7 & 8. Stony Stratford Songs

Stony Stratford songs:
7. Waking Up: Words: Rib Davis & Kevin Adams; Music: Rib Davis
8. Stony High Street: Words and Music: Eileen Rafferty

Stony Stratford, on the ancient Roman road Watling Street, was famed for its ancient coaching inns – ‘The Cock’ and ‘The Bull’. Alongside them, and extending throughout and beyond the High Street, were old rural businesses that had traded for generations. For example, listed in the 1832 Trades Directory[1] were myriad specialists for your everyday living: to help you in your work were saddlers and blacksmiths - even a pinmaker. Your home comforts and furnishings could be provided by a tinman and brazier, or a plumber and glazier; you could have your baskets and cabinets crafted, your mats and candles manufactured, and your furniture upholstered, dyed and scoured. Your appearance and bearing could be enhanced by a dozen High Street tailors as well as by lace-makers, haberdashers, dressmakers, watchmakers, milliners and straw-hat makers, boot-and-shoemakers, tanners and leather cutters - and a glover.

For your sustenance there were two millers, 13 butchers (including William ‘Porky’ Green, Pig Dealer), and 16 bakers; and for your leisure and enjoyment there were maltsters, wine-merchants, and – as in Eileen Rafferty’s song – the all-important confectioners as well, of course, as the publicans, all 38 of them!

‘The pubs used to open at 6 o’clock in the morning in those days, and the chaps who wanted could go in and have rum and milk and then go into work losing a quarter of an hour. There was not a great deal of drunkenness at that time.’ Bill Elliott (LAMK)

‘Those days’ of the early 20th century were the focus of the life story of Stony resident Tom Worker, born in 1902 – Worker By Name - for which these two songs were composed[2]. Many of the shops he grew up with endured throughout his lifetime – such as Canvins the butchers, or as its sign announced: ‘Wholesale & Retail Purveyors of Meat’; and both Odells and Cox and Robinson were among the longest-established, centuries-old businesses in in the town.

Even in the 1950s and ‘60s, Stony had a cornucopia of trades and shops:
‘You could buy absolutely anything in Stony, from a goldfish bowl to a bowler hat. I can still remember most of the original shops [then] from the top to the bottom - and the names of all the pubs! I am sure many local people still spend many happy hours recalling the names of the shops and what you could buy and where – and how much for in those days! My favourite shopping was going to the bakers on the Market Square. Cowleys bakers had been there for centuries, and it was a shop in what must have once been a little front room with the bakery at the back. I remember Mr Cowley had a little horse-drawn cart and was seen delivering bread all round Stony and out to the villages. The smell of that bread and the little bread rolls while waiting to be served will remain with me forever.’[3] Helen Aylott

[1] From Wolverton & District Archaeological & Historical Society - Historic Trade Directories for Stony Stratford (mkheritage.org.uk)
[2] Worker By Name is the community musical documentary drama produced by Living Archive in 1992, based on Tom Worker’s memoirs, available in digital form at Living Archive | A living history of Milton Keynes
A link is available both these Stony songs on the 2009 Living Archive Band album All That’s Changed Vol 2 on Track 5 (up to 2min 10sec:) Stony Stratford | The Living Archive Band (bandcamp.com)
[3] See more of Helen’s memories at Helen Aylott | Stony Stratford, Creative IT Course | Living Archive