14 The Hill Blunham

14 The Hill August 2009

14 The Hill is, today [2009], a butcher's shop, run by F. S. Charteress & Son. There has been a butcher's here for over eighty years.

The Rating and Valuation Act of 1925 specified that every piece of land and building in the country should be assessed to determine the rates to be paid on it. Blunham was assessed in 1927 and the valuer visiting 14 the Hill [DV1/C155/93] discovered that, then as now, it was a butcher's shop, then owned by a Mrs. Chambers (who also owned 12 The Hill next door) and tenanted by A. Bembridge at a rent of £29 per annum. The brick and slate premises comprised a parlour, living room and scullery downstairs in addition to the shop, which measured 12 feet square. Three bedrooms lay upstairs and outside were a barn, a timber and corrugated iron garage, a brick and tile stable for one horse, a fasting stall, a pair of two bay open cart sheds and a slaughterhouse measuring 11½ feet by 10 feet. Water was obtained from a tap in the yard and the valuer considered it a "Compact little place".

Arthur Bembridge appears as a butcher in Blunham in Kelly's Directory for 1924, 1928, 1931 and 1936. In the final volume held by Bedfordshire and Luton Archives and Records Service, 1940, he has been replaced as the only butcher in the village by Reginald Leonard Peck.