IN 1959, Fred Astley of Blackburn opened the most up-to-date wholesale food warehouse in the North.

The firm brought the latest ideas of warehouse layout and conveyor belt systems to its operation in Weir Street, so that all orders were ready for collection within 24 hours of receipt.

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The Astley brothers had been in business in the town since the 1870s, but by 1959 the family company had come a long way from its early beginnings.

Its new operation was a far cry from the first days, when James Astley had baked bread in Chester Street and walked round the streets of Blackburn with his cry: “One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns.”

After the Great War, when the four brothers all returned home, the family turned from bakery to grocery.

After a short period in the retail trade in King Street, Astley’s moved into wholesale grocery and the firm flourished.

Back in 1959, the senior partners looked back on the early days with pride, recalling that, soon after the First World War, they once sold an entire field of potatoes, batch by batch, as they were dug out of the soil.

They also remembered selling 360 cases of eggs on one Easter Saturday.

The business’ new streamlined grocery operation, which was known as Paygo, had taken three months of hard work to organise.

It charged grocers 2s 6d to belong to the scheme and in return the traders received up-to-date price lists of the the 2,000 commodities kept in stock – which included foodstuffs, cleaning products, confectionary, patent medicines and tobacco.

Astley’s also recommended the retail prices the grocers should charge their customers.

Does any one remember Astley Brothers? Did you work there or buy your commodities from the wholesaler? Has anyone any photographs of the warehouse, the partners or any workers?

This photo from the Telegraph shows the modern roller conveyor belt moving boxes of items through the warehouse, as two employees unload it for delivery.

n The 1950s was the decade of the Coronation, the end of food rationing and the Suez Crisis.

Here is a memory of the time: “I think bacon was the last to go off ration. I remember our local grocers where bacon was sliced, cheese cut with a wire from a large block, and big open sacks of prunes sat on the floor.

“Sweet shops were individual units with rows and rows of glass jars containing loose sweets which were weighed out by the two ounces or a quarter and placed in paper bags.”