Monday, August 13, 2012

Thames (NZ): Parawai Shops aka Fenton Street Shops

While updating the business registers for The Treasury at Thames, I came across what could be the first shops that were established in Fenton Street. Many of you that went to school at Thames South of my generation, will remember these shops in the 1960s. The rush to get there and get your ordered school lunch..maybe a filled roll plus an orange from the Grocer next door if you had a threepence/sixpence to spare.

In 1895 Mrs Henry GRUBB is reported as having established a shop and Post Office Agency on land adjoining the Maori Meeting House. The bottom photo shows the location of the shop on the corner of Fenton and Heale Streets, known then as MRS GRUBB'S Post Office Store, Parawai.
Thames Star 18/2/1895

Below:  The red arrow points to the location of Mrs Grubb's Parawai Store - on the corner of Fenton and Heale Streets.
The Yellow arrow arrow indicating the site of the Meeting House. In this later photo it is being removed to the Auckland Museum, where it proudly stands today.
Top right is the Thames South School.
(Photo: Merv Cunningham Collection - The Treasury)


In April of 1895, a notice appears in the paper that D PEAT occupies Mrs GRUBB's old premises in Heale Street and that Mrs Grubb's is in the shop at the corner of Heale and Fenton Street. Raising the new dilemma to be explored...did Mrs Grubb move along the street?