Fruit and veg from the garden of Eden

He was Albert Farmer Eden who, at the height of his commercial success, had four shops in Worcester, selling fruit, veg, fish, poultry and meat, plus an antiques business and a demolition firm.

I've learned a great deal about Farmer Eden in the wake of publishing what I deemed a "mystery" photograph in a recent Memory Lane.

It was a vintage view of a AF Eden shop, but I didn't know the location, the date or the personalities pictured.

Since then, however, several readers have responded with significant information, particularly one woman who kindly pointed me in the direction of Farmer Eden's eldest son, William (Bill) Eden, still living in Worcester.

I immediately contacted him, and he arranged a local get-together, also with his brother Robert (Bobby) Eden, who came down specially from Birmingham, for the meeting to tell me all about their late father.

Albert Farmer Eden was born in 1900, at Badsey, near Evesham, the village where the Edens had lived for several generations. After leaving school, Farmer had a job as a butcher's boy at a shop in The Shambles, Worcester, and later moved to the Faithful City, when he set up home at North Quay with his wife, Emily Beatrice Bozward.

She was from a well-known and long-established Worcester family. Her mother "Grannie" Bozward ran a popular eating place in Lowesmoor, where sausages and mash were among the specialities, and it was said that she was related through her maternal line to the Scott family, including the legendary "Scott of the Antarctic."

Farmer and Emily Bozward's riverside home at North Quay was at the end of Dolday.

"It was a stone house which had only one ground floor room with a fireplace, and there was no inside toilet, running water, gas, electric nor other mod cons," recalls Bill Eden, who was born there.

It was in the early 1920s that the ambitious Farmer Eden, still a young man, set up in business on his own, when he opened a shop at 27 Broad Street, as a pork butcher. It was on the north side of the street, next door to the bakery and confectionery business of Harold Hopkins, later an alderman and Mayor of Worcester.

The Eden family moved to live over this shop, which later became mainly a fruit and veg outlet. Farmer also expanded his business when he had a second shop created in the rear part of the City Market Hall at The Shambles. It was numbered 19b The Shambles - and it is this shop which was featured as the recent "mystery" picture.

Again, fruit and veg were the prime fare though Farmer Eden also sold fish, meat and poultry.

As a further expansion, he opened another fruit and veg shop at the other end of The Shambles, next to the once-familiar but long-lost black and white mediaeval shop of ironmongers J and F Hall at the corner with Church Street.

Farmer Eden also bought a row of small shops and other premises along the Golden Lion Arcade off The Shambles, and it was in one of these units that he began his antiques business.

A demolition firm was a further branch of his many business activities, as was the opening of a shop in Rose Avenue, Tolladine. Further afield too, he also set up a fruit and veg market stall in the main square at Evesham. It was to remain a popular feature of the town's outdoor market scene until about 10 years ago.

Farmer and Emily Eden had four children, all sons - William, Thomas, Charles and Robert - who, from boys, were expected to work whenever possible in their father's shops. Their mother was already a key figure in the businesses.

Bobby Eden, now aged 65, says that, as the youngest son, he was treated as the "dogsbody" by his father who was "a hard man" to his sons.

"His prime objective in life was, work, work, work!"

Eighty years-old Bill Eden agrees that Farmer was a hard taskmaster. "After we left school, he expected us to work seven-days-a-week, 16-hours-a-day - all for just £1."

However, despite the unrelenting work ethic of Farmer Eden, his sons suggest that their mother was "the mainstay of the business." She too had a hard nose for trade and would often become angry over apparent tiny shortages in the tills.

Bobby explains that when cash registers arrived, they had two-level tills inside them, and there were a few occasions when, cashing up at the end of the day, their mother spotted that the takings were half-a-crown or two shillings short.

"She went mad and said: 'Who's had it?' In fact, it was when the tills were eventually pulled out for some reason, that a small accumulation of half-crowns and two shilling pieces was discovered behind them. The coins must have flipped over the back of the tills!"

In the run-up to each Christmas, Farmer Eden would have bumper supplies of turkeys, chickens, pheasants and rabbits to display in his shop fronts. Bobby vividly recalls that his father would "bribe" the headmaster of St Martin's School to allow him occasional days off to join Farmer on trips to pick up poultry and rabbits.

"I especially remember one drive down to Abergavenny, in my father's Austin 16. We loaded up with rabbits, but there were so many we couldn't get them all in the vehicle and had several hanging outside from the big headlights."

Bobby also laughs still, as he recalls when his father bought a large monkey to act as "guard dog" in his shop at 19b The Shambles.

"It was kept in a back room and was certainly a deterrent to anyone breaking in, but it quickly became more of a nuisance than a useful pet.

"Mother's brother, Uncle Joe Bozward worked in the shop and always wore a flat cap. However, one day he came in without it, and the monkey, not recognising him, hit him over the head with a mallet, knocking him out!

"Father also sometimes took the monkey with him to the pub where it got up to all sorts of antics after half-a-pint of beer, but he eventually became so fed-up with monkey that he got rid of it. There had been occasions when the monkey had locked father out of his car and sat in the driver's seat banging repeatedly on the horn.

"I suppose the monkey was with us for about nine months, and it was certainly a hilarious time."

Farmer Eden's great leisure-time passion was for boxing. He supported local and regional bouts and once went to America, to see the world heavyweight fight between the legendary Joe Louis and Billy Conn. He planned to be in the USA for a few days but stayed four months!

Bill Eden has great nostalgia for the "good old days" in The Shambles, particularly for the 1930s and 40s.

"For its size, it was the busiest 200 yards in England and would be packed with people buying at its many meat, fish and fruit and veg shops. The atmosphere was always jovial and electrifying.

"In fact, on Saturday afternoons and evenings, shoppers could hardly get in because The Shambles was so crowded, particularly with poorer people hoping to pick-up bargains before shopkeepers closed down for the weekend. In those days, the traders had no refrigerators in which to keep their perishable goods so they had to sell them off cheaply. For two bob, a woman could pick up enough meat and veg to feed a family of six for days.

A less convivial facet of Shambles life in those times was the regular slanging match between the Edens and their intense fruit and veg rivals, the Thompsons, whose shop was on the other side of the street.

Passers-by couldn't fail to hear, and no doubt be amused, as the trading competitors hurled abuse across the street at one another and criticised the quality of their rivals' respective displays of fruit and veg.

Nevertheless, from amid this competitive battle zone somehow blossomed an enduring romance - sort of Romeo and Julie-style, a la Montagues and Capulets, but with a far less tragic outcome.

Bill Eden fell for the girl across the street, Margaret Thompson, and they have now been married for more than 60 years. She is 91 and the only surviving member of what was a large family of Thompsons. who were shopkeepers and traders in Worcester for generations.

Bobby explains that he and two other of Farmer Eden's sons - Charles and Thomas - were not prepared to endure the hard life their father led them so, as soon as they were old and independent enough, they left.

Thomas Eden served in torpedo boats towards the end of the Second World War and, in 1958, emigrated to Australia, without telling anyone or leaving a forwarding address. He has not been in touch with his brothers and family back home since, though it is believed he may now be living in the north-west of England. He will be 75-years-old.

Charles Eden took over his father's demolition business and founded his own extremely successful demolition firm, based at Worcester. He later branched out too with an equally thriving waste disposal business which is still very much in operation in and around Worcester today, now run by one of his sons.

Charlie Eden remains a leading figure in Worcester's commercial history of the past half-century.

Bobby Eden left Worcester to work for fruit and vegetable suppliers in Birmingham, later joining the major company, Geest. He became director of one of its pre-packing units and was eventually able to acquire this as a management buy-out.

He sold the business at 60 to take early retirement and devote more of his time to his great passion, golf - a sport he did not take up until his 30s.

He is a scratch golfer and has played with the likes of Faldo, Lyle and Woosnam. He was the Staffordshire Amateur Champion in 1980, first team Staffs County captain for a time, and recently won the Staffordshire Amateur Seniors Championship.

Bill Eden was the only son to remain with his father, working in the various shops until the war when he saw active service at home and abroad with the RAF, being wounded twice.

In 1946, Bill took over his father's fruit and veg shop at 27 Broad Street and ran this for 12 years, before taking on the market stall at Evesham. This he ran until about 10 years ago, retiring beyond the age of 70.

Because of its "olde worlde" charm, the Evesham stall was once featured over two pages in The Tatler magazine and, when the stall finally closed, the Evesham Journal mourned its passing with an article under the heading "Shopping on Saturdays in Evesham will never be the same again!"

During the expansion of his business interests, Farmer Eden and his wife moved from above the Broad Street shop to a house in Ombersley Road though, alas, Emily died there in 1953, at the age of 53.

By coincidence, Farmer Eden died in 1966, at the age of 66. He had spent his last three years in a bungalow in Reservoir Road, Rainbow Hill.

His Shambles shops had been acquired by developers at various times while the one at 27 Broad Street was among the many properties bought and pulled down to make way for the Blackfriars Square development.

Moving into a further generation of the Eden dynasty, sons of Charlie and Bobby are extremely successful businessmen. It is believed too, that a daughter of Thomas Eden is now a leading barrister, possibly a QC, in this country.

Bill Eden's dearest wish, though unlikely to be fulfilled, is to see all four Eden brothers and their families get together for a grand re-union.

"I'd love for us all to be together round a table again though it's not likely to happen, certainly if Thomas can't be traced. Our combined ages as brothers now total 290 years."

6 Several Memory Lane readers were in touch to identify the location of the AF Eden shop in the "mystery" picture, among them Peter Dowty of Silverdale Avenue, Worcester; Eric King of Ombersley Road, Worcester; Margaret Elgar of Worcester; Richard Moule of Cusop, Herefordshire, and Eric Price of Pickersleigh Road, Malvern, who particularly recalls the "war of words" across The Shambles by the Thompsons and the Edens.

And from much further afield I also had a letter from Norman Bowcott of Wigginton, near Tring, Hertfordshire.

He kindly sent me diagrams and a long list of all The Shambles traders in 1939, including, of course, AF Eden.