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Still on the subject of hairdressing.  A couple of weeks ago I drifted back to my hairdressing days and changed hair colour.

 

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Well, long shots pay off sometimes...and this one did, I'm delighted to say.   Olive's mother, Harriet, generally  answered the door when my mother rang the doorbell. The front door opened o

Still on the subject of hairdressing.  A couple of weeks ago I drifted back to my hairdressing days and changed hair colour.  

Hi Jill Sparrow Its nice to see some give hairdresser's a kind word , like Nonna i did a 3 year apprenticeship which my mum and dad borrowed £75 for my indentures. The last perming machine used i

My first barbers was Pelham's on King Street. It was in the basement of one of the buildings on the west side of the street (possibly the Prudential Building) - anyway you went down a flight of stairs and there were about 8 or 10 chairs on two sides of a big room - or if you paid more you could have your hair cut in a separate room with just one chair.

 

Later on I couldn't be bothered catching the bus into town for a haircut so went to the Park Saloon - the last of a parade of shops on Mansfield Road in Carrington immediately after the junction with Hucknall Road.

 

last time I was in the city (about 4 years ago) I noticed both had gone.

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10 hours ago, Tim in the North East said:

My first barbers was Pelham's on King Street.

 

There's another thread about hairdressing, and the other one includes a photo of that place.

https://nottstalgia.com/forums/topic/12205-barbers/?page=4

 

I used to go there in the mid 60s. I agree with your description of the place - a long room below street level.

 

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I once did some sign writing for a fellow fireman who had an upstairs barbers on Clumber Street. (Harry Todd). It was black  on a white sandwich board. When I delivered it , he was just throwing out a youth with long hair and wearing what was trendy at that time , a long army trenchcoat. He gave the lad a right mouthful about respect for military veterans and long hair and uniform etc. Harry was a WW2 merchant navy man I believe. The lad walked off without a word. 

 

Strange, what we remember !

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I think the name I painted on that sandwich board that was Esquire, I don't think the shop lasted very long.

 

One of his services was called ' shampoo and friction', friction being some sort of perfume. Any hairdressers remember friction ? Or was it just a sixties gimmick ?

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  • 1 month later...

Drifting back in time, as we tend to do on this site, I was thinking about my earliest experiences of visiting a hairdresser.  Her name was Olive Wibberley and she lived at the first 3 storey Victorian villa on Radford Boulevard, roughly opposite Wordsworth Road.

 

Olive was a single lady who lived with her mother and the front bay windowed sitting room served as her salon. She displayed an oval glass sign in the window: Olive, Ladies' Hairdresser.

 

My mother liked Olive because she was scrupulously clean and all the combs, brushes, etc were meticulously placed in a sterilising unit which stood on the mantelpiece above the ancient gas fire.  The floor was covered in linoleum and the only vanity unit and mirror was fitted in the alcove between the chimney breast and the window.

 

Being such a little girl, I had to sit on a pile of cushions to raise me to the desired height!

 

In those days, I had Shirley Temple curls and usually screamed blue murder when my mother tried to put a comb through them! Olive, however, had a magical way of getting the job done. She usually made a bargain that if I let her trim my hair, I could go and stroke the cat! Sometimes, there were kittens.

 

Mum admired Olive's ability to 'cut in the curl' and she had a great many customers from Player's. However, her styles were somewhat old fashioned and eventually people took their trade elsewhere.

 

Olive always took a great interest in my ballet lessons and I learned many years later that, in her youth, she had been a talented dancer herself, so much so that she had a professional career as a dancer against her parents' wishes. Apparently, she had a child out of wedlock and the stage career came to an end. Hairdressing became her means of earning a living.

 

She often spoke excitedly of her nephew, Paul, and I have since wondered whether he was actually her son.

 

Our next door neighbour knew Olive quite well and was most upset the day in 1972, she told my mother that Olive had committed suicide. Custom had dried up, her mother had died and she had been left all alone and suffering from depression in that large, empty house.

 

I loved my visits there. The last time I saw it, the house had been split into bedsits for student accommodation. 

 

I'll never forget the day I stuck my head into a box of sawdust, kept by my grandfather for preserving his home grown tomatoes. My mother went completely berserk, knowing that I would never permit her to comb it all out. I was dragged off to see Olive who tackled the problem calmly and methodically, with the promise of cuddling the latest kitten if I cooperated.

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On 6 dicembre 2018 at 1:03 AM, Tim in the North East said:

My first barbers was Pelham's on King Street. It was in the basement of one of the buildings on the west side of the street (possibly the Prudential Building) - anyway you went down a flight of stairs and there were about 8 or 10 chairs on two sides of a big room - or if you paid more you could have your hair cut in a separate room with just one chair.

 

Later on I couldn't be bothered catching the bus into town for a haircut so went to the Park Saloon - the last of a parade of shops on Mansfield Road in Carrington immediately after the junction with Hucknall Road.

  

last time I was in the city (about 4 years ago) I noticed both had gone.

 

Park Salon , carrington? Did Mandy cut your hair? I worked at the park salon on Derby rd Canning Circus. The couple who owned it had another salon in the same place you described. 

On 7 dicembre 2018 at 11:37 AM, fogrider said:

I think the name I painted on that sandwich board that was Esquire, I don't think the shop lasted very long.

 

One of his services was called ' shampoo and friction', friction being some sort of perfume. Any hairdressers remember friction ? Or was it just a sixties gimmick ?

 

Yes I remember it was a scalp tonic for better words

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Hairdressers in those days were talented women working in their front rooms, Reasonably priced, but not up to date and well informed. I had quite a few appointments in a few too.

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  • 2 months later...

I used to go to Clarke's School of Hairdressing up a tiny street just off the square which I think may have led up to Maid Marion Way.  The lady that cut my hair was gorgeous with long thick straight black hair that she used to flick from side to side whilst cutting - that did it for me!   I wanted to be an apprentice there when I left school in 1970 but my mum said she couldn't afford the £600 fee!   I don't know if that fee was correct or she just didn't want me to do hairdressing!

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2 hours ago, IAN FINN said:

.. it was on King st. or Queen st. on the left hand side going up the hill,it was in a basement with many barbers in there.

 

I used to go there as well when I was a kid. 

 

Look at this other old thread about hairdressing, and scroll down a bit...  https://nottstalgia.com/forums/topic/12205-barbers/?page=4

 

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5 hours ago, doodle said:

I used to go to Clarke's School of Hairdressing up a tiny street just off the square which I think may have led up to Maid Marion Way. 

That was on the right hand side of St James Street, walking up from Long Row, just round the corner from the Wimpey Bar. The hairdressing salon always had wigs in the window.

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On 8 aprile 2019 at 3:08 PM, doodle said:

I used to go to Clarke's School of Hairdressing up a tiny street just off the square which I think may have led up to Maid Marion Way.  The lady that cut my hair was gorgeous with long thick straight black hair that she used to flick from side to side whilst cutting - that did it for me!   I wanted to be an apprentice there when I left school in 1970 but my mum said she couldn't afford the £600 fee!   I don't know if that fee was correct or she just didn't want me to do hairdressing!

 

The premium charge had gone up from when I went into hairdressing. My parents wouldnt pay it 

either . They said they would have paid them to pay me my wages. Besides you spent the first 6 months sweeping floors and doing odd jobs in the larger salons. I went to a smaller one where all 4 sisters were champions and won loads of trophies. I got tuition from day one.

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  • 1 month later...
On 1/28/2019 at 4:28 PM, Jill Sparrow said:

Drifting back in time, as we tend to do on this site, I was thinking about my earliest experiences of visiting a hairdresser.  Her name was Olive Wibberley and she lived at the first 3 storey Victorian villa on Radford Boulevard, roughly opposite Wordsworth Road.

Nottstalgia at its very best. I've just had a PM from relatives of the lady who cut my hair more than half  a century ago! Who would believe it? It could only happen on this site.

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P-20190326-094044.jpg

 

The house on the left was where Olive Wibberley lived.  I took this shot in March before my visit to Berridge.  I looked closely at the stone steps up to the front door. The centre of the steps has been worn away over time by feet...many of them arriving for a hair appointment.

 

Nice to see the old place still standing. Many memories there.

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  • 2 weeks later...

A long shot, this one, but if Jennifer the partner of Paul Grant, Olive's nephew wants to contact me, I have some information....and some questions....about Olive.  I know you mentioned you were looking into her background.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Well, long shots pay off sometimes...and this one did, I'm delighted to say.

 

Olive's mother, Harriet, generally  answered the door when my mother rang the doorbell. The front door opened onto a long passageway which led to the stairs and in that narrow hallway was a bentwood chair and a little table with an old-fashioned black Bakelite telephone, Olive's hairdressing appointment book and a pencil. Mrs Wibberley, as we always called her, would write down an appointment in the book and we would often call back later in the day either for my hair to be trimmed or my mother's to be trimmed. 

 

It is a shame that, as the years passed, Olive's hairdressing clients began to diminish but the reason was probably that most of them were employees of Players, already women who were getting on in years and preferred old-fashioned hairstyles.  I vividly remember the front room of the house which was Olive's salon and the very strange looking contraption which stood in the corner to the left of the window. My mother always warned me never to touch anything but this particular piece of equipment fascinated me and all I knew about it was that it was connected with perming hair. I now realise that it was actually a permanent wave machine and already, in the very early 1960s, completely out of date and probably obsolete but no doubt Olive was still using it to perm the hair of some of her older lady clients.  There was only one hooded hair dryer which again looked rather old-fashioned even in the early 60s.

 

Cutting my hair when I was a very small child must have been an extremely arduous task because it was so tightly curled naturally that I shied away from anyone putting a comb through it. Olive had a magic touch when dealing with children and certainly managed to persuade me to sit still for long enough to have my hair trimmed and I don't remember her ever pulling my hair or hurting me as my mother tended to do when she tried to comb through my Shirley Temple locks. Olive used to tell me stories and I remember when she'd finished cutting my hair, she used to brush the loose snippets away from the back of my neck with a soft brush which tickled. She always said it was the fairies dancing on the back of my neck. Given that she had such a magical way with children, I have always felt it was a shame that she was not allowed to be a mother herself, even though she did have a child early in 1939.

 

I often wondered in later years whether the child she gave birth to was actually the boy she called Paul and said was her nephew but I now realise, of course, that he wasn't.  Perhaps her child, who was named David, was brought up by another member of the family as so often happened in these situations years ago. It would certainly be nice to think that she wasn't totally separated from him and could still see him at times and that she was aware of how he was growing up and what he was doing.

 

Children are very aware of atmospheres and, although I enjoyed going to Olive's to have my hair cut, I was very often aware of a sadness which seemed to hang around her and although my mother very much liked Olive and thought she was an excellent hairdresser, she always seemed to feel rather sorry for her. It wasn't until I was much older that I found out she may have had a great deal of sadness in her life which no one ever spoke about.

 

As nonna pointed out a few posts back, there were many women who operated hairdressing salons from the front room of their homes but they were not able to keep up with the latest styles, training and equipment which usually meant that once their clients had grown older and either moved away or died, the salon went out of business and this, sadly, seems to have been the fate which befell Olive.

 

As to her family connections, I discovered that Olive was the eldest of three children born to Percy James Wibberley and Harriet Harris who were married in March 1911 in Loughborough. The other children were Margaret F Wibberley who was known as Peggy, born in 1914 and Rex Wibberley, born in 1917.

 

Harriet was born on the 8th of August 1888 in Loughborough and died on the 17th of August 1978 in Nottingham. Percy Wibberley was born in 1889 in Ashbourne, Derbyshire and died on the 23rd of May 1961 in Nottingham.

 

Olive Wibberley never married, although she gave birth to a son named David in 1939. Peggy Wibberley was married twice, firstly to Charles R Swift in 1936 at Sculcoates. They had two children  John M Swift  born in Middlesbrough in 1938 and Roger Swift born in Nottingham in 1941. After  Charles died in 1942, Peggy married for a second time to Frank E Grant in 1953 in Nottingham and they had a son named Paul, born in 1954, Olive's much loved nephew.

 

It appears that Rex Wibberley never married and died on the 16th of January 1981 in Nottingham.

 

According to the 1939 register, Percy James Wibberley was employed as a master confectioner, whilst Olive was already busy in her hairdressing salon and Rex was an apprentice electrician.  

 

It may be that Paul has already acquired all this information but, if not, I have made a note of it here as I know he has been trying to find out about Olive's history and some of this may help.

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Brilliant Jill. Another bit of fascinating history.

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Hi Jill Sparrow

Its nice to see some give hairdresser's a kind word , like Nonna i did a 3 year apprenticeship which my mum and dad borrowed £75 for my indentures. The last perming machine used in Nottingham was i belive  at a salon on Union rd went by the name of Grace Bull. When i started it was at a salon in Sherwood and inside we had cubicles with wall hair dryers, i had to call  the manageress Miss Lane and our senior was Mrs Putt we could not use first names, also on the desk was a large black telephone which they would not let me answer till I had been there 6 months, even then i had never used a phone and was shaking when I had to answer it for the first time, later the black phone was changed for a trim phone. At the time the top stylist in Nottingham were Stanley Dennis, Prendred, Peppers, John Cornell, Stanley Barber (remember the swinging scissors) Hollywood Salon. Prices 2/6 for a dry cut, 7/6 shampoo/set colour rinse 10/6 perms from £1 10/- Pin Perm, then  all the way up to £4 10/-  permanent colour was from £2 00.  styles fingers waves, french roll, curls on top, the higher you hair was the better, you could also buy your hair lacquer 2/6 or refill 1/3   just coming in was the concave and convex bob from Vidal Sasson also at the time cutting was layer or one lenth Vidal brought in the Pivate cut  which the boss paid for me to go to Vidal's London salon to learn. sorry folks if I'm going on maybe one day I might write a book on Hairdressing.

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Thinking about it, Mary, a hairdresser working on her own from a front room needed to make a considerable investment to purchase a salon dryer, a permanent wave machine, a sterilizer, etc. All would need maintenance and repair if they broke down.  Olive's salon dryer was grey stove enamel. I remember it distinctly. The chair under it was a Bentwood chair with curved arms and a seat cushion. 

 

She had her work cut out with me. I was apt to scream blue murder if anyone tried to put a comb through my tangled locks! She must have had some patience!

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Your right Jill not quite knowing the fact's i think a lot of stylist started out in there front room, but when the works and factory act came in, there was so many rules and reg's that had to be followed that this was why a lot of salon's started up. Please don't quote me on this as it's just a guess. The first patented Permanent -waving machine was like a chandelier and was fixed to the ceiling it was by Charles Nestle were both a bit young to remember this. but i can remember when i first started work clients would say remember the old permanent machine when you were hocked to the ceiling you dare not move if you did it would burn your scalp.Then a few changes their was one perm called the Supermer  Brushwave  you used hot pads to place on the rods after winding (this was the first perm out for colour treated hair) then a chap called Eugeng Suter and the Macdonald brothers brought in the cold-waving perm which is the one used in salons to-day (but now modified)  but a lot of stylist forget that they are still using chemicals on the hair if any solution drops on to the scalp it must be wiped off straight away. Now days perm's are not used like in the 60/70/ s   as clients can manage there hair with a good cut.

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I have just sat and read though this brilliant topic and i think that i have repeated myself in the topic, apology's  for this member's 

 

When i read some of the post it seems that a lot of salons where you all went were unisex, this was a new approach to hairdressing as in 1965/66 a most of the salons were "ladies salon's " and men would not dare go into them like most men's were barbers and you would not see any women in a barbers.

I worked at a salon and at the back was a barber;s when he was not very busy, Jack would teach me how to cut men's hair. 

(Remember the men's haircut called the Boston) the hair at the back was cut in a square shape, if men had it cut at a ladies salon the hair in the nape was always a round shape.

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Hairdressers of the 1930s may not have had the qualifications needed today but women like Olive Wibberley must have had some training in cutting hair, at which she was very skilled, and using the dangerous chemicals needed for perms.  I suppose, sole practitioners like Olive just didn't have the time or finances to keep up to date with styles and techniques demanded by an ever more fashion conscious clientele.

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