Fore Hill, Ely, c.1912

38 Fore Hill, Ely

History of 38 Fore Hill

J L George grocer and tea mart c.1900

There was also a leather factory behind 38 Fore Hill. Pamela Blakeman recalls the factory in Ely Memories, 1998. William Clarke (1904-1989) worked at the factory and his reminiscences can be found in Ely Memories. In 1939 he was living at 39 Broad Street.

Pamela Blakeman’s reminiscences about the leather factory are also recorded in Ely Memories: The smell of leather brings back – vividly – the warehouse part of the leather factory which stood at the back of Fore Hill and Broad Street. The delicious smell came from the large ‘bends’ (a bend was half a butt which was the broad back reaching down on each side of the backbone) of leather which were either delivered to shoe repairers of were cut with a knife, which had a sharp curved blade, into sizes suitable for sale, either wholesale or retail.

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1910 Lemmon’s the butchers

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The site was redeveloped in 1975.