Photographs

Leicester: Museums

Shops

KEGWORTH. Co-op. The Community Centre .. was created by the conversion of premises that formerly housed the Co-op, built in 1903, with its butchery, grocery and drapers departments. Each department conveyed money to a central cashier's desk in containers, propelled by elastic, which ran on overhead tracks; receipts and change were returned by the same means." Kegworth Village Association and museum. Down the Dragwell (2009)

LEICESTER. Beehive (drapers), Silver Street. Extensive Cash Ball and ? wire systems. Shop closed in 1962. Part of system was reinstalled in Leicester Museum of Costume and has now been transferred to the Newarke Houses Museum. (I saw in both locations.)
Leicester Mercury, 13 October 1962, p.6 describes the closing of the shop and has photographs of Miss Grimsley raising a Cash Ball for despatch and of Leicester Museum representatives dismantling the railway. (One was Neil Cossens who went on to become Director of the Science Museum.) The operation of the wire system is also described.
Hollins reproduces the photograph of 'The old cash by railway system' and also has a photograph of the frontage on Silver Street.

LEICESTER. Bennetts (hardware). Wire system in 1950s. (H.Boynton)

LEICESTER. Co-op. Overhead wire system. Not open before WW1. (Don Hurd posting to Leicestershire-Plus-L list, 10 Jun 1999). "To see and hear cash disappearing in capsules up magical tubes to disappear to Lord knows where, what wonders!" Membership matters: newsletter for Midlands Co-op members, Sept. 2006, p.6

LEICESTER. "Provision store on Hotel Street, possibly R.L.Ackinson at no. 18" . Photograph showing three Rapid Wire stations in Images of Leicester (Derby: Breedon Books, 1995) p. 91. There is a smaller version in Hollins.

LEICESTER. Freeman, Hardy and Willis (shoe shop), Cheapside. Pneumatic tube system until ca. 1970. (L.Hammond and personal recollection)

LEICESTER. Grices and Cordells, High Street.

LEICESTER. Hawkins (drapers), Cheapside. Wire system in 1950s. H.Boynton

LEICESTER. Herringtons (drapers), Market Street. Cash carrier. H. Boynton

LEICESTER. Hope Bros (gents' outfitters), Gallowtree Gate. Pneumatic tube system. H.Boynton

LEICESTER. Lewis's (dept store), Humberstone Gate. "Lewis's had a modern vacuum system. Your transaction was inserted into a metal container, this was set on its way down a pipe and returned a minute later accompanied by a loud plop." Leicester Mercury, 12 Dec. 2005, p.16. Also personal recollection. Approximately 60 pneumatic tubes. Leicester Mercury 3 Sep. 2010
• External photograph at English Heritage website

LEICESTER. Melia Bros (grocers), Gallowtree Gate. Pneumatic tube system. H.Boynton

LEICESTER. Midland Educational, Market Street. Pneumatic tube system on at least three floors. A favourite haunt for books and Meccano. Also H.Boynton

LEICESTER. R.Morley & Sons (family draper), 14 Cheapside. "Then on to Morley's to buy some cotton (just loved the overhead cash system there)." Leicester Mercury 14 Sep. 2000, p.14 . (Also H.Boynton). There are photographs of the exterior and interior in Paul and Yolanda Courtney. The changing face of Leicester (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1995) p.81

LEICESTER. Henry Raiment (grocers), Granby Street, opposite Grand Hotel. Tube system. T.W.Buxton and H.Boynton

LEICESTER. Simpkin and James (high-class grocers), Market Place. Pneumatic tube system. Specification. Carrier was still operating in 1950s. My recollection and H.Boynton

LEICESTER. Smiths (outfitters and toys), High Street. Tube system in 1950s. The source of my school uniforms! Also H.Boynton

LEICESTER. Vickers Mount (grocers), 31/33 Gallowtree Gate. "When he had served a customer he had to operate the overhead system for carrying the customer’s money to the kiosk in the corner of the shop where it was cashed by the cashier and the change returned to the counter. Each container for the money consisted of a cylinder of wood which was twisted (I think) to open and shut then operated to send it skimming over the heads of the customers. Later versions used a vacuum system but this system used overhead wires." WW2 People's War website
•"As a girl it was Mrs Bailey's fortnightly errand to go into town to pay the grocery bill at Vickers, Mount. 'I'd sit on a tall stool and watch fascinated as my money and bill were sent whizzing on wires via the overhead carrier system to the cash office,' she recalls." Leicester Mercury, 8 Jan. 2003

LOUGHBOROUGH. Pickworths. Wire system. Quorndon Magazine, Summer 2002

LOUGHBOROUGH. Pilsbury & Youngs, drapers opposite Baxtergate. Wire system. Jean Carswell (ed.) Loughborough as I remember it

MELTON MOWBRAY. Co-op. Wire system. "Another memorable shop in Melton was the Co-op. The best thing here was the wonderful system of obtaining change. There were no tills at the counters, so if you paid with a ten shilling note, this was put with details of your purchase into a metal cylinder, and sent by overhead wire to the cashier who worked in an office high up on one wall. She would put in your change and send it back down to the shop assistants. Three of the overhead wires ran to counters in the shop, but others ran through holes in the wall to the Co-op butcher and cobbler next door! The cylinders were sent up to the cashier by a spring mchanism, but came back by means of gravity" David Bell: Those were the days: Leicestershire in the forties, fifties and sixties. (Newbury: Countryside Books, 2001), p.58

MELTON MOWBRAY. Maypole. Wire system. T.W.Buxton

Museums

LEICESTER. Newarke Houses Museum. See LEICESTER. Beehive above.

indicates systems which are still there (as far as I know) though they may not be working.