We lived just down the road in Blucher Place on the carpark and Mum would send me or my older brother John to the butchers. Mum also was a charlady at the shop and also at Molly Lacroix's convenience store at the top of Russell Street. Mr and Mrs Bassett were a lovely couple and very well respected. I still have the book she gave me at Christmas 1952. Happy memories indeed !

You are right Peter, Mr and Mrs Bassett were lovely people and I don't ever remember Bert without a smile on his face and a big cheery voice. My grandmother (from Willamy's Guest House in Dyke Road) always bought her meat from him. My sister and I walked past the shop down Upper Russell Street to our school, St Paul's in Little Russell Street. On the way home we would stop at the sweet shop which I think is the one next door to the butchers. I will never understand why these gorgeous little shops had to be destroyed for the impersonal monstrosity that was the original Churchill Square. To think they called it progress!

I well remember this shop and Mr & Mrs Bassett, they were a lovley couple but they would brook no nonsense which was the order of the day then. Mr Bassett would always have a kind word for anyone even if you weren't one of his customers, I know this for certain as I lived in Grenville Place for the early part of my life. John Wignall.

Did Bert Basset ever hang meat on the outside where the window now is? Did he also have a counter on the side walk with chicken etc on it? I have a photo of my grandfather, Charles Earnest Smith, master butcher, as a young man, standing next to the counter with another butcher- it looks very much like this building. Later Charlie Smith opened his own butchers shop in Oxford Street.