DOVER KENT ARCHIVES

Page Updated:- Sunday, 07 March, 2021.

Published 19 December 2002

 

 

The Dover Street newsagent used to be quite a landmark in Folkestone with its amazing variety of postcards, spilling over apparently into an adjoining shop.
WHEN local history enthusiast and postcard collector Peter Hooper picked up his monthly copy of "Picture Postcard Monthly" he was struck by a familiar scene on the inside cover - a fine photograph of Parsons' the newsagent's shop.

Picture postcards galore were on display inside and outside the shop and the magazine was asking if any readers could identify the picture.

Peter, a member of Folkestone Local History Society, promptly rang the magazine to tell them he knew the shop, having recognised it as the one that used to be at 42 Dover Street, Folkestone.

But the magazine staff took some convincing. Another caller had "positively" identified the street as being in Blackheath! But Peter told them he would 'bet his life on it' being the shop he knew.

"I went to school with Robert Bliss, the son or grandson of the shopkeeper who had the newsagent's shop, and I knew it well!" He told me, just as he told the magazine.
Determined to back up his personal knowledge with solid evidence, Peter got in touch with Alan Taylor, Chairman of Folkestone Local History Society to see if he could lend him copies of his photographs of Dover Street in which the old shop appeared.

Alan was only too pleased to see a copy of the photo, which was new to him, and he was able to produce several old pictures of the street.

One of these clearly showed some of the same collection of advertising signs and placards outside the shop, proving it was the same!

Convincing

One photo, of 1927, showed a particularly narrow footpath outside Parsons' shop, while another, taken just before the war, pictured a procession of girl guides and Roman Catholic children going down the street when the shop was run by Mr Bliss.

A third showed the same shop after the war, while a fourth was of the old Central Picture Theatre in Folkestone which was advertising the film, "The Eagles Claw," the same as that being promoted by a poster
DOVER Street, once a narrow cobbled road running down towards the harbour. This photo, from the collection of local historian Alan Taylor, shows part of the former newsagents shop on the right, with enamelled advertising signs identical to those in Peter's postcard view. Dover Street, re-developed, is now called Harbour Way.
outside Parsons' shop in the photo printed by the magazine.

All this finally convinced the editor of the postcard magazine and he published the fact that Peter had positively identified the newsagents — but then the magazine printed the location as Dover Road, instead of Dover Street (now, of course, completely changed following rebuilding after the war, and renamed Harbour Way) and had to publish a correction!

The shop appears to have been owned by Parsons until 1927, when it was taken over by A.J. Bliss, proprietor until the early 1940s.

In 1944 that part of the street was hit by a German shell and stood derelict until the buildings were demolished in 1956 and the street redeveloped.
Amazingly, 12 years after the air raid some of the enamel signs in the rare postcard view were still there!

That fine Edwardian postcard, reproduced on this page, published by a Stockwell, London, firm, is now in Peter Hooper's collection.

What I should be interested to know, is whether the shop had anything to do with Messrs F.J. Parsons Ltd, formerly of Hastings, who were the original owners of the Folkestone Herald and other newspapers.

•A Herald reader particularly interested in Les Page's Dover Road School football team picture featured recently in Memories was Billy Doyle

- one of the boys in the picture.

Billy was one of the wartime evacuees to South Wales who stayed on after the war and still lives in Wales.
Game set and match to Pete!
 

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If anyone should have any a better picture than any on this page, or think I should add one they have, please email me at the following address:-

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