Community unites to restore shop to Victorian glory

Volunteers have joined together to restore Peacock and Verity, creating a Victorian grocers' shop

Elsie Taylor has lived in Masham, on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales, her whole life.

The 95-year-old remembers a now-derelict shop, Peacock and Verity, in its heyday.

"It was quite lovely, they had a long counter from the door right back. Everything was in order," she says.

"The thing I most remember is Easter time and that lovely special smell of hot cross buns.

"If I could walk into Peacock and Verity and buy a hot cross bun, it would make me feel young again."

Elsie's memories become reality in a new Channel 4 documentary series, following a team of volunteers as they recreate a Victorian grocer's shop and Edwardian tearoom, with its own working bakery.

Masham resident Elsie Taylor, 95, shares her memories of the Victorian-era Peacock and Verity shop in a TV programme

At a special screening event for Our Yorkshire Shop: A Victorian Restoration, Elsie tells the BBC: "It's brought back a lot of memories and it's such a natural film - people doing everyday jobs.

"We've got to record memories for the next generation, so they understand.

"I think Masham will become very popular."

'Masham at its best'

Number 15 Silver Street had hosted a shop until the start of the Covid pandemic, and it was bought by a community organisation in 2023.

As well as the grocery store and tearoom, the group's proposals include a heritage centre, affordable rental flats and returning a post office counter to Masham.

"It's not nostalgia," says Alan Hodges, chair of the Peacock and Verity board.

"It is using the past - and the skills of the past - to make a better sustainable project."

He hopes the Channel 4 series will generate local tourism, improving the local economy, and encourage investors to support the project as it continues.

"We know about the sense of community but to see it expressed on screen like that was quite moving," he says, after watching the first episode.

Joiner Ian Johnson, who fronts the programme, agrees that it shows "Masham at its best".

Joiner Ian Johnson, pictured as his alter-ego Yvette, is one of the leading stars in the Channel 4 programme

"Masham is everybody's ideal Dales market town," says Ian, who appears in the show as his alter-ego Yvette.

He led on some practical elements of the restoration.

"Being a joiner, it helps, really," he says.

"I do things in Masham, I get involved in things. If anybody wants 'owt doing for nothing, it tends to be me."

Parish councillor Val Broadley also appears.

She thinks the series "certainly showed off some of the characters" in the town and will "bring Masham into focus".

"It's very well known as a dog-walking spot, somewhere to wander along the river, somewhere just to spend a quiet afternoon having a picnic, but people from away don't necessarily know it."

Selling locally-sourced produce is key to the project, with cider, beer, soaps and jams produced in North Yorkshire stocking the shelves

The series features a number of North Yorkshire businesses, making produce to sell in the shop.

A historic oven has also been restored to working order, to bake bread and hot cross buns.

Engineer Olly Osborne travelled to Masham from the south-west of England to carry out the restoration.

"The presence of cameras was a little bit daunting," he says, having not worked on TV before.

"It took a lot of research, a lot of graft, but we got there, so it's quite special really."

Olly Osborne restored a Victorian oven to fully working order as part of the project

"This show is made totally in North Yorkshire, and it's made by people from Yorkshire," Channel 4 commissioner Emily Shields says.

One of the aims was to hire people who had not worked on similar projects before, in a bid to "drive new skills, to give opportunities, and to really help develop the talent base here", she adds.

Working on the series was a "dream come true" for editor Joe Haskey, who is originally from Bridlington and lives in Leeds.

"This is proper regional programming, edited by a Yorkshireman, in Yorkshire with a Yorkshire production company as well," he says.

Joe Haskey says editing a documentary series set and created in his home region of Yorkshire is a "dream come true"

But Joe adds that hiring on and off-screen talent from Yorkshire "shouldn't be a novelty".

"When you're filming in Yorkshire, if you can also edit it in Yorkshire, that'd be nice."

The dedication to hiring new talent was driven by the show's producer and director, Emily Dalton, managing director of production company Factual Fiction, based near Ripon.

She is originally from Masham, and says there are "people here who I think aren't perhaps represented on screen very often".

The series is about community, she says.

"I don't think communities exist in this way closer to London anymore, but up here we're fiercely protecting them, and I wanted to celebrate that."

Our Yorkshire Shop: A Victorian Restoration is on Channel 4 from 8 June at 20:00 BST.

Listen to highlights from North Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.