Author Topic: Shops in balsall Heath  (Read 1912 times)

Robertbyatt

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Shops in balsall Heath
« on: December 09, 2012, 06:10:30 PM »
Does anyone remember moores bookshop by the Mosley rd cinema ,you used to be able to buy or
Swap books my mom used to send me up there buy hank janson or nat carter detective paperbacks
She loved reading them! Rob.

Phil

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Re: Shops in balsall Heath
« Reply #1 on: December 09, 2012, 07:37:46 PM »
So thats how you spent your youth Rob, peering into the window of Moores dirty book shop window, it can just be seen here on the left hand side of the photo.
Phil died in 2020. RIP.

VanessaLinandSue

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Re: Shops in Balsall Heath: Moores Bookshop
« Reply #2 on: March 03, 2018, 11:01:44 PM »
We used to live there (above Moores bookshop) as students in 1974.  The cellar was full of supplies from a former tenant Southertons the Chemist. There were loads of empty medicine bottles in damp and rotting cardboard boxes which we loved to explore.  I still have  a small bottle with a glass stopper saying Southertons 417 Moseley Road with the slogan "Friday night is Amami Night"


We had to pick up  phone calls from the shop if our parents needed to contact us...down the stairs, through the sliding door into the shop.  I remember Mr Moore was a bit like a serious undertaker and the two ladies who worked there were always very friendly and always had reading material on their laps under the table!


For some reason they used to burn the stock from time to time in a brazier in the back yard where the bins were.  If we were lucky we could rescue the scorched mags and take them back upstairs to read.


We loved our time in Balsall Heath.  many of the streets behind us were being demolished - it was like a battlefield.  It cost me £7 a month to live there and all the electric was by 50p pieces in a meter so we had a pile of coins standing by!


Would love to see a picture...does anyone have one? my room was the right-hand arched window on the top floor...






Phil

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Re: Shops in balsall Heath
« Reply #3 on: March 04, 2018, 11:44:52 AM »
Hi VanessaLinandSue


First let me welcome you to the forum, then I must ask you if you have got your location right. Number 471 was located between Balsall Heath Road and Vincent Street and if I have got the location right at the back of you in 1974 would have been a skip yard and over the road was the Castle & Falcon public house. There was another book shop there that in my childhood was Clements Chemist and was next door to Goldstein Tailors.
Phil died in 2020. RIP.


 

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