TRADITION, SWEET TREATS AND ECCENTRIC SHOPKEEPERS A HISTORY OF THE SEVENOAKS TUCK SHOP
Local shops and bakeries have provided centuries of snacks for peckish Sevenoaks students – with the Old Post Office acting as our tuck shop since 1898
The term‘ tuck shop’ has its origins in the late 18th century. The Tuck family traded as bakers, confectioners and pastry cooks, and their London shops not only sold food but were also popular meeting places. A small shop selling sweets, snacks and soft drinks, along with social interaction, is associated particularly with independent schools( who of course also had their tradition of‘ tuck boxes’). Shops could be on or off site but local enough to be considered an intrinsic part of the campus. One identifying feature is their idiosyncratic names: The Lun( Merchant Taylors’); The Grubber( Tonbridge and Repton); Crack( Charterhouse); Rowlands( Eton) and, of course, Mr P’ s( Sevenoaks School).
From the mid-19th century, the area around the school was populated with bakeries, grocery shops and confectioners. Jane Edwards in her 1863 Recollections of Old Sevenoaks recalled from her childhood the jellies and buns in Mrs Chard’ s shop on the corner of Oak Lane. Cyril Bailey( OS 1884) remembered visiting the bakery of Mother Eames,‘ a kindly, cheery body who took an interest in us and we liked her, but we liked still better her buns, which had a peculiar flavour of their own’. By the turn of the century an establishment had opened which would come to represent the‘ official’ Sevenoaks School tuck shop. From 1898, number 13 High Street was taken over by John and Louisa Woods who added a sub-post office and provided sweet treats for pupils.‘ Ma Woods’ was remembered by many Old Sennockians, including Ron Terry( OS 1937), who described her best-selling tuck as‘ milky lunches, whipped cream walnuts and other sweets … hot cordials [ prepared ] in a small room behind the shop, lit by a candle to ensure the kettle was boiling’( Old Corners of Sevenoaks).
Within a decade, another shop had opened – Budgens – run by George and Mary Ann Budgen, whose son Bert later expanded the business.‘ The heart of Budgens was Bert himself … that queer shop of his … the strange signs and bottles dating back 50 or 60 years,’ remembered Headmaster Kim Taylor of his school days in the 1930s. Bert died in 1959 and
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