The current post office was built as a hotel after the opening of Lightcliffe Station in 1850. Its main door faced what became Sutherland Road, as can be seen from the double frontage. From the 1920s the Sutcliffe family kept the newsagent’s, as the premises became. They were followed by Ridyard, Roper, Barron (Aubrey and Annie, who later ran the newsagent’s in the wooden hut at the end of Victoria Road in Bailiff Bridge) and Leonard Hall. At this time the post office, kept by a Mr. Sagar, was at Bleak House.
Next door was Purcell’s Bakers. Doris Lomas, who lived at Woodhead before moving to Waverley Crescent when the houses were built in 1937, sold bread and pastries for Purcell’s from door-to-door, carrying her wares in a basket covered with a tea towel. She also worked for Greenway’s at their Denholmegate Road shop. Purcell’s was taken over by George and Marion Barrett, George continuing the deliveries previously made by Doris Lomas.
Coppertop was a grocer’s shop, Toothill’s, until it was taken over by Mr. Walker, who ran the business with the assistance of a Mrs. Gee.
Next to the top of the row of five was a business selling clothes for babies, children and women. It was owned by, chronologically, Mesdames Ackroyd, Sykes, Holroyd and Bottomley, the last-named the wife of Derek Bottomley, chemistry master at Hipperholme Grammar School.
Finally, there was the Lightcliffe branch of the Brighouse and District Industrial Society – the Co-op. People remember the sawdust on the black-and-white tiled floor, the crane which hoisted bags of flour up to the store room, the sound of the bacon slicer. Going back to before the Second World War managers included Joe Booth, a Mr. Stead, Jack Whiteley, Joe Langley and, up to its closure in the 1970s, Mr. Kershaw.
RMH