The Sales, Swindon.

The time had to come when the children could no longer cope with having Christmas money sitting in their piggy banks....the sales it had to be....

"A" shops like a man( at the age of 12)- all items purchased in three shops- completed in 30 minutes...

"O" is developing nicely- a number of shops gone into, some items tried on, a bit of pondering over whether to buy, some items purchased ( with receipts kept just in case) and a further trip planned later in the week.


A bit more information on the W W Hunter building:

Born in the east end of London, William Wallace Hunter moved to Swindon towards the end of the nineteenth century. In 1891 he lived over his furnishers shop at 24 Regent Circus with his wife and their two young sons. But by 1901 William had built his spacious showrooms on the corner of Regent Street and Edgeware Road and moved his family into a villa on Bath Road.

In around 1905 William Hunter developed two streets off Ferndale Road and named one of them Hunters Grove. According to Peter Sheldon and Richard Tomkins in their book Roadways, St Mary’s Grove was named in honour of his wife.

With the outbreak of war in 1914, two of William’s three sons answered the call to the colours. William’s youngest son, Second Lieutenant William Samuel Hunter served with the 9th Battalion of the Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment and was killed in action on February 1, 1916. He was 21 years old.

Newly married Ralph enlisted in 1915 and served with 345 Company in France from September 1915 to January 1916. He returned to Britain as a casualty and was later released for civil employment with the Royal Aircraft Factory at South Farnborough.

William and his wife Mary retired to Weston super Mare where he died in 1936, but it would appear that the family furnishers remained in business until at least the 1940s.