92 High Street

Livery Stable

We can clearly see below, from the section of a map published in 1895, that the shop front that we currently see at number 92 High Street was a later addition to an original building set back from the road.

The original building was in fact a stable or, more likely, a coach house for one of the neighbouring properties – Arundel or Thelmore House. The map makes it unclear as to which property the stable/coach house originally belonged to but we can be sure that it was part of the Thelmore House estate at the beginning of the 20 century, when it was clearly signed as a livery stable owned by S Gifford, who was occupying Thelmore House at the time of the 1901 and 1911 census. The exact date the shop front was added to the stable is difficult to identify – the photo below, understood to have been taken in 1911 capturing the celebrations held to commemorate the Coronation of George V, features the stable sign on the far left hand side with the stable building visibly set back from the road – however, a map from 1907 also appears to show this part of the building already in place so we can only approximate that the change occurred at the beginning of the 20th century.

Thelmore House was built with an impressive protruding feature window which ran along its right hand wall (now removed following renovation works). This seems a slightly odd design decision when viewed today but it would once have enjoyed uninterrupted views down the High Street before it was, in effect, blocked in by the new shop front which was added to the front of the stables/coach house.

The Pennel Brothers and 20th Century Businesses

Phyllis Stevens recalls how the building was occupied by the Pennell Brothers during the mid 20C in her online article, More West Malling Memories By Phyllis E.Stevens. We can see from the 1939 Register that Bernard Pennell, living in Churchfields, was a moter engineer and driver.

On the same side of the road was a rather nice house in which lived Mr and Mrs Leonard Robinson and their daughter Vivienne nicknamed Bunty with whom I played when we were young. Close to this house was a shop which sold radios, it was a garage originally but on the shutter door was printed the advertisement “Pennell Bros have gone home to their Philco”. 

The photo below shows the Pennell Bros van used for the radio shop.

A few other businesses have occupied the property since Sidney Gifford vacated the property but we would be delighted to hear from anyone who can recall any others missing from the list below:
1922 Kelly’s Directory – John Robinson
1954 Kelly’s Directory – Joe Motors
Denniss’ Stores