The building has escaped redevelopment but its change of use is very significant.
We are looking for a photograph of the building as a butchers but apart from changes to the upper windows and advertising there has been very little change. This was originally Buckenham Butchers which was taken over in later years by Barnes. There was an abattoir at the back owned by the shop but how far back this association goes is yet to be ascertained. It is known that there was at least one other abattoir in the locality.
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My dad used to work in the slaughter house and then started working in the shops which was called Dick Barnes by then. I remember going there with my mum and sister after school to meet my dad.
A LHR school friend, Margaret Cousins’, father was a manager of this branch of Buckenhams, and they lived in the house attached to the shop. I believe her family moved to Grays in the early 1960’s. I do not remember any mention of an abattoir during my acquaintance with Margaret.
Buckenhams had two shops in the High Road and a slaughterhouse behind the one near the Fortune of War. When Dick Barnes took over the slaughterhouse, they came there from their other slaughterhouse called Southfields Abbatior, which the Ford Motor Company bought from them and where they built the Dunton Research Centre. They knocked the abbatior down. The orchard is still there today on the south side of the A127 just before the slip road for the flyover opposite the Southfields Cottages and Kennels. Dick Barnes had a house built in Western Road, Billericay just up from Hart’s Corner on the right hand side and named that house ‘Southfields’.
My Uncle was the Butcher at Buckenham Butchers in Laindon. His name was Phil Cousins, and he lived in the house behind the shop with my Aunt, Ena, and my three cousins, Dennis, Peter and Margaret.
As the opening statement correctly says, there was an abattoir (or the ‘slaughter house’ as it was called at the time), at the back of the shop.
I remember visiting and sometimes staying there during the 1960s.
I remember cyclying past the butchers on my way to school, mum used to send me there on my bike to get meat. I remember going to school with boy whose mum and dad ran the butchers their name was Cousins.
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