Brothers with a meating of minds

Checketts of Ombersley, now into its fourth generation in the business, started from humble beginnings in 1902 and has now been widely-known for decades for the quality of its locally-produced meats and for its national and international prize-winning sausages and pies.

But the Checketts' dynasty can be traced back much further than the past 100 years in the meat trade.

Previous generations were farmers in South Worcestershire, and the family tree has been researched back to one William Checketts of Bishampton, near Pershore, who died in 1551.

Brothers Tony and Phil Checketts, who currently head the family firm, know that their great-great-grandfather Giles Checketts (1796-1875) and great-grandfather, also Giles Checketts (1844-1923), ran Walcot Farm, Drakes Broughton, and that this substantial agricultural holding remained in the family for a century from around 1850.

Giles Checketts junior was married in 1878, to Esther Ewins, whose family kept the New Inn at Pinvin. It was the second of their five sons, Thomas Green Checketts (born 1882) who was to found the family firm of butchers.

On leaving school , Thomas couldn't find work on the family farm at Walcot, so he went as a boy of 14 to the employ of a butcher in Kempsey.

Then in 1902, at just 20, he courageously set up in business on his own in small thatched premises on the main road in Wyre Piddle. He even had to borrow money to buy his first set of implements.

However, his butcher's shop flourished and, in 1911, he moved to 74 Ombersley Road, Worcester, where his trade continued to expand. He married Ethel Ann Day of Bishampton, and they went on to have five children - two sons and three daughters.

The next and most significant milestone in the Checketts' saga came in 1925, when Thomas sought another move to larger premises and had to choose between a shop in Ombersley and one in Kidderminster.

"Luckily, our grandfather decided on Ombersley, which certainly turned out to be a very good move because of the excellent location of the shop and because customers can park right outside," said Phil Checketts.

From 1925, Thomas Green Checketts rented the substantial property in Main Road, Ombersley, known as Church Villa and owned, like so much of the historic village, by Lord Sandys of Ombersley Court.

Church Villa had been purpose-built in 1830 to serve as a butchers and had stock pens and an abattoir at the rear for slaughtering. Thomas, his wife and five children also set up home in Church Villa. Thomas insisted on sleeping in a rear bedroom so that he could hear at night if the stock in the yard below were all right.

His elder son, Thomas Henry Checketts, was just 10 at the time of the move to Ombersley and literally grew up in the business, helping out at the shop from boyhood and joining the family firm after leaving Ombersley School at 14. Among his first tasks was making deliveries on the shop's carrier bike.

In those times, Thomas senior would have travelled into Worcester most weeks to buy cattle, sheep and pigs at the city's cattle market. These would then be herded back on foot by road and byways to Ombersley for slaughter at the Church Villa abattoir.

Thomas senior's eldest daughter, Esther, who now lives in the Lake District, vividly recalls how her brother Thomas Henry would often go by bike to Worcester on market days and then go ahead of the drovers on his bicycle for the return trek to Ombersley, hopping off to close field and garden gates along the route. The journey took several hours.

In 1940, Thomas junior went away on war service with the Royal Artillery, and his place in the firm was taken by his younger brother William (Bill) until he too was called up into the RAF.

On de-mob, both brothers returned to the business though Bill also worked part-time for a baker in Ombersley, until leaving the village for a life-time career in banking, starting with the Midland in Birmingham. Bill, a past pupil of both The King's and Royal Grammar schools in Worcester, now lives in Droitwich.

Thomas Henry Checketts took over the family business at Ombersley in the early 1950s, when his father decided to retire. Thomas senior died in 1958, having outlived his wife by six years.

In 1947, Thomas Henry Checketts had married Evelyn Morris of Barrow-in-Furness, whom he had met during a wartime posting in the North-West, and they made their home over the shop at Church Villa. There, they brought up their four sons - Anthony (born 1948) and Philip (1950), now principals in the family firm, Peter (1953), an insurance broker, and Andrew (1955), a headmaster in Birmingham.

Like his father, Thomas Henry occasionally went to Worcester market to make purchases but he gradually bought more and more cattle, sheep and pigs direct from local Worcestershire farms.

It was the start of what has become Checketts' firm policy to primarily buy locally-produced meat. Posters in the shop still tell customers which particular farm their meat had come from that week.

Slaughtering continued at the firm's abattoir at Ombersley until only three years ago. Checketts now send animals to a Bromsgrove abattoir for slaughter.

In the early 1950s, Thomas Henry was given the opportunity by Lord Sandys to buy the freehold of Church Villa and did so, as did Don Everton with the neighbouring store of Evertons, the wine merchants and grocers.

The Ombersley shop eventually ceased to be the Checketts' family home in 1972 when Thomas and wife Evelyn moved to live in Bevere Close, Worcester. Thomas retired from the firm at the age of 65 but kept going back to the shop regularly "to do a bit and to help out" until he was about 80.

On the social side in retirement, he was a member of Probus and of the Hadley Bowling Green bowls club. He died in 1998, at the age of 82.

His wife Evelyn was also involved in the business for some years with office work and "doing the books," and she still looks in at the shop about once a week.

Son Tony joined the family firm in 1964, after attending, like all his brothers, the Sacred Heart College at Droitwich. His brother Phil decided to go first into engineering with Archdales at Worcester, but, after five years, succumbed to the pull of the family business and joined it in 1970.

Phil's wife Pamela is company secretary, and the fourth generation of the Checketts family in the firm is represented by their 25-year-old son David, who is shop manager.

Tony and Phil Checketts are members of the nation's Institute of Meat and say their trading policy is to offer customers a large selection of best quality meats and meat products with personal service and attention. This is why people come from near, far and wide to patronise their Ombersley shop.

Naturally, Tony and Phil are extremely proud, too, of the many prestigious first prizes won by their sausages and pies in national and international competitions. Their father first built up Checketts' sausage trade, and they have developed and enlarged the range beyond the traditional beef or pork sausages to such varieties as wild boar, venison and lamb and apricot.

In the last three years, they have also gone more into the production of home-made pies such as steak and kidney, chicken and leek, and pork pies.

Tony, who lives at Bevere, and Phil, whose family home is at Sinton Green, are now busy planning a party and other events through the year to mark the Checketts' centenary.

However, the family firm is certainly not going to rest on its laurels.

Said Tony: "We are very grateful to have managed to bring our family business to this milestone and look forward to serving our customers for many more years to come. This commitment to the future is underlined by our intention to carry out a major re-fit to our shop in the very near future."