Morris Edwards - 10th Aug 2009 7:36pm
Morris Edwards is pictured outside his shop at 5 Well Lane Rock Ferry which opened in 1927. Edwards was the seventh child of a farming family from Llangwn, North Wales. He once worked at Allansons in Grange Road after he was demobbed from the army after First World War.
In 1923 he opened his first gents' outfitters at 290 Old Chester Road, later selling ladies' clothes here and gents' at 5 Well Lane. Together with his two sons he would later establish other gentlemen stores at New Ferry and Heswall. During the 1930s shops lined long stretches of Old Chester Road and New Chester Road, social strutches were different.
People like Morris Edwards were familiar figures, forming a strong part of the framework of society and commerce - keeping money within the area of those that spent it. Economic fortunes were also different. Well Lane had a photographer who also had premises in Bold Street, Liverpool, at the at the corner of Bedford Road and New Chester Road was an antique shop described as one of the best in England and in 1927, 2,8000,000 people travelled on the Rock Ferry steamer.
Morris Edwards won many Merit Awards in the London Window Dressing Competition for displays. This award was for the shop at Well Lane.
The picture above shows the shop at 56 Bebington Road in New Ferry. The shop opened in 1935 and was later doubled in size which supplied many local people with wedding suits and school uniforms. With New Ferry fortunes changing, such as rising crime rate and wealth going elsewhere, this establishment, as with other independent shops, disappeared. This shop closed in 2007.
The picture below shows the interior of the New Ferry Store. Morris Edwards stands to the left and his son, Gordon, stands on the right. Though Morris Edwards was crippled in the 1930s and walked with the aid of sticks, he became the Chairman of the Bebington Chamber of trade in the 1950s.