"The people standing in front of the shop are my husband's father, Denis Adkins and the girl is his sister, Joan.  The shop was run by my husband's grandparents, Austin and Mona Adkins.  I don't know when they started running the shop, but I do have a letter addressed to Mona Adkins at that address (348 Cobridge Road) in 1921.
 
Here is the information from my husband's cousin (she remembers working in the shop as a child, which, in her case, would have been in the early fifties):
 
"The shop was on a corner and the address was 348 Cobridge Rd., Cobridge.  It was formed from an original shop plus 2 cottages.  Next door on Cobridge Rd. was a pub called The Black Boy.  Further up the road towards the town of Cobridge lived my grandmother's mother Annie Whitehead in a house called Prospect House which had been the family house. Opposite the shop was a pottery and a little lower down the road a convent, The Sisters of Mercy." "