When did it stop? When did it start again?

Until I was 6 (when we moved area) I certainly remember the baker delivering, and the milkman coming with a horse. Young dds found this utterly hilarious! ‘Back in the really olden days, Mum, when the milkman came with a horse…’

This would have been in the mid 50s.

We moved to a little East Anglian village in 1959. We had Corona delivered I think on Wednesdays, the baker came twice a week. He also had eggs from his own chickens. Milk every morning except Sundays. The paper was always there first thing in the morning and the post came early, too. At Christmas there was a second postal delivery.

The International Stores man came on Thursdays and my mother always gave him the list of what she wanted the following week, so I think he just brought pre-packed boxes, but he may have had shelves fitted with a few tins and boxes in the back of his dark green van.

The mobile library came round every other Thursday.

In 1971 we moved from the village into town, so didn't need delivery services any more. I'm not sure how long they went on for. People in villages were all getting cars by then and could do their own shopping when and where they wanted.

Where I live now, in Germany, supermarket deliveries still do not exist. During the pandemic, the local church organised volunteers to go and do the shopping for the vulnerable, housebound and quarantined. I never heard if that took off, or if it's still going.

Corona was fizzy drinks, by the way.

In fact, I do not think home deliveries ever stopped, they did reverse as the local services from local businesses disappeared, destroyed by supermarkets, but then the suermarkets started their home delivery services.

I can remember the “ carrier” in the late forties. Not Evri or DPS, but a chap with a horse and cart who would collect or deliver anything to/ from the nearest town or railway station to our rural village.
I remember the pop man ( Corona or Tizer), the baker, the grocer up until at least the sixties. The milk man, who was in fact a lady, a farmer’s wife, was once pressed into the job of plucking and drawing a chicken which we had been given one Christmas! No “oven- ready” in those days.
I recall the first time my parents went to a supermarket. It was the first in the country. They had a car, and came home with just two cardboard boxes of tinned goods. Dad grew his own veg and Mum would not desert the local butcher, fishmonger etc.

I think we have been talking about two different kinds of home delivery. The ones from my childhood when tradesmen came around with a van from which you could select and purchase items (or in the case of the milkman delivered your usual milk and any extras he carried), and then the pre-ordered food which was (and still is) delivered to you. In my childhood I remember only the former.

Yes Cabbie, the carrier who was for centuries the link between towns and people in isolated villages. Fetching and carrying goods and people and bringing back news. My ancestors’ only means of transport to the nearest market town (never London!) other than Shanks’s Pony.

Sending in an order and waiting for its arrival has aways been around and I think to try and see it as something different to a man with a van is impossible because the to were so intewrlinked and the link is available means of communication.

I have a book discussing clothing and making clothes at the beginning of the 19th century and the same women who were buying from local peddlers/ man in van equivalents were sending orders up to retailers in London, or sometimes just a local big town for lengths of cloth and other requisites. Later in the 19th - and early 20th century, big houses would write, or even telegraph orders to Harrods, and Army & Navy Stores and other department stores or big food purveyors, who would pack the food into hampers and it would be sent by train to the nearest station and collected. Not that different to ordering groceries online.

Until the 1970s, and for some after that, many homes could not afford telephones, so there was no alternative to a trader loading goods in his van/cart and taking them to his customers to choose what they wanted, or them writing off and ordering them or even using catalogues (mail order).

Supermarket deliveries evolved from the small local individual businesses, with their horse and cart or man in van, who the supermarkets put out of business and found that they neededto replace.

In an isolated village and with no telephone or car, the travelling grocer/butcher/fishmonger was the only means of buying food in my childhood. There was no means of sending in an order and waiting for its arrival for my parents and grandparents. I’m sure those who lived in the big houses had a very different experience.

In many ways we had it better in the fifties and sixties. My small village had several independent shops for food: butcher, baker, grocer who also delivered, greengrocer, as well as bakers who called with a basket of bread and cakes to choose from and milk daily on the doorstep; tradesmen easily available. My second larger village also had shops to buy clothes, furniture, watches, electrical appliances and hardware from the much missed Wilco, originally Wilkinsons.

Now many places have not even one shop. City centre shops have closed and the high street consists of nail bars, vape shops, hairdressers and cafés. I most miss the department stores.
I tend to avoid buying online as I want to support local traders, though sometimes it is the only way.

There were also "packet houses" on the canal system M0nica. There was one in my village (though not used as a packet house by then).

In the "valleys" South Wales, my paternal grandmother bought her enormous China teaset from a travelling salesman. I was told he only sold china.
We do still have it (well, my daughter does) - even though it's a sickly pink, yellow and gold!

They had an "onion man" in the valley too - but not where I grew up in the NW of England.

Butcher, baker and onion seller on a bicycle all visited my childhood home in Berkshire.
Earlier my G'dad would take a list to the grocers on his way to work in the morning. The goods would be delivered to my G'ma at home with 5 children and 4 refugees from London later that morning.

In the late 50's and early 60's I remember my mother taking her shopping list to the grocer's shop and leaving it with the assistant. Either later that day or the next morning the grocer's van arrived with the shopping neatly packed into a cardboard box.
By the end of the 60's he had stopped delivering, but by then I think he was about retirement age.

We had the veg. man,who never stopped talking and always arrived as my mum was trying to cook dinner before dad came home), milkman - on horse and cart until mid 60's, ( my job to shovel the horse manure for dad's roses!), newspaper delivery twice a day, 2 postal deliveries daily, laundry, groceries, window cleaner, pop van....not forgetting the ice cream van in summer!

In the 50s and early 60s we had the horse and cart men collecting rags, or sharpening scissors and knives. Also a pig man collecting food waste for his pig farm. We had a special bin for this under the sink.
Where we live now on the south coast there's a fish van selling frozen fish that comes once a month.

Such fun to read these posts! Thank you for cheering up a cold grey day and bringing back happy memories 😊

I have been with Ocado since 2004 and have found them to be reliable, flexible, helpful, easy to order, good range of products, and reasonable prices - I even get money back on my weekly shops if Tesco is cheaper, as well as 10p for each of their carrier bags I hand back! I have tried other stores, eg Sainsbury, Tesco, and they seemed to always deliver many substitutions nothing like my order so have to be handed back.

Yes in 60's & & 70's we had a few vans bakers, food stuffs etc and also a mobile shop which was a charabanc bus even- he had a huge choice & mum just paid there &then like a shop- some of the smaller vans had things 'on tick' for some chosen customers who were good payers- you called in shop to pay at end of week or month- butchers would deliver later on if you bought stuff in butchers shop- we had milkman & coalman deliveries and a pop man once a fortnight.we also had a caddys ice cream man on an old fashioned bike with little freezer box on back!And mobile library.There was even a Burtons luton van used to come round loaded with new clothes- you could buy & pay weekly- and of course paper shop deliveries.And no we didnt live in back of beyond either. (Though when we did live in countryside we still had a small van shop came and local shop who were grocery/bakers/butchers did deliver your order if you liked after you had picked/paid) Those were great days.More bothered about giving good customer service/goods than nowadays.

Gosh yes i forgot about fish van man and the rag&bone man with his his horse&cart😆

Don’t forget the Rington’s tea man!

Yes even in 80's& 90's our milkmen brought much more than milk- eggs bread cheese potatoes bacon orange juice.and if you had milk tokens they just knocked the amount they were worth off the whole bill and you paid the difference.

In the mid 60’s and into the early 1970’s we had a butcher, baker, Corona Pop man, Davenports beer (until my dad started brewing his own). There was also a fishmonger and a general grocery delivery. The Coop delivered an order from the book that my mum dropped off at the beginning of the week. We also had a regular dry cleaning man who would take the big woollen blankets and coats etc -and a rag n bone man. I seem to remember there was also a man who collected the pools coupon and an insurance man.

Oh yes Gransey i did forget Ringtons!- probably cause in those days as a lil kid i was more bothered about the pop man & buying sweets than a cuppa! 😅

My gran had a Rington’s man, I don’t think they ever stopped delivering! He brought tea, and sold a lot of things as well - including crockery in a design called ‘Tally Ho’ with fox hunters all over it. My mum was resigned to getting stuff from the Rington’s van for Christmas, because my Gran felt sorry for him.

In 60’s and 70’s we had bread, milk, papers, bleach etc, lemonade , coal . All by delivery in Liverpool. I’ve had milk delivery right the way through and fish in Wiltshire since the 80’s and since covid I’ve had fruit and veg etc from farm . Our butchers have also always done delivery.