Edwin JONES 1859 -1947 Cinderford grocer Royal Union Stores? (General)

by Jefff , West London, Middlesex, Friday, February 03, 2012, 20:02 (4680 days ago) @ slowhands

Slowhands,
I'm with you on the approximate location. Unfortunately most photos of the High Street tend to be taken from the old "bottleneck" looking down, such as per your photo suggestion. I believe the shop may well have been actually part of the bottleneck which for various aesthetic & practical reasons didn't get photographed very often at all.

Your photo shows a large building on the lefthandside with the Co-op Signwriting proudly displayed on the side wall. In the past I'd grown up associating it's neighbouring building (out of this photo, uphill towards the camera) as being the Co-op, I vaguely recall walking past it's impressive plate windows as a toddler in the mid 60s. Until a few years ago that site was the "Westgate" store still part of the Severnside Co-op, which had itself bought the Town Hall which dated from 1869.
Certainly even in the 1980s the Co-op Dairy was behind what was then Woolies (ex Town Hall plot) so still on this same general site.
This earlier photo shows it better(thanks to you I see)
http://www.forest-of-dean.net/gallery/cinderford/pages/page_58.html