THE CHERTSEY SOCIETY is sad to report on this page the death of Ron Taylor. Ron was a good friend to Chertsey and to the Society.
Ron and his brother Bill were joint partners in the family greengrocer’s shop `Ethel Taylor’s’ at 6 Windsor Street, Chertsey. Bill started work at the grocer’s in 1935, followed by Ron in 1941 during World War II. The business had been in the family since 1884, and the shop had been a grocer’s since c.1800.
Ron was the son of a tenant farmer, who lived at Panels Farm, Chertsey with 5 brothers and a sister. Descended from a farming family, the Taylors grew their own produce, and eventually set up as green grocers in 1884 at the Windsor Street shop. Ron recalled his father being the first grocer to sell bananas in Chertsey, from their family business, after bringing them back with other produce from London.
One bright manager of that establishment put up a sign on The Crown’s post celebrating the fact that Ron and his elder brother and war hero Bill would occasionally cross the street for liquid refreshment. To go in the Taylor’s shop before Sainsburys came to the town together with Mr Bush’s delicatessen ham shop next door was a delightful all-round local shopping experience with all the friendly chit chat thrown in. Except for the faithful shopping locals, the supermarket adjacent changed all that.
Ron and Poppy bought the finest residence in Chertsey town, Curfew House in Windsor Street, then they later moved on to the bungalow The Cedars Retreat.
A sharp-eyed viewer of the late 1970s LWT TV programmes ‘Public Eye’ would have seen in series 7 location shots in Chertsey. In one programme the private eye Marker comes out of The Crown and crosses London Street as the brilliantined Ron Taylor pops out of the door of Ethel Taylor’s shop and goes to the fruit boxes on his pavement. Ron was kind enough later in life to pose for The Society to be photographed with our town crier emulating his grandfather posing in the same spot with Mary Blaker the town crier in the 1930s.
THE CHERTSEY SOCIETY Hon. President, the rotating Hon’ Chairman, the committee, and members of the Society send their condolences to the Taylor family for their loss as sadly a part of Chertsey’s modern history ends with him.