Heaven Scent move continues family link with Briggate shop

A Briggate shop which has been a hairdresser's for nearly 50 years has been given a change of direction by the late owner's daughter. Mrs Sally Spencer, pictured above, couldn't bear the thought of the premises being sold after her mother, well-known hairdresser Beryl Southwell, who started the salon in 1977, died last November, one month short of her 90th birthday.

Sally negotiated with her sister, Wendy Southwell, to buy the shop and the adjoining house where their parents lived. Sally has converted the salon into a shop, calling it Heaven Scent and selling home fragrances, including melts, which she makes herself, gifts, shoulder bags and cards. After Beryl retired in the 1990s, the salon was run by daughter Wendy and subsequently by Wendy's son Lawrence Hindle, who now has a chair at Themis, the swish salon at No. 19 Briggate.

The iconic premises have been used for an array of retail purposes since the late 1800s.

Butcher John Lund, pictured above in the doorway, was there from the 1890s and possibly before then. Dick Ashton opened his electrical and radio shop here around the 1920s and was followed by Leonard Dyer's electrical shop in the late 1950s/early1960s.

The shop briefly was a snack bar as can be seen in this nostalgic photo taken in the late 1960s.

Sisters' salon brings Briggate a stunning new look

Sisters Jody Ellis (above left), a beauty specialist, and hairdresser Jade Whitehead (on the right) have taken their hair and beauty salon, The Lounge, to new heights. They have left the cramped premises they have occupied for the last eight years and moved across the road into one of Briggate's oldest properties, which has been amazingly modernised.  

The building, previously used as offices, has been transformed inside and out. Silsden-born Jody and Jade are pictured in front of the new-look Lounge with colleague Nicola Slingsby, one of the salon's three hairdressers. The other hairdresser is Michelle Lund. 

The Lounge has four chairs downstairs and three upstairs, in addition to three treatment rooms. The Lounge also includes a nail bar run by Amy Lambert; beauty therapist Jade Woolley; and aesthetics by lash and brow technician Lily Fieldhouse. Chairs and a beauty room are available to rent.

In the 19th century, the building (pictured below) that is now home to The Lounge was  known as the "band 'oil" from the days when Silsden Brass Band, formed by renowned musician Edward Newton in 1872, practised there. From the late 1950s to the mid-1990s the shop area on the right was open for the sale of Sunday newspapers.