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Saturday, August 30, 2008, 10:00
But thanks to an anonymous Looking Back reader who dropped in a marvellous brochure produced by the Plymouth Society to commemorate its centenary, I thought it would be nice to remind everyone just how very local it all was back in 1960.
The reminder starts with the Service Card, which came as a pull-out, postage-free postcard inside the front cover and which invited all and sundry to tick which door-to-door services they'd like to receive from the Society: Grocery, Bakery, Butchery, Dairy, Greengrocery, Mutuality Club, Laundry, Coal, Dry Cleaning and CIS (Insurance).
People were even invited to suggest the approximate time they'd like the Co-op to call. At that time there were nine mobile grocery shops – in addition to the 78 branches locally – and there were 27 mobile greengrocer's vans. There was also a fleet of laundry and dry-cleaning vans and butcher's vans.
However, over and above the many vehicles bringing services to your door, the brochure also revealed that more than 25,000 loaves of bread were baked every day at the Co-operative Bakery in Peverell; "Every shape and size of bread is baked and delivered to your doorstep."
"Delicious iced cakes, boxes of fancies and many other delicacies" were also made, "and supplied in dust-proof, hygienic transparent wrapping."
Pies and sausages were also made at Peverell, most vegetables came from local farms, and meat was locally-sourced too: "Every week the butchery manager visits Launceston and other markets in Cornwall and Devon to buy the finest-quality Devonshire lamb and steer beef and Cornish dairy-fed pork."
Furthermore, we read that "Plymouth Co-operative Society is the largest dairy farmer in the south-west of England" and that the "Dairy Department [was] the only retailer to sell tuberculin-tested (pasteurised) milk as a standard service in the City of Plymouth".
Because of this the Co-op was able to sell its pasteurised milk from the Radnor Dairy to the 30,000 local families they had on their books at eightpence (about 3p) a pint, which was a ha'penny less than other retailers – and in the summer they could even knock another ha'penny off that. Not everything could be had locally, though, and a great deal of fruit came from "far lands", while fish was brought in by rail, "absolutely fresh in hygienic deep-freeze containers", and coal came by sea to Millbay, where it was weighed and bagged.
But it wasn't just about consumables; there was the works department for household repairs, cobblers for footwear repairs and Co-op removals, holidays, car hire and coaches, as well as numerous other first-class services from furnishings to funerals and from fashion to pharmacies.
Which ones do you remember using and how different were they from the services you get today?
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CLOCKWISE, FROM TOPLEFT: Service card; inside the Radnor Dairy; who baked all the pies?; coal lorries loading at Millbay; the Co-op centenary brochure
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