Hidden tiles find sparks history rethink for shop

A chance discovery of some original Victorian tiles has led a couple to change their plans as they revamp a former butchers, with the aim of restoring more of its original features.

Francesca Griffiths and her husband Tom, from Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, took on the lease of the building on Regent Street in May and started renovating it.

As they began to rip the plasterboards off the back walls, they said they found the tiles from the original Victorian butcher's shop in the 1800s, which sparked the new direction of the revamp.

"I'm keen for it not to feel like you are stepping back in time completely, but I want to show people what we have found," Francesca Griffiths said.

The couple plan to turn the building, which had most recently been a cafe, into a New York-style delhi sandwich shop.

The idea to more reflect the site's history came as they found the tiles although, at first, they did not think much of them.

"Initially I just saw these white tiles. It wasn't until we took more off the top area that we found we had this beautiful border tile intact," Francesca Griffiths explained.

"We had some broken ones and I could see the manufacturer's name on the back; then I actually realised that they were from an old Victorian butcher's shop."

A hole in the floor left by the previous owners also led to a further discovery of red and yellow Victorian tiles, that she said she "fell in love with".

The pair then worked by hand over several weeks to strip back the six layers of flooring covering them up and restored them.

Their efforts sparked a new mission for the building, they said, to find and bring back all the original features from the butcher's shop that once stood there.

Through visits to the county records office and Leamington library, Francesca Griffiths managed to trace the history of the building to 1828, revealing Joseph Edwards as the first butcher on the site.

She also found a photograph from the 1930s of the Crawley family, who she said owned the butchers from the 1920s to the 1960s.

"It's got a long history of being a butcher's shop. To be able to trace it as far as that is amazing," she said.

They now plan to use some of the old shop advertisements, from various newspapers over the decades and the original tile manufacturer are going to handmake some replica tiles, they said.

The new sandwich shop is set to open at the end of August but the interior might not be finished by that point, Francesca Griffiths admitted.

"We might be opening without any furniture, so it might be a takeaway just to begin with," she added.

"But I'm keen for people to come in and see what we have been doing because I know a lot of people are really excited by it.

"I'm born and bred in Leamington, love the history of Leamington and I know a lot of people in the area as well really care about these stories."

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