Through the butcher’s window – how we used to eat

Long before there were high streets, there were butchers. We have cave paintings of prehistoric hunters to prove it. In fact, Britain’s oldest family business is a butcher’s shop in Dorset.
Butchers at Smithfield meat market in London, circa 1935. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)Butchers at Smithfield meat market in London, circa 1935. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Butchers at Smithfield meat market in London, circa 1935. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Even in an age of pre-packaged and shrink-wrapped supermarket meat, there is still an independent butcher in nearly every town. Traditional window-dressing is also a craft that is still alive and well, although these rarely-seen pictures from the archive suggest that it is not practiced as elaborately as it once was.

The centre of Britain’s wholesale meat trade has always been Smithfield Market in London, but one of the oldest thoroughfares in Yorkshire was also once a meat market.

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The 14th century Shambles, in the shadow of York Minster, was known as the street of butchers, its name having come from the Anglo-Saxon word Fleshammels – the shelves on which butchers displayed their meat. In the late 19th century there were as many as 25 butchers’ shops strung out along the street, though only a pie and sausage shop now betrays a hint of its history.

British politician Margaret Thatcher, Leader of the Opposition, talking to butcher Alan Lake during a tour of Mill Hill in London, April 29th 1977. (Photo by Malcolm Clarke/Keystone/Getty Images)British politician Margaret Thatcher, Leader of the Opposition, talking to butcher Alan Lake during a tour of Mill Hill in London, April 29th 1977. (Photo by Malcolm Clarke/Keystone/Getty Images)
British politician Margaret Thatcher, Leader of the Opposition, talking to butcher Alan Lake during a tour of Mill Hill in London, April 29th 1977. (Photo by Malcolm Clarke/Keystone/Getty Images)

Although many butchers have survived the competition from supermarkets – unlike in America, where all but a few have died out – the sector has not been immune from corporate competition.

Dewhurst, originally founded by the wealthy Vestey dynasty, had grown by the 1970s into a chain of around 1,400 high street shops, and was the first to introduce glass windows to protect the meat on sale. But it fell on hard times during next decade and eventually had to call in the administrators.

Dewhurst was predominantly a southern chain but it had a Yorkshire and especially Lancashire counterpart in UCP – United Cattle Products – which sold exclusively offal. Tripe Dressers, they called themselves. There were said to be 260 branches in Greater Manchester alone, many with restaurants attached.

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1937:  The staff stand proudly by the window of a  well stocked butcher's shop.  (Photo by General Photographic Agency/Getty Images)1937:  The staff stand proudly by the window of a  well stocked butcher's shop.  (Photo by General Photographic Agency/Getty Images)
1937: The staff stand proudly by the window of a well stocked butcher's shop. (Photo by General Photographic Agency/Getty Images)

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