Address: 18 Bishopthorpe Road, York, YO23 1JJ (on the entrance of Bishopthorpe Road Pharmacy)
Description
A vibrant blue mosaic on the floor of the Bishopthorpe Road Pharmacy displays the word “Sherwin” in a delicate italic font.
The ghost sign is framed with an intricate border of different shades of blue and white tiles.
History
The Bishopthorpe Road Pharmacy was originally John Sherwin’s druggist and chemist shop – established in 1891.
It was later taken over by his son, John Arthur, who continued the business until his death in 1948.
Although the shop changed ownership, it kept the Sherwin’s name until about 1973.
The original shopfront remains, complete with a beautifully tiled entrance that still displays the name ‘Sherwin.’
1990 – When Sherwin’s pharmacy had become B&T Hutchinson Pharmacy Source: York Press
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John Sherwin was born on Clementhorpe, York in 1853. At the age of 13 he became assistant to a Dr. Stone of 7 Stonegate, York. He and his son John Arthur bought the shop at 18, Bishopthorpe Road in 1891. When John Arthur died in 1948, my father John Charles Pickard bought the shop off his widow. My father ran the shop together with his wife, Hilda until dad had a heart attack in 1972 and decided he could no longer run the business. Dad had maintained the Sherwin name to the shop because customers knew the shop by that name and because it was cheaper not having to change the stationary. Dad sold the property to Gordon Trevor who already had another shop in Wains Road, York.
Mr Trevor decided to modernise the shop and donated the wall unit that ran along the wall behind the counter and other items to York Castle Museum, where it now proudly stands in the Pharmacy on Kirkgate, the Museum’s Victorian Street.
I am not sure of the chronology, but Mr Trevor then sold the shop either to B. & T. Pharmacy or to Chris Black Pharmacy. (It could have been the other way round). The shop then became part of the Lloyd’s Pharmacy Group for a while before finally being sold to its current owners MD (?) Pharmacy.
I do not remember the interior of the shop ever looking like your picture above. The wall unit behind the counter being a straight run as well as the counter. There was a wooden screen at the end of the shop which partitioned off the dispensing area. This wooden screen can know be seen at either end of the counter in the Pharmacy at the Castle Museum.