Sally Popplewell (left) and her sister Lily Baker
(both formerly Hubbard) in their shop in Ferrybridge

Photograph submitted by Sally Popplewell

Hubbard's Fish and Chips

Text by Ron Gosney

Joseph Hubbard a coal miner was born in Walsall Wood in 1862, where he married Sarah Smith in 1885, and they had a large family of 11 children. Like many mining families from the West Midlands they moved to Ferrybridge area in the early 1900s.

Experienced in mining, Joseph went off to the Canadian gold mines to seek his fortune. Whilst away his wife Sarah started cooking and selling fish and chips done on an open fire. On his return they opened, in 1915, a fried fish and chip shop in Ferrybridge High Street, the present day site of the doctor's surgery. In those early days he was assisted by two daughters Sarah Shepherd and Florence Lee, and they could recall when fish cost 1s-9d a stone, but the fish came whole so they had to take off the heads and do the filleting.

From around 1934 the business was then continued by Joseph's son Tom, who had lost a leg in the First World War. Tom married Nell Hadfield, a widow, and they had two daughters Sally and Lily. Once again the daughters assisted in the running of the shop, and the business transferred to Mexborough House in the Square, part of the old Angel coaching inn buildings and many will recall the three or four steps leading to these premises.

Mexborough House then came under the compulsory purchase order scheme in the 1960s that claimed most of the old property in the Square for the new A1 trunk road. So, it was on the move again, this time back to the High Street to new premises built there, in the shop still trading there today. Here Sally and Lily continued until retirement in 1972 when it was taken on by Sally's daughter Brenda. She continued until 1998, thus ending more than 80 years of family tradition of serving the needs of Ferrybridge people with their takeaways.