A MOUTHWATERING insight into the 'supermarket' which supplied Bromsgrove families with their weekly box of groceries a century ago, has been uncovered by the new owners of a shop in the town centre.

Patricia and Antony Kent, who are opening the latest salon in their chain of UK Barber Shops at 42 High Street tomorrow have found an aged ready reckoner used by the old grocery business which once occupied the premises.

The little booklet, which was discovered underneath floorboards during restoration work, has tables which enabled the shopkeeper to calculate at a glance money totals made up of farthings, pence and shillings.

It also has a list of grocery products with their obsolete and now forgotten units of weight converted into hundredweights, pounds and ounces and it even has tables for converting the values of ancient coins and currencies now lost in the mists of time.

The grocery products include a bushel of apples (18.2 kilos), a Jamaican bag of ginger (50.9 kilos), a puncheon of molasses (509 kilos), a stone of cheese (7.3 kilos), a tierce of coffee (259.5 kilos), a seron of almonds (63.6 kilos) and a firkin of soap (29.1 kilos).

The obsolete coins and currencies include the British Gold Angel (worth 50p), the Old Scots Bodle (0.07p), the French Sou (0.21p), the Russian Imperial Half-Ducat (just under 80p), the Austrian Maria Theresa Thaler (15p) and the Turkish Piastre (0.8p).

"When I came across this little book and started reading it, you could have knocked me over with a Kent Cap," said Antony whose company owns 15 other salons across the West Midlands.

"By the way, a Kent Cap is not my hat. It was apparently once the technical name for a sheet of brown paper measuring 21 by 18 inches or about 53 by 46 centimetres.

"I suppose that this book was really the equivalent at the time of the electronic calculator that many shopkeepers use today - only it is much more interesting. It opens up a distant view of a gentler, more picturesque world which is long gone."

Patricia and Antony became so intrigued by their find - which is thought to date from the late 19th or early 20th Century - that they started carrying out their own research. They discovered that their shop was originally a grocer's which traded under the name of Francis Ince and kept going into the 1950's.

"We have spoken to local people who remember it when they were children and it really was the most amazing place," Antony added.

"There were apparently sides of bacon hanging on the walls and the most wonderful aroma of fresh coffee and tea which were kept in large casks and boxes and were sold loose instead of being pre-packaged.

"And people have recalled how the shop manager would deliver their parents' groceries personally every week in a little van."

The new salon, which has eight barbers' chairs and is the second largest branch in the group, is creating four new jobs for the town.