amos hames
Dedicated Member
whilst watching Spring Fever today I noticed the name Beale on the letterbox of the Café. Is this Sid and Ivy's surname that we have never known. Has anyone else noticed this.
Name on Cafe door.
- Thread starter amos hames
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Marianna
Dedicated Member
The question has arisen in the past, but there hasn't been a definitive answer. Your question prompted me to dig more deeply than before, after taking another look at the scene where Chip is shooing his eldest back out to the van with the dog. There's just a frame or two where 'N. R. Beall' can be clearly seen on the mail flap. I found listings in the 1950-70 telephone directories for N R Beall, 'fish frier' at 4, Towngate, Holmfirth. So I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was the name that happened to still be on that door from when it was a chippie. For the sake of consistency, they would have had to keep the name on the door on the corresponding stage set.
During the early episodes, that building was being used by the ironmonger whose shop faces the street as a space to store paint, so he would have had no reason to paint over the name. Before that, it had been a chippie. When the shop closed, the ironmonger had simply gathered up all the equipment, with the grease still in the pans, and stored it in the building on the other side of the short flight of steps beside the 'cafe'. So incomers were warned not to walk too close to that building to avoid the odor of rancidity and stale fish. The paint storage space reeked, too, from the decades of frying grease that had permeated the walls and ceiling. It was the kind of place that if the script required an exit from that building, the actors didn't stay inside any longer than absolutely necessary.
BTW, using that building as the 'Hygienic Fisheries' in First of the Summer Wine wasn't too much of a stretch. It's entirely possible that it was a chippie as far back as 1939.
Marianna
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amos hames
Dedicated Member
Wow thanks for that. Very intresting. : )