I mentioned this to a friend who lives in Dronfield (well, Coal Aston), and he said there are two other butchers there that are still open. They haven't been there for three hundred years, but perhaps they're better butchers.
The butcher's shop that lasted 300 years (give or take)
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Re: The butcher's shop that lasted 300 years (give or take)
#22> "So they say you can’t close. And I think, well, come and spend your money with me instead, then."
You get this all over the small picturesque villages in the UK, people love the idea of village shops and village pubs but few are willing to put any money behind them. Remember my parents remarking that their neighbors where sad the village pub was closing down, my parents thinking its ridiculous because they only see them in there twice a year at best, it's 2 minutes walk up the road. Pub did reopen thankfully, but if you want your village to retain it's soul you have to spend your money there.
Re: The butcher's shop that lasted 300 years (give or take)
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Society must have been really stable there for a long time. > South of Munich Bavaria is interesting; I was wondering how it would have fared as the various armies swept Europe in those eight centuries - Thirty Years War, Hundred Years War, and so on, but Bavaria seems to have been astonishing stable apart from a few incursions by Sweden and Napoleon. Per wikipedia, "The Wittelsbach dynasty ruled Bavaria without in…
Basically entire Europe was a warzone from the end of the Roman period to... oh, Ukraine.. well, Europe still is a warzone but much less so now than in the past centuries. The middle ages wars didn't really involve the population. They were more a matter of aristocracy. Cities were raized, since those where the way to control land, but you generally left the peasants and their lords alone. Peasants really didn't care…
> wars mostly affected the 'state' and not the people that much
How do you exactly think armies are fed, armed, and paid? There are innumerable examples of revolts ignited due to the abuses of the local or occupying army.
This idea of "limited" warfare where a king took a few men and fought it out with his rival with the population not caring or suffering much is utterly deluded.
Re: The butcher's shop that lasted 300 years (give or take)
#24Covid showed me that decentralisation is the way to go (at least in terms of food in the UK). I had prepped well but there's always a few things you need and crave. In those times searching the big stores you will be unlucky. However the local butchers, corner shops were ok. Plus you discover some treats that you don't get in the supermarket (Lorne sausage, freshly baked rolls/baps/barms/whatever you call them locall…
Think this is really wishful thinking, small villages are already crammed with much more wealthy people who lived through the best parts of the housing boom than the majority living in cities and these shops and local pubs are mostly already gone. People would rather just order online or just do one cheaper trip to the supermarket.
Re: The butcher's shop that lasted 300 years (give or take)
#25There's a butcher fairly close to where I live that's been open since 1760 and there's often a line out the door on weekends etc. I love going there as if you ask where the meat is from, they'll give you directions to their fields up the road! If that's not the best way to determine animal welfare then I don't know what is.
Re: The butcher's shop that lasted 300 years (give or take)
#26Where I live in Germany, small traditional butchers and bakers etc. are also closing down, but not for the lack of customers. They get too old, and nobody wants to take over. About 8 or so years ago, a baker closed at the city center, replaced by a chain, and a friend lamented how traditional bakers can't keep up with the chains that basically put frozen products in the oven. Her father laughed and said the place was…
Often the people who are willing to work long hours and lack formal qualifications are immigrants. Maybe there are not enough immigrants in your town? Or they would have needed to start as apprentices 5 years ago, and it's hard for them to get into the apprentice system?
Re: The butcher's shop that lasted 300 years (give or take)
#27Where I live in Germany, small traditional butchers and bakers etc. are also closing down, but not for the lack of customers. They get too old, and nobody wants to take over. About 8 or so years ago, a baker closed at the city center, replaced by a chain, and a friend lamented how traditional bakers can't keep up with the chains that basically put frozen products in the oven. Her father laughed and said the place was…
Often the people who are willing to work long hours and lack formal qualifications are immigrants. Maybe there are not enough immigrants in your town? Or they would have needed to start as apprentices 5 years ago, and it's hard for them to get into the apprentice system?
> lack formal qualifications
Not sure about Germany, but there is a formal qualification for bakers in France.
Re: The butcher's shop that lasted 300 years (give or take)
#28Where I live in Germany, small traditional butchers and bakers etc. are also closing down, but not for the lack of customers. They get too old, and nobody wants to take over. About 8 or so years ago, a baker closed at the city center, replaced by a chain, and a friend lamented how traditional bakers can't keep up with the chains that basically put frozen products in the oven. Her father laughed and said the place was…
Often the people who are willing to work long hours and lack formal qualifications are immigrants. Maybe there are not enough immigrants in your town? Or they would have needed to start as apprentices 5 years ago, and it's hard for them to get into the apprentice system?
That's the paradox: Germany took in over 1.4 million "refugees" from Syria and North Africa (predominantly young, healthy males), and they still couldn't find ~20k temp workers to pick up asparagus this summer. They lamented how Polish people can't come anymore, due to COVID-19 lockdown. So no, it's definitely not the lack of immigrants, they are just wrong kind of immigrants, the too-lazy-to-work kind.
Re: The butcher's shop that lasted 300 years (give or take)
#29Thousands of shops like this must have closed in the UK over the past 20 years.
I grew up in neighbouring Leicestershire and in my town we had numerous butchers, greengrocers, fishmongers - much of the produce was sourced locally and sold wrapped in paper / paper bags and we used to walk into town to buy it.
Now we drive to buy those goods from a single supermarket, flown in from all corners of the globe and wrapped in layer upon layer of plastic.
Re: The butcher's shop that lasted 300 years (give or take)
#30Where I live in Germany, small traditional butchers and bakers etc. are also closing down, but not for the lack of customers. They get too old, and nobody wants to take over. About 8 or so years ago, a baker closed at the city center, replaced by a chain, and a friend lamented how traditional bakers can't keep up with the chains that basically put frozen products in the oven. Her father laughed and said the place was…
Often the people who are willing to work long hours and lack formal qualifications are immigrants. Maybe there are not enough immigrants in your town? Or they would have needed to start as apprentices 5 years ago, and it's hard for them to get into the apprentice system?
You need to have what's called "Meisterbrief" to run a bakery. That's the equivalent of having studied. You need 3 years of apprenticeship, then you make what's called "Gesellenprüfung", then you need to work at least 2 years in a bakery and then you need to go back to school for two years. That's quite some effort and it's not lacking formal qualifications.
Also, running a bakery is a fairly capital-heavy investment. Friends of ours closed their bakery when the oven broke - it would have cost at least 50k to repair and that was the point they decided to retire (despite offers from many people in the street to chip in).