For several years John Vickery’s shop, opened in 1862 in the western building of the Bampton Road stores, was the only purpose built shop at Brendon Hill.
Some miner’s wives, such as Jane Goss, who lived in one of the company cottages at Gupworthy described herself as a ‘shopkeeper’ in the 1881 census. Women like her evidently opened small ‘huckster shops’ in the front room of their cottages selling basic foodstuffs like flour and bacon.
The partners built two blocks of stone and slated buildings with a yard between adjoining the Bampton road at Brendon Hill. A hundred metres to the west of the stores, two limekilns were built, served by a rail siding. The stores were opened in time for the completion of the incline. It is not known precisely when the stores closed but the buildings stood for many years and were used as a lodging house for employees of the Somerset Mineral Syndicate from 1907-09.
Goosemoor Stores were opened at the end of the railway shortly after completion of phase 2 of the line in 1865, and were managed by Giles Randle, where he sold, coal, oil cake and garden seeds, etc. In 1877 Randle was bought out by James Phillips, the auctioneer and merchant of Bridgetown who rented half of the station house at Goosemoor as the stores office and dwelling for the manager. The stores were still in operation in 1902.
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