Smith's in Bull Lane: Remembering Wycombe’s favourite fish and chip shop

Smith’s in Bull Lane was overwhelmingly voted readers’ favourite. This shop consisted of a fishmonger’s downstairs, which had frontage directly onto the street, with a take-away at the rear, and a restaurant upstairs. Smith’s was certainly my favourite fish and chip venue when I was growing up in the town.

Fish and Chips Comes to Wycombe

By coincidence the Fish Trades Gazette had run an article on the Smith’s shop eighty years earlier on March 8, 1941, which was then referred to in the BFP a couple of weeks later. The article paid tribute to “the men who brought the fish trade to Wycombe many years ago - Mr George Smith of Bull Lane, and his uncle Mr Nathan Woods who is approaching his 80th birthday”. The article continued “In this England of ours there must be hundreds of George Smiths, but to many a merchant up and down the country and to a host of local housewives in Buckinghamshire there is only one George Smith, and he is a fishmonger in High Wycombe.”

Apparently George’s father was “one of the greatest fishing skippers of his day and was admiral of the fishing fleets sailing out of Barking. Later he transferred to Lowestoft. It was here that Mr George Smith extended his knowledge and experience of the industry, and there is now scarcely a fishing port in which he is not known.”

“It was in 1881 that the uncle Mr Nathan Woods started the first fried fish shop in High Wycombe [this was in White Hart St] and Mr George Smith started a “fish round” in the town and district. Today he controls an enterprise of some magnitude, covering the wholesale, retail, and frying sections of the trade. He has interests, as he modestly puts it, in five fish businesses in the borough. Some of his customers have been purchasing regularly from him for over 45 years.”

History of Smith’s

Conscious that the newspapers do not always report accurately, I have verified that the above account is substantially correct, except that the first shop was started by the Woods Brothers around 1888, rather than 1881. In the census of 1881 the family of George Woods, which included three sons all born in Barking, were living at 6 Walton Rd in Lowestoft. George a fisherman was not at home at the time, his wife Harriett stating herself to be the head of the family. Their daughter Emma had married local fisherman Robert Smith, and their son George was born in 1880.

By 1891 the Woods brothers had moved to Wycombe and George and Harriett were living in Denmark St. By 1901 they had moved to live above the shop in Bull Lane and were able to employ 16 years old George Badger as a servant. It appears that the brothers went their own separate ways in about 1900, when George became the sole proprietor of the Bull Lane shop.

Exactly when and why the Smiths moved from Lowestoft to Wycombe is not known, but George was listed in Wycombe in the 1901 census. He was living at 39 Totteridge Rd with his mother Emma, who was now a widow, and his two brothers and one sister. He married Beatrice Neighbour in 1906 and in the 1911 census he was living with Beatrice and three children at 39 Totteridge Rd.. His occupation in both censuses was stated as fishmonger. He was first recorded as the only proprietor of the shop in Bull Lane in a 1915 trade directory, with other shops in Oxford Rd and Totteridge Rd.

Under George’s management the business continued to expand on both the wholesale and retail side, with several fish and chip shops being opened in different locations in Wycombe. He became a member of the Wycombe Branch of the Freemasons, a guarantor of the Old People’s dinner programme, and a member High Wycombe cricket club and the Whiteleaf golf club.

George retired in 1947 and handed the business over to his youngest brother Frederick. He died at his home in Rectory Ave on November 5 1956 after a short illness.

Lowestoft Fishermen in WW1

A clue as to why George came to Wycombe is provided in an article on the social history of Lowestoft’s fishing industry. This gives an account of the dangers trawlermen from the port of Lowestoft faced during the period 1860 to 1923, when 171 men and boys were lost at sea. Trawlers fishing in the North Sea were in particular danger during the world war of 1914-18. They were constantly under attack from German U-Boats and minefields.

One such account is of the trawler “Research”, whose skipper was George Smith (this is not the George Smith who came to Wycombe, but is likely to be related). “At noon on May 27 1916 skipper Smith spotted a U-Boat about two miles away, this was UB-18. When she was about one mile from the trawler UB-18 started firing on the vessel. The first shot fell short. Skipper Smith at once started to get the small boat out but before it could be launched the submarine fired several more shots, of which only one struck the vessel. The boat was then ready for launching, but another shot struck the rigging, cutting it and bringing down the mainsail. Pieces of this shell struck three of the crew: killing James Wilson (age 62) the cook, and wounding Smith in the head, and also the deck-hand George Stone. They managed to get the boat out and got the cook’s body into her and pulled clear of the trawler. UB-18 then went alongside [the trawler] and threw something down the hatch and then steered off”.

Lowestoft’s fishing community paid a heavy price in WW1, with over a hundred and twenty-six men and boys killed. These were all civilians and sailed under the red ensign (the flag flown by British merchant or passenger ships since 1707), but they found themselves in the frontline of an economic war prosecuted by Germany.

Their names and that of the fishing vessels can be found on the Tower Hill Memorial in London.

This commemorates the men and women of the Merchant Navy and Fishing Fleets who died in both World Wars and have “no grave but the sea”.