24 January 2025

The Tuck Shop

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THE STORY OF THE TUCK SHOP

The term Tuck Shop has its origins in the late eighteenth 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. Today the concept of a small shop selling sweets, snacks and soft drinks along with social interaction is associated in this country in particular with independent schools. Some are on site, part of a main school shop also selling items such as uniform or stationery; some are 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 Ps at Sevenoaks.

From the mid nineteenth century the area around the school in Sevenoaks’ Upper High Street was populated by a variety of bakeries, grocery shops and confectioners, any number of which would have provided sustenance to the pupils during their school day. Jane Edwards in her 1863 Recollections of Old Sevenoaks recalled from her childhood the “jellies and buns [which] were always good” in Mrs Chard’s shop on the corner of Oak Lane. OS Cyril Bailey remembered visiting Mother Eames’ bakery in the early 1880s further up the road – “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 that century an establishment had opened which would come to represent the ‘official’ Sevenoaks School Tuckshop. No.13 High Street was originally a general grocery shop but from 1898 John and Louisa Wood took over, added a sub post office and began providing sweet treats for Sevenoaks pupils. Ma Wood’s specialities were “milky lunches, whipped cream walnuts and other sweets…[along with] hot cordials [prepared] in a small room behind the shop, lit by a candle to ensure the kettle was boiling” [Old Corners of Sevenoaks, Ron Terry].

Within a decade, another establishment had opened in the locality which would compete with the Old Post Office for both trade and sentimental attachment from Sevenoaks pupils – Budgens. George and Mary Ann Budgen ran a tobacconists and confectioners on Raley’s Corner; their son Bert expanded the business and sold everything from sweets and fireworks to fruit and washing powder, as well as being a furniture repairer. “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. A “charming old man, always chuckling” [OS Roger Barnard]; “a loyal supporter of Sevenoaks boys and, like the landlord of a village pub, an endless fount of school gossip” [OS Brian Gibbons]. He let boys run up ‘tick’ and allowed them to earn a “snowball or halfpenny chocolate horn” by helping behind the counter if short of money. Bert died in 1959, a year after his shop closed, and Kim Taylor made special reference to his “real wit and kindness” in his Headmaster’s Speech Day address that year.

Ma Woods left the Post Office on the death of Mr Woods in 1937 but under a succession of owners, including the infamous Ma Thornton in the 1940s, it has continued to serve tuck to Sevenoaks pupils right up to the present day. Since the early 1990s it has been run by Mr Patel – hence ‘Mr Ps’. OS Charles Rodmell was certain that “all the major food groups are covered in there (chocolate, sweets AND crisps)”. Social media posts on the tuck shop are essentially a listing of the classic confectionery sold there in old fashioned imperial measures: gummy bears, toffee crumble and fruit salads.

Mr Ps and Budgens were also the sources of more forbidden substances – “How many Sennockians bought their three Woodbines there and scarpered off to Knole Park for a quiet fag at lunchtime?” [OS Alan Smith]; or behind the cemetery wall with “no.6s bought singly” [OS Oliver Stephan]. Older OS will remember Mrs ‘Ma Higgs’ Walker calling from School House windows and charging a “Boy!” with fetching her daily cigarettes from the tuck shop; a place she also frequented in person on a regular basis for “any bits of gossip today?” [OS Newsletter 1990].

Perhaps the most cherished memory of the Old Post Office is the tradition of pupils, in particularly school leavers, signing their names on its ceiling. It has been a feature of the shop since as early as Ma Woods’ time – some names are there today, albeit from more recent generations after several (necessary) repaintings. An editorial in the Sennockian of December 1937 announced that “photographs of the ‘autographed’ ceiling of the Old Post Office (which was removed in October) can be purchased” there.

Whichever tuck shop they frequented, Sevenoaks alumni of all generations remember visits there as some of the fondest memories of their time at school. The “scruffy” shops were sources not just of provisions but also of comfort and friendliness; a glimmer of warmth in the midst of often spartan school surroundings. Perhaps Cyril Bailey summed it up best when he wondered, long after leaving the school, “whether such a simple friend as [Ma Eames] at the shop still exists – a great loss to the school and the town if she does not”.

Sally Robbins
Archivist

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