• Welcome to this forum . We are a worldwide group with a common interest in Birmingham and its history. While here, please follow a few simple rules. We ask that you respect other members, thank those who have helped you and please keep your contributions on-topic with the thread.

    We do hope you enjoy your visit. BHF Admin Team

Paynes shoe repairs

Hi Phil,

A long shot maybe but, do you or any other BHF members have any photographs of the said shops?

Lozellian.

I'm sorry but I do not have any images of the shops in question around the relevant time, but luckily enough all three shops have survived up to today. I am posting all three as they appear today in the hope that they may be of some use to you.

1. Peter Hawkes 60 P.O.W Lane
2. E Hands 72 P.O.W Lane
3. F H Hands 145 P.O.W Lane

60 Prince of Wales Lane Peter Hawkes..JPG72 Prince of Wales Lane E Hands..JPG145 Prince of Wales Lane FR Hawkes.JPG
 
My father sadly passed away last year .
I’m hoping to find this treasure a new home .
it seems such a shame to keep it hidden away .
I was wondering if anyone has any ideas of head office / museum information that will look after / display
Thank you
 

Attachments

  • C6B48306-DC03-41B5-892F-6EBE35440E60.jpeg
    C6B48306-DC03-41B5-892F-6EBE35440E60.jpeg
    761.1 KB · Views: 61
I remember Payne's, there was a branch I am sure in Harborne, but as my dad, along with many in the 50's, had a Cobblers Last, he repaired all our shoes, with cardboard, and I am sure Payne's stick on rubber repair soles, dad even did some stitching by hand, hard times, bless him. Paul
 
I used to go and work on the bus that Brian? Watts ( Billy and Ivy Watts son) used to bring from by the Wagon and Horses to the Radleys to help out on Saturdays. I was parked on a site at the Radleys before the pub was built. Paynes eventually opened a shop at the end of the row shops in Sheldon Heath Rd.
I worked at the Radleys sh man times between 1966 & 1976
 
I think that members of the Payne's Shoe Repairs family today will smile at a rather special little tale that I have to tell in which the Firm played a central role in an entirely unexpected way that was only discovered decades later.

I never knew my paternal grandfather who died before I was born, but from around 7 until at least my early teens I went with my father every Sunday to visit my grandmother and also see whatever other relatives - aunts, uncles and cousins - might also be visiting as the family all did much the same.

Nan lived in Devon St., Nechells, just a little way down from the school on the opposite side of the street. It was a 2-bus journey from where we lived across the other side of the City, the first picking up another to Nechells somewhere around Aston.

But that was over 60 years ago, and whatever little amount of notice I actually took of the journey has long since left me apart from two things in particular. One was that I always knew when we were getting very close to our Nechells stop because the bus swung right-hand in to a tight downhill outside curve that made it feel, well to me at least, lol, that it was about to overbalance and topple over flat on to its side!

I have no recollection today of the route number, though for some unknown reason I have always had it in mind that it was the number 8. Others will know whether that is possible I'm sure, but in any case shortly after the bus had negotiated that bend and somehow managed to remain upright, it reached the bottom of its little hill there and soon emerged at a little triangular junction with the Saltley Rd/Viaduct somewhere close by what I now know was called "The Gate", and dropped us at the stop we needed just steps across from the bottom of Devon Street.

Payne's Shoe Repairers? Hold on, I'm just getting to that.

Back in Aston wherever it was that we picked up our bus, directly across the street from the stop was a large advertising hoarding with a poster depicting a smart-looking man striding out. But he was drawn/printed to suggest he was actually stepping one leg out of the poster. So a part of the image of him was of the exposed sole/heel of his forward foot facing outward as he stepped ready, and this was of course HUGE in size just to make the best of the intended effect.

Occasionally since then I have found myself "recalling" that the chap was in fact a cobbler and wearing a brown apron, though this could now easily be entirely in my imagination running in overdrive sparking off the fact that there was large lettering on the poster citing the superior nature of Payne's Shoe Repairs!

It seems to me that I saw that poster every weekend for years and years, lol.

No, that's not the special story. That comes if I now add that the little girl who would grow up to become my wife was born and for a short while lived just in Inkerman street with a large proportion of her immediate relatives around there and Dolman street.

We made the connection of having families close there quite early-on when married and exploring backgrounds etc., but it was only in some random chit-chat about 5 years ago now a half-century later, that I mentioned about the change of buses and my recollection of that advertising poster.

And her eyes became wide, and with a mixture of surprise and laughter she said that she remembered that well because she was there probably just as frequently at much the same time when she was taken by her mother on Sundays to visit her Nan and also pop to see other relatives there too sometimes. She couldn't recall the route number, but the kicker was the same memory of the topply-bus curve, lol close before getting off the bus .

So we figured that although not in any way guaranteed it is not impossible that we could have been waiting there at the same time for the next bus to complete our journeys, maybe seen each other more than once even but that might be pushing it ... though, would it really? I mean, that's a guaranteed 52 times a year from me for sure and my wife says it was much the same with her parents taking her, an unquestioned routine ... as I believe it would have been with many in those days, Sunday visits and treats to see the grandparents ... yes?

So then ..

To the Paynes - For all this time you thought that your Firm's advertising was just a regular business feature and served that purpose. But in fact those installations - well, one in Aston somewhere anyway, lol - had an unburstable link of an entirely different kind from around the mid-50s, and contributed something special to a possibly lovely coincidence but definitely to the bringing together of two completely separate sets of very personal memories in order to create a third and very special shared memory half a century later.

Soulmates and solemates :)

TQ
 
By 1948 (Kelly's Directory) they appeared to be running two parallel shoe repairing businesses:

Harry H Payne, with head office at 65 Longmore Street, Balsall Heath, Birmingham 12, had some 30 branches all over the city.

W R Payne (Shoecraft) Ltd had shops at 740 Bristol Road and 19 Oak Tree Lane, both Selly Oak, Birmingham 29.
I worked for Payne’s from1966 to 1976 at various shops Great times.
 
I used to go and work on the bus that Brian? Watts ( Billy and Ivy Watts son) used to bring from by the Wagon and Horses to the Radleys to help out on Saturdays. I was parked on a site at the Radleys before the pub was built. Paynes eventually opened a shop at the end of the row shops in Sheldon Heath Rd.
I think Ivy & Bills son was Bernie.
 
Loved Paynes would buy packets of Segs on a Saturday morning a tap them into the heels of my shoes and the smaller segs on the edges of the leather soles . Shoes lasted longer but you could slip and slide a bit. Remember having your best shoes soled and heeled at Paynes then clip clopping down the road . Seemed to be a popular theme .
 
Hi.
New member here. I stumbled across this website whilst looking at/for info on Paynes shoe repairers.
My late grandfather was the manager of the Northfield branch for what felt like forever. I think he may have been in the same branch since he left the army after the second World War 2 up until his retirement. At the time there were 2 branches in Northfield both being on the Bristol Road - he worked in the branch that was eventually to become (still is?) Dixons Estate agents (the other branch was further down the road by the Natwest bank).
Many a time I went to work with him and would come home with that strong smell of industrial glue in my nostrils.....how he ever put up with that smell for so long was a miracle . Repair machine was out the back, quick fix machine out the front along with the key cutting machine and shelving stocked up with customer repairs waiting for collection.
The one distinctive memory of him at work was the nails lined up in his mouth being readied for the repairs (if you know you'll know ). One nail - one hit with the hammer - job done. Happy memories of going to work with him
 
But what happed to Paynes? I remember one of the lads on The Pits Farm Estate having a Paynes delivery bicycle with a basket carrier on the front. I think the shop he worked at was at Wylde Green
 
I am currently researching my great uncle (Harry H Payne) and grandfather (William R Payne) buisness, Paynes Shoe Repairs. Is there any one who worked or has relatives who worked for them. Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Hi

My dad, Harold Morris worked for Paynes late 50’s to the 60’s, worked his way to being a area manager in the Birmingham area. I believe he eventually managed the Erdington shop where he met and married my mom Gillian Bills who worked as a shop assistant there.
 
I am currently researching my great uncle (Harry H Payne) and grandfather (William R Payne) buisness, Paynes Shoe Repairs. Is there any one who worked or has relatives who worked for them. Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Hi

Is this thread still sctive? I have some info re the shop at 7 Edward Road which was bought by Payne's in the 1940s as a going conceen.
 
Here's a scan of a glass negative I found of the Payne's mobile repair bus reg FEH 832 Cromer Rd Balsall Heath

View attachment 153182
Wow! Fancy this picture turning up! I have been involved with friends in bus preservation since my senior days at school, and several of us were asked to help one weekend prepare this to be towed away to a chap in Devon's collection which he kept in a large aircraft hanger on a closed RAF station. I don't know if it survived or was just used for spares though.
 
Loved Paynes would buy packets of Segs on a Saturday morning a tap them into the heels of my shoes and the smaller segs on the edges of the leather soles . Shoes lasted longer but you could slip and slide a bit. Remember having your best shoes soled and heeled at Paynes then clip clopping down the road . Seemed to be a popular theme .
I remember as a late teenager going into a New St show repair shop and asking the lady "do you sell segs?"
The look I got!
 
Wow! Fancy this picture turning up! I have been involved with friends in bus preservation since my senior days at school, and several of us were asked to help one weekend prepare this to be towed away to a chap in Devon's collection which he kept in a large aircraft hanger on a closed RAF station. I don't know if it survived or was just used for spares though.


it would be nice to think it did survive lloyd

lyn
 
i do not recall seeing FEH 832 at the airfield mentioned. I knew the owner well so I guess it was at an earlier date or a later date and was probably sold on. I would have remembered this vehicle as it had Birmingham and Potteries connections. The original owner has passed away now and it is his son who has the place. Names and details are withheld for owners security reasons.
 
John Mead appears in the electoral registers at 7 Edward Road for 1912 and 1920, the latter also includes 'Elen Christina' who is presumably the little girl in the 1902 photo, but not in the 1901 or 1911 census's (censii?)
 
Back
Top