunstable, got sold to a kebab shop. I noticed it's been empty for about a year or so. And last week I came past it, and lo and behold, it's become a fruit shop.

LO: Awwww!

BG: So I'm actually going to go in there in the next couple days to say, did you know what this was? Give them a bit of history.

LO: Do you have any records?

BG: I have a photograph of old Dunstable and you can see that one of the shops in High Street North, top end, is my father's shop, because they used to have two shops side by side. One of them was the vegetables and salad, and the other one was the fruit. And then, that would be in the 1960s, Dad knocked one [through] and made it bigger. And the other one he rented out as a baker shop.

Also, along Dunstable High Street, it used to be the market, so the original market. The Square. The Square, yeah, right. That used to be the cattle market. Right. I can just about remember having cattle stores there. Then it became the market, then that became the market and then that all closed down. And the market then moved from the crossroads right the way down to just before the cinema, basically, and then after many years, it moved over to Queensway Hall.

[Recorded on 15 April 2024]