CAPEL HISTORY TRAIL
The Village Store at 40 Whetsted Road
The general store at 40 Whetsted Road opened in 1895 and for many years rivalled Marks and Spencers as the leading retail outlet in the area. The store was the first in the UK to offer online click and collect and deliveries but, by the start of the second world war, a suspicious series of punctures on the shop's large fleet of bicycles caused the service to end.
The property was requisitioned in 1941 by the Ministry of Defence and little was known of its usage during that period. However, the subsequent discovery of quantities of extra large size khaki boiler suits, empty whisky bottles, panama hats and cigar stubs has led historians to believe that this was a training centre for so-called 'Churchill doubles'. Still shrouded in mystery, this branch of the armed forces provided doubles of the wartime leader whenever it was felt an assassination risk existed.
The property was returned to a more modest general store after the war and was converted to a domestic property during the 1990s. A special feature is the gardens with later additions to the rear garden in particular by Capability Brown working in partnership with Alan Titchmarsh.
The picture above shows an experiment being conducted at the store in 1935 by Professor Ernest Knight of Kings College Cambridge concerning the ability of humans to stare blankly into a camera.