Grantham Civic Society writes about the changing face of Grantham High Street

In May 1738 Henry Stokes was a mercer on the Market Place and lived and worked at the shop, writes Grantham Civic Society.

Notice was given in the Stamford Mercury that from the following midsummer, his previous assistant John Whishaw, who had worked in the shop for 19 months, would taken over, after helping Stokes to dispose of his stock.

Whishaw would ‘lay in compleat and fresh Sortment of Mercery, Drapery, and Haberdashery Goods, and whatever else has been sold at the said Shop of late years. There will also be sold fine Teas, Coffee, and the best Tobacco’. It continues ‘N.B. Funerals will be furnish’d at a reasonable Rate’.

Stokes had previously lived and worked on the High Street and in 1740it was reported in the Stamford Mercury that: ‘Whereas the Shop late in the Tenure of Henry Stoakes, Mercer, next door to the Angel Inn in Grantham, has for some time been shut up: This is to give Notice, that at the said Shop is laid in, by Thomas Stone, a fresh Stock of all sorts of Mercery, Woollen-Drapery, Linnen-Drapery, and Haberdashery Goods; where all Persons may depend upon being supply’d with good Pennyworths’.