Newspaper Article 1969 – She’s kept a tuck shop for 50 years

She’s kept a tuck shop for 50 years

Many ex-pupils of Parkvale. School attending the 50th jubilee celebrations this month will recall the homemade ice cream and pies which Mrs A. Baddiley, the school tuck shop owner, served them up to half a century ago.

Mrs Baddiley opened her little school tuck shop a few months after Parkvale School was opened in 1919.

Her ice-creams made of real cream and eggs will cause many an old pupil to look back on the passing of the “good old days” with regret.

The ice-creams sold for Id and 3d and the pies for 3d.

“I used to make a gallon of vanilla ice-cream every day.

“One of my daughters would bike down to the coolstore and bring back a block of ice on her carrier.

“We’d pack it around the churn and it would keep the ice-cream cold all day,” Mrs Baddiley said.

Like custard

“The ice-cream was very popular. It was so creamy it was like custard,” Mrs Baddiley’s daughter, Mrs G. Moran said.

Mrs Moran and her other daughter, Mrs J. Greene, both help their mother in the shop. They attended Parkvale School.

Mrs Baddiley’s apple and meat pies were always in demand too.

Today all the food she sells comes from Hastings firms.

“It’s not economical to make ice-cream and pies now,” she said.

The little shop sells pies, doughnuts, chippies, soft drinks, buns, sweets and the “odd pad and pencil.”

It would be one of the few remaining tuck shops run outside a school today.

In small shed

The shop is a small shed with an on-the-street counter. It was built in 1927 along with Mrs Baddiley’s house in Howard St opposite the school.

When Parkvale School opened there was just a small lock-up shop and the Baddileys lived around the corner in Windsor Avenue.

In those days she stocked groceries as well as school lunches[?].

Was caretaker

Mrs Baddilev has come to know staff and pupils over the years.

She doesn’t have so much contact with the school now as when her husband was alive.

Mr Baddiley was caretaker of the school from the day it began until his death in 1957.

Mrs Baddiley has been more than just a shopkeeper to the children she has been during 50 years.

“They used to come over with all their aches and pains,” she said.

One old-boy attending the reunion told Mrs Baddiley he didn’t remember her so much for her pies and ice-creams [as] for the bluebag she put on a bee-sting for him.

“The school was always sending over for something. Once they asked for a toothbrush they wanted to draw.”

“They’re much better equipped now”

‘Just children’

Mrs Baddiley thinks today’s children might have a bit more to say for themselves “but they are just children.”

She thinks some children seem to have too much money to spend. If a child had rather a large amount of money she would ask where it came from.

“If I was not satisfied I’d tell the teacher or inform the parents.”

Mrs Moran said her mother has been responsible for putting quite a few children “on the right tracks.”

‘Not goldmine’

Although she finds the shoop [shop] work a bit heavy going now, Mrs Baddiley doesn’t plan to give up.

“The business is not a goldmine, but it has kept me well and truly employed.”

Photo caption – Sweets for Parkvale School children at Mrs A. Baddiley’s tuck shop. Mrs Baddiley has operated the shop for 50 years now.