Kirkgate's long-standing fish and chip shop on the market

Pictured above are Mark and Jean Whitmarsh, who have put their Kirkgate Fisheries business on the market after 22 years at the Kirkgate fish and chip shop. A combination of health problems and VAT challenges has prompted their decision. Mark was a geologist in the oil and construction industry and met Jean while working in Hong Kong. They married 32 years ago. Mark had lived in Silsden and returned here to take on the Kirkgate chippy, which had been run for 16 years by former local milkman David Rawsthorne. Mark and Jean were new to the business of fish and chips and were grateful to David for instructing them. “We are still frying fish and chips the way David taught us,” says Mark, who will be looking for a desk job once the shop is sold.

 Cut Italia barber's shop changes hands

Cut Italia, for many years a mainstay of men's hairdressing in Silsden, is now owned by Molly Frankland, pictured above, who two years ago bought the business from Gino and Nancy Familio. Molly worked with Gino and Nancy for seven years and took over when the renowned couple retired.

Before moving to Cut Italia, Molly had been a barber in Skipton for 10 years after making a major career change. Following university she was a school teacher in Liverpool but didn't take to the job and quit in order to train as a barber.

Molly is progressively putting her own stamp on the interior and exterior design and decor of the shop at No. 88 Kirkgate, which Gino opened as a barber's in 1989. The sign above is a prominent addition to the gable end in Wesley Place. Silsden has a long tradition of barbers going back to the 1870s. A number of them lived and worked in the town for incredibly many years. (See my Blog posts of September 13th 2013 and April 11th 2019.) 

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.