SOMETHING of a personal Peep into the Past for me this week thanks to local artist Susie Lidstone.

Our family has lived in Farnham since just before the First World War. My grandfather Thomas Willoughby Shepheard ran a taxi service based in granny Kate’s tea rooms next to the station level crossing (now a private residence).

Just down the road in Station Hill was Robins Commercial Hotel. Between the wars, granny and granddad took over the hotel and also incorporated a shop selling tobacco and confectionery. It seems there almost might have been some sort of swap as Robins later used the old tea rooms for their offices, including for their very successful removal company based in the Fairfield behind.

Granny ran the hotel while granddad looked after the shop but sadly Kate died relatively young in 1947 and Thomas was unable to run the hotel on his own. Kate had formerly been a housekeeper for a well-to-do family with homes in Gloucester Square, London and Middleton in Norfolk.

My father Alec Shepheard, who had just returned from the Middle East, went into partnership with his father Thomas and the hotel was converted to a large, double-fronted general store on the ground floor with two self-contained flats above.

The second photograph (above right) shows the staff outside the newly-finished building in about 1953 or ’54 and is one of only two images we have of the shop. That’s me in the centre with granddad behind me.

My parents are there too but I hope Peeps readers will be able to name some of the others in the photograph.

The lack of photographs prompted me to ask Susie Lidstone to undertake the painting using the group photograph to recreate the shop front as we remember it and I think she has done a wonderful job (below right).

Recalling the colours and what was where in each window – confectionery to the left and stationery to the right – has brought back many memories.

Hopefully it will conjure similar reactions for older Peeps readers too. Sadly the building is currently not in such a happy state. The right half is a normally-thriving barber’s shop, closed because of the virus, and the general store on the left suffered a disastrous fire in 2019.

Let’s hope before long the building will return to being the hub of the local community that it once was.