The introduction of supermarkets, among other causes, has resulted in the demise of the majority of them.

And on Tuesday last week, another link to the past was severed with the death of Peter Pratt, whose shop on Edward Street is depicted in this photograph. He was 91.

For five generations, the Pratt family had been in the butcher business in Dunstable.

Peter Pratt has been running the Dunstable business on the junction of Winfield Street and The Globe public house since 1994.

The premises, which had previously been used by another well-known local butcher, Philip Mead, were closed in 2002, and a contemporary building has since replaced it.

Mr Pratt’s father, F.W. Pratt (also known as “Sonny”), owned a butcher’s shop on Houghton Regis High Street, near today’s Whitehouse Close, and his son Peter started a business in Hillsborough Crescent on the Tithe Farm estate in the 1960s.

Peter’s recollections of life in the village were published in Memories of Houghton Regis, the book edited by Sue King in 2011, as well as in the newsletters of Dunstable Local History Society (available on line).

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