My mother was a regular visitor to Lathams, with me in tow, on the corner of Kingstanding Rd and Dyas Rd, it's now a furniture shop. I seem to remember she was always buying mainly buttons, probably to replace the ones that got crushed in the mangle LOL. As a kid it used to amaze me when, no matter what you asked for, they always knew which little drawer to go to, there seemed to be hundreds of them.
bren