Nobody does it batter!

HISTORIAN MERVYN EDWARDS SALUTES FISH AND CHIP SHOPS OF THE PAST AND PRESENT

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FISH and chips seem to have been available forever in Stoke-on-Trent but you'd have been hard pushed to find a chippy in Hanley in 1860.

Don't get me wrong, it wasn't difficult for piscivorous potters to buy a nice piece of fish in Hanley in those days - the town had had a fish and potato market since 1848, after all and by 1860, according to Kelly's Post Office Directory, there was a brace of fishmongers in Piccadilly and one trading in Vine Street, but there was no-one selling fried fish and chipped potatoes in combination. However, the first chippies in this country emerged in that decade, with chip shops in our own area making their appearance by the 1880s.

They sold cheap and tasty food to factory workers, but fish and chips also came to be served in colliery canteens when family nights were held. Virtually every suburb and village had its chippy, never mind the towns.

When I interviewed the late Don Hickton who lived at the long-demolished village of Longbridge Hayes, near Longport, many years ago, he recalled a local chippy that only traded on Fridays. Sentinel reader Steve Hillman of Stoke remembered another lost village, Cliffe Vale, between Hartshill and Shelton. Steve lived there between 1952-66 when the full range of shops included two chippies.

There is a surviving photograph of Derricott's fish and chip shop, circa 1910. Readers will remember it as being among a row of outlets adjoining the old Hanley Market building, this area being cleared in 1981. Cyril Derricott, speaking to The Sentinel in 2006, recalled the days when the shop enjoyed great footfall from the customers of Hanley Market around the corner. There were frequent queues outside the chippy, which remained busy until six in the evening. He added that once this old range of shops had been demolished, locals missed Derricott's more than anything else.