Millennium Project
Rob Forsyth
This article draws together multiple facts from a number of different locations on this website
According to Mary Vane Turner (1934) There was a Tavern on the site before it became a Grocery Store. The Deddington Map Group researched old inns and notes in an article 'Where are they now?' that it was called 'Kempsters Ale House'.
The first recorded proprieter of the premises as a store is a newspaper announcement in 1853 of 'Mr John Dean, grocer, Deddington' marrying Miss Jane Gilkes.
In the parish archives is a very early photograph of his shop with his name on the front. The date is attributed to 1860s.
It
looks as if it became Tuckers Grocery Store sometime after the 1861
cenus and 1868 when Elisha Tucker appears in Cassey’s Directory as its
proprietor. Elisha was not a Deddington man having been borne in Frome,
Somerset.
Elisha has a 5 yr old son, Robert F Tucker, who according to Kelly's 1911 Directory was the village postmaster (the PO was located on New Street) and a grocer. His father was still listed as a grocer so they were running the shop together.
It would have been son Robert who was running the store in the 1920s as recalled by Bernard Bowerman in his memories of Deddington in the early 1920s. According to Bernard the Post office had relocated from the Post House on New Street to Tuckers in the Market Place.
Robert F also had a son called Robert who was probably running it in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
Kellys 1939 Directory lists a Mr VR Boone as its proprietor.
He passed the shop to his son Raymond who subsequently sold it post WWII to Mr Ted Moseley.
Mr Mosely sold it to Mr Mervyn Wynne and his wife Marjorie (Nicky) in the late 1950s. They had a wood carved plaque made of the house (now Quince & Clover) and the shop (formerly Otters ) which is now in the Parish Archive (l). Joanna Levan, their daughter, recalled the circumstances in the Deddington News
The Moseleys sold the shop to John Cannell in the 1970s whose son Peter subsequently ran it.
1989 It then changed hands and use when Barrie and Annabel Gregory took it over selling antiques and bric-a-brac as Tuckers Country Store and then simply The Country Store. The Gregorys departed for a life in the west country when it changed use into a restaurant...
1993 Dexters - Jamie Dexter
[Date?] Bowlers - Martin Ellis
[Date?] Otters -Michael
2025 - sadly now closed up since [Date?] and not anything.