UK Edition
Our village is in mourning. Our immensely popular family butcher closes forever this Saturday.
The business has existed for over 150 years. Thomas Jarvis was a Victorian local farmer. When houses cost almost nothing, he clubbed together with fellow-agriculturalists to buy Bateman’s, Rudyard Kipling’s future house. In 1870, he opened a butcher’s shop in the neighbouring village of Burwash. It did well. In 1900, he started a second one in our village, Etchingham.
Thomas built a combined shop and house for his son Albert, just returned from service with the Royal Sussex Regiment in the Boer war. Near the counter still hangs a photograph of Albert, prosperous and suitably butcher-like in apron, cap and Edwardian moustache, flanking the game that hangs outside the window. To this day, the glass proclaims “A Jarvis” in the ornate lettering of the period.
Albert’s great-grandson, Nigel, is the current incumbent. He is 65, and has decided to retire.
Last week, I visited Nigel to talk about it. We are regular customers, but I had only previously been “front of house”. From his kitchen, he has a fine view across the meadows by the river Dudwell. He showed me the tiny back premises downstairs. There, each day, he takes in the whole carcasses of lamb, pigs and sides of beef, and breaks them down into primal cuts. They are then boned out; trimmed; tied; cut.
Until 1934, the shop had no electricity, so once a week a huge block of ice came up on the train from Hastings and was carried in a hessian bag by horse-drawn cart the few hundred yards from station to shop. The little room built to accommodate it survives. During the war, I imagine the shop was rather like that of Corporal Jones in Dad’s Army, handling rationing and shortage.
Nigel was brought up next to the Burwash shop and later worked as a meat inspector. In 1985, he succeeded his father Geoff, and has run the place ever since. I half-expected him to tell me that over-regulation, supermarkets, and vegetarianism have defeated him. Not so, he says. “I thought it would be the death-knell when Waitrose and Tesco came so close, but no.”
The business has grown, modestly but steadily, over his 36 years in charge. “The trick,” he believes, “is to treat everybody the same.” During the lockdown, people stayed at home, took comfort in something they could trust and preferred the Jarvises’ small masked queue to the grim socially distanced waits in Sainsbury’s. Custom went up by 50 per cent. Average annual turnover in recent years is about £150,000.
Eating habits have certainly changed, Nigel says. Fewer people want Sunday roasts now. Instead, “Chicken fillets fly out of the door” – a metaphor that makes me laugh as I imagine the scene. The sausages are justly famous, made more so when a publican, who bought lots of them in the 1980s, persuaded Nigel to brand them “Burwash Beauties”.
The customers – mostly individual families – keep coming. They like the local sourcing: F J Jarvis & Sons sell no imported meat – “unless you call Scotland imported”. They also like the quality, and the chat. As for price, it can always be undercut by the supermarkets, but it is not stupendous. The Jarvises have never got fancy.
In fact, it is rather fascinating that a completely straightforward family business has survived so much economic and social change so well for so long. I think the character of the business today would be wholly recognisable to Thomas Jarvis 150 years on. He would surely approve.
Why is Nigel stopping, then? “Because I can,” he says. “Thirty-six years is a fair stint.” He loves the place and the work, and has never had any trouble from vegan protestors, thieves or vandals. “I did once pick up someone by the collar and threw him out,” he recalls, “because he was being so rude about a friend of mine.”
But although the job is peaceful and satisfying, it is also relentless. Since his late 20s, Nigel has almost never – the shop being open on Saturdays – managed a weekend away. In the 21st century, his one substantial holiday was a fortnight 15 years ago to see relations in New Zealand (“I was offered a butcher’s business in Akaroa while I was there!”). He has built up enough pension to go now, and cycle, motorcycle and do the other things he enjoys before he gets too old.
It is the inflexible commitment of set hours, more than money, which presents difficulties for the young. The next Jarvis generation, though well settled in the neighbourhood, does not want to take on the trade. In former times, when it needed more labour, young people could train up in it and find career opportunities to rise. Nowadays, very few staff are needed. When you do want them, they are hard to recruit.
Anyway, the business goes on. Nigel’s younger brother, Graham, continues in the thriving Burwash shop, and so do the Burwash Beauties. Nigel will certainly be around to help him – “I need to work. I can’t stop.” He will still be found at the summer hog-roasts in which he specialises.
But it is impossible for us villagers not to be sad. There are only about 700 of us, and we are only too conscious of how lucky we have been. The word “hub” is on everyone’s lips these days, but we are losing a rare one.
Telegraph readers on the decline of the local butcher...
Giles Russell: "When on leave from the Far East in the 80s and 90s, I would accompany my stepfather to the local butcher in Barrow in Furness on the Saturday morning to buy the joint for the Sunday roast.
"The butcher was a chum since school and he would always greet my stepfather with the words "Morning Freddie, left leg as usual?". My stepfather would nod his agreement and the fun was to look at the puzzled faces of the other customers. My stepfather would take delight in telling them that because the Lake District fields were so steep and hilly the lambs would always develop stronger legs on one side than the other. So one leg would be tougher than the other. The customers always accepted the explanation as gospel.
"I have since heard that the butcher shop closed in the 2000s when the butcher died. I doubt that a similar exchange could ever take place in a big chain supermarket these days."
Malcolm Marchesi: "I live in the nearby parish of Framfield. Until a year or two back, we also had a village butcher, who closed up for the same reason. His goods were also of top quality and fairly priced. As the article states, it is often the case that the main reason for a small village business to close is that it calls for a way of life which is no longer desirable by younger folk, the financial aspect is secondary. Sad but apparently inevitable.
"Fifty years ago, in the above mentioned parish of Framfield and Blackboys, there were eight dairy farms, mostly family worked. Now there is one. The change in government farming policy is obviously a factor but the unwillingness of people to undertake the commitment required by such a vocation is also significant."
Bryan Irons: "Our small butchers in Norfolk closed after 12 years. This, we have been told, is due to a lack of foot traffic into the shop.
"Due to Covid, their other branches, some six and 12 miles respectively away, started up home deliveries. Lots of people used this service in our village and other villages including ourselves and it was brilliant. However there is always a price to pay. The loss of our fantastic shop."