Sian's house buy is a brush with history
A little house Sian Ferguson has bought in Wellington came with an unexpected bonus - the broad sweep of history.
Because since buying it Sian has discovered that the tiny property was once associated with an old brush factory more or less next door.
A fading sign for "Smith's Stores, Brush & Basket Maker" painted on a High Street building nearby gives a clue to its heritage.
"It was the only place I can afford," said Sian, who lives in the Hope Valley in south Shropshire.
"I love Wellington, it's one of my favourite towns on the planet, because it's a market town with a nice history and a lot of charity shops, which to me is heaven," she said.
"I like the fact that the property has got a history, although I didn't realise that when I bought it."
It was only when she contacted Wellington-born historian Allan Frost that she found out about its past.
"It is connected with the Smith's factory, who owned it. The landlord was Tom Smith, the brush man whose workshop stood just a few yards away."
At another point, she says, drawing on Allan's researches, the workshop was used as a canteen for unmarried women working at the Chad Valley factory in the High Street in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Allan's mother was one of them.
Allan said: "Sian's house has seen many changes over the decades and was probably used as a storage outbuilding behind Tom Smith's properties fronting High Street.
"Once enlarged, it became a grocer's shop run by Alfie Davies until 1954 when he moved to a new shop on Dawley Road. For many years afterwards, perhaps as late as the 1970s, it was the place where Austin's paper shop - formerly one of Tom Smith's High Street premises - sorted newspapers for delivery."
Sian has named the property in New Hall Road, just off the High Street, The Little House - and with good reason.
"It's one up, one down," she says.
She thinks it had a galvanised roof but was at some point was extended upwards.
Although Sian says she bought the property intending to live there, and has spent £30,000 on renovations, she is now reluctantly selling it - it's on the market for £105,000 and is described in the estate agent's details as a "tastefully renovated one-bedroom detached home."
