Anyone out there with memories, stories or pictures of this fish and chip shop from the 1950s please? Was at 325, and caught all the trade from the pub and the cinema. It was, apparently, the only place to buy anything to eat at that time of night in the area. Thanks
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Open 'Till Midnight Fish & Chip Shop, Soho Rd
- Thread starter journocy
- Start date
Hi Astonian,
Thanks, but no - I'm told 'Open 'Till Midnight' was diagonally opposite the Red Lion pub (which is still standing) and almost next to a greengrocers, with an alley down between the shops giving access to the rear of the chip shop.
It was a double-storey building with accommodation above the shop.
Someone said 325 Soho Rd is now something called DiVine, a Jamaican restaurant and the alleyway is between Jaminfoods and Freshsave? (Freshsave would be where the greengrocers was, and there was a timber merchant's up at the top of the alleyway. Presume what's now Jaminfoods and DiVine was all one plot.)
PS. There was also a serious model train layout in the room at the back of the shop - which had at one time been used as an 'eat in area' and loads of customers used to go and play with the trains while waiting for their orders. There was a piano in there too. and a decorative fish tank in the shop itself.
Cheers
Hi journecy
Many thanks for your replied I can recall the pub opersite ( a little pub) Called the Harrell but not that particular one chippie
As I used to go down the steps of the continal night club which was very west Indian ordinate scene
This was in the days of the huge five pounds notes currantcy you had to knock on the door through a hatch and some one would
Look to see whom you was if except able to them you would pass your fiver through the hatch to the geezer
And the bolts would be drawn and I would be in there until six o'clock drinking barly wines
There was a chippie on the corner just along from there on the corner of Soho and as I thought was st Michaels church
As these guys whom ran the one I am on about and thought you may be on about was not the one
As these guys operated a couple of bussineess in Birmingham city they was notorious and very few people knew of there crimes
Which was big time they was running espresso bars one on broad street and one later in the top of summer hill
Along with this chippie that had been for years right up until the slum clearances of villa red
They now rum a kebab supplies out in surrounds of Sutton Coldfield supplying restaurants and chipies around the country
These people I know personally as I have a sister in law whom as got mixed up with one of there cousins
And I later found out he went to ickneild street school I can recall him as a young lad walking into our class along with his cousin
The one I know came in to the class room and said his father was a regimental officer in the British army
We did not believe him but now on sixty years on I have seen the photo of his father and I used to go his big house in Sutton
Which where he still lives today and met the other cousin came visiting when I was there one evening I think he recognised me
And bowed his head down and went passed and went out to the outer house in the garden grounds to discuss business
This relative of mine holds a high postion in suttoncoldfield I have been out in public with him so I know
Once again thanks for your time in replying Astonian,,,,
Many thanks for your replied I can recall the pub opersite ( a little pub) Called the Harrell but not that particular one chippie
As I used to go down the steps of the continal night club which was very west Indian ordinate scene
This was in the days of the huge five pounds notes currantcy you had to knock on the door through a hatch and some one would
Look to see whom you was if except able to them you would pass your fiver through the hatch to the geezer
And the bolts would be drawn and I would be in there until six o'clock drinking barly wines
There was a chippie on the corner just along from there on the corner of Soho and as I thought was st Michaels church
As these guys whom ran the one I am on about and thought you may be on about was not the one
As these guys operated a couple of bussineess in Birmingham city they was notorious and very few people knew of there crimes
Which was big time they was running espresso bars one on broad street and one later in the top of summer hill
Along with this chippie that had been for years right up until the slum clearances of villa red
They now rum a kebab supplies out in surrounds of Sutton Coldfield supplying restaurants and chipies around the country
These people I know personally as I have a sister in law whom as got mixed up with one of there cousins
And I later found out he went to ickneild street school I can recall him as a young lad walking into our class along with his cousin
The one I know came in to the class room and said his father was a regimental officer in the British army
We did not believe him but now on sixty years on I have seen the photo of his father and I used to go his big house in Sutton
Which where he still lives today and met the other cousin came visiting when I was there one evening I think he recognised me
And bowed his head down and went passed and went out to the outer house in the garden grounds to discuss business
This relative of mine holds a high postion in suttoncoldfield I have been out in public with him so I know
Once again thanks for your time in replying Astonian,,,,
Jayell
master brummie
I wonder if the fish and chip shop you are talking about was the one that my best friend's parents ran in the early 1950s. I am pretty sure the number was about 325 Soho Road. The name was the Blackpool Fish & Chip Shop and it was just down from the Regal Cinema on the same side. My friend was called Jean Thomas. Don't know her parents' names though I'm afraid.
Judy
Judy
Thank you, Jayell, Phil and Astonian.
'Open 'Till Midnight was - I am told - owned and run by a gentleman called Bert Coleman and his wife Gwen. I guess they had probably sold it on to Kenneth Stevens by 1956, then, Phil.
Umm, apparently the name 'Blackpool Fish and Chip shop' rings no bells as a previous or later incarnation, nor does the family name Thomas.
I guess Soho Rd had loads of chippies - but this was the only one at the time that literally stayed open until midnight!
Do you have access to a trade directory from any earlier in the 50s by any chance please, Phil?
Desperate to help someone track down more information about the shop, hopefully some pictures with the original signage, and maybe stories.
You're all doing really well here, people. I have faith in the Forum solving this for me!
Cheers!
Qu.Be
Heróiam sláva
325? That was by the bus stop. I wasn't around in the 50s, but the chippy was well placed for getting off the bus from a night drinking in town and getting in something to eat before heading home, in the early- and mid-1980s. It was a much-reduced establishment from the one described above and the chips weren't as good as those of the chippy by the #70 bus stop on Grove Lane, a lot closer to where I lived, but 'sooner was better' at that time of night and you never knew if Mr. Suleiman or his industrious family might not grass you up for illicit chip-buying to The Family. The Grove Lane chippy might well have been closed by the time we used to drag home, too.
