Sweet Success

It was granny to whom she was incredibly close, it was granny who inspired her to set up in business for herself and it was granny who provided the name for the business which, in just a year, has become a magnet for visitors and locals in Ross-on-Wye.

Grandma Peggy's is the just the kind of sweet shop that - well, your grandma used to know - but Alison, who lives in Belmont, Hereford, has gone a stage further than just selling traditional confectionery.

This is a family business with a real emphasis on family. Not only does the store look as if it's been swept up by a time machine from the 1930s and deposited in Ross's 2006 High Street, Alison has incorporated into it a museum dedicated to her family.

Indeed the business logo, featuring a smiling young woman of the 1930s, is actually based on Grandma Peggy, when she was in her prime, smiles Alison.

Rainbow row upon row of multi-coloured jars give a tempting hint of the tasty joys which await inside, while the likes of Glenn Miller and Judy Garland can be heard in the background as staff, dressed in appropriate uniforms (waistcoats, long aprons and grand-dad collared shirts) serve enthusaistic customers.

There's an art deco theme and photographs from earlier generations of Alison's family adorn the walls. Pride of place, of course, is the picture of grandma herself, wearing her WRVS uniform during the Second World War. Alongside it is another of her husband , the fabulously titled Augustine Kenyon O'Leary, also in his war uniform.

"I don't claim to be historically accurate but 99.9% of all our visitors say it's authentic," Alison points out.

"I wanted to make it more of an attraction than just a sweet shop.

"Places like Ironbridge Museum and the Welsh Folk Museum all thrive because people love to look back. I took my business inspiration from there."

But she's always had an interested in the 1930s, she admits, loving the decade's style, extravagance and opulence.

"I would much rather sit down and watch a black and white Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire or Deanna Durbin film," she says.

So who was the woman, born in 1917, who was such an inspiration? Quite a character, according to Alison.

"I had an absolutely fantastic childhood and was very close to her but what made me appreciate her and respect her as an inividual was that between 1991 and 1996 she lost her only daughter, my mum, and her husband for 60 years - and she survived that.

"She didn't go downhill, she broke her hip two days after my mum died, but had it pinned and was sitting up next to her bed immediately - she was quite an inspiring person. So strong and a bit quirky with her ways.

"She had a really good sense of humour and she was just a kind, gentle person but very stubborn!

"She was an atheist all her life - Christianity was just hocus pocus to her - and she was very British, fearless even.

"If she saw someone cycling on the pavement she would tell hem off - even if they were 6ft tall."

Although she lives in Hereford now, Alison comes from Bridgend, in south Wales and she can just remember the shop, half pawnbroker's-half workware store, which her grandmother and grandfather owned.

Grandfather Ken, whose own father came from Ireland, she says, arrived from Birkenhead after his father, extraordinarily enough, won £1,000 in a Daily Sketch competition.

"That was a lot of money in the 1930s and they thought about what they should do so moved to Bridgend as they had friends in the south Wales area and set up this shop," says Alison.

It's the wealth of all the family detail (it covers 110 years of the different independent businesses, all on her grandmother's side) that makes the museum side of Grandma Peggy's so fascinating.

Alison, the self-styled "Queen of the internet" when it comes to geneaology, also acknowledges that she's been able to discover much of the story through being lucky enough to know her great grandparents.

"They were born in the 1894 and '96 and I knew my grandmother's mother until I was 15, so also knew a lot about that generation.

"We have a lot of photographs which my grandmother, in the last couple of years of her life, spent a lot of time writing on the back of all of them.

"I'm obsessed with family history, I uncovered the fact that my great-great- grandparents owned a sweetie shop themselves at Bridgend."

So it seems things have come full circle. The family is back in the sweetie business and it's proving a hit too.

But would it have been a hit with Grandma Peggy? Well it appears so.

Her sister - Alison's great aunt, Joan, is still alive and well and living near Bridgend and has been up to visit the new venture.

Not only did she think the shop was fantastic, Alison says, she told her great-niece: "Your grandmother would be tickled pink and proud beyond."

IT'S a big step going into business for yourself but, once the opportunity came up, Alison never had any doubts.

Originally from Bridgend, she came to Hereford in 1994 to work for MFI. She'd originally been covering a maternity contract for the company in Cardiff and, when that was due to end, asked if there were any other opportunities.

She spent another eight years working for MFI in the city and Worcester before moving on to spend four years at Herefordshire Council.

"I've always regretted the fact that my mother didn't take over my grandparents' shop and, as early as when I was 18, my dad was toying with the idea of buying the village shop where we lived for me to run," she says.

"Then he decided that I needed to spread my wings a bit and not get stuck to the village where I grew up but it was always in the back of my mind."

It was during a meal at a balti house that the sweet shop idea emerged and things just flowed from there.

She left the council in 2003 and opened Grandma Peggy's in August 2005.

A big step undoubtedly yet, Alison says, she never had any doubts or felt apprehensive about the risks. Maybe granny was watching? Yes, she acknowledges. "It is weird but it does feel right." The sweets are not made on the premises but Alison has gone to great lengths to supply original receipes and now uses a family-run business which has been in existence since 1862.

"That's the key," she insists, "making sure the sweets are orignal and traditional. We have older people who say they haven't seen them for years."

Particular favourites with older clients, the men in particular, are dolly mixtures and jelly babies. The jelly babies, she points out, are of the original kind. "Bassetts are the original makers but they've changed their recipe over the years and these are the proper white dusted jelly babies," Alison says.

"Dolly mixtures have become slightly harder in the last 10 or 15 years and, again, our supplier makes them to the original style and recipe so they taste like the ones I remember in the 1970s.

Another popular buy are Pontefract Cakes - a black disc of licquorice gum.

The whole Grandma Peggy's experience has resulted in Alison becoming quite a confectionary connoisseur.

"I've gone to lengths to make sure I know what I'm talking about," she says.

"For example, we get a lot of requests for certain sweets which I know are trademarked but are not being made any more so I can tell people that it's no good looking for them.

"I also know where certain sweets, can be found, who the original makers were, which company bought which company."

Now thoughts are turning towards Christmas - the time of year when the average person's sweets consumption probably doubles.

Alison finds that the rose and violet creams prove a popular choice.

"We sell a lot all year but particularly at Christmas, they seem to be the thing to get for Granny," she says.

Other festive sweet treats include Turkish delight and, as table gifts, Christmas trees containing sweets. New for this year are jelly fruit slices.