Island Life Magazine Ltd February/March 2015 | Page 88

Orchard Bros

reach 150-year landmark

O

rchard Bros, the well known
family grocers located in
Freshwater Bay, celebrates a
remarkable milestone this year with its
150th anniversary.
The fast changing and cut throat world
of food retail is massively challenging
even for the country’s biggest
supermarket chains. Many local shops
gave up the fight years ago but the
historic Orchard Bros has defied the odds
and remains a much-loved treasure.
The shop, a Grade Two listed building,
sits proudly on the junction of Bedbury
Lane and Victoria Road, its handsome
façade little changed over one and
a half centuries. The business has
passed through five generations of the
Orchard family since it was founded
by William Orchard in 1865 and has
witnessed and survived two world wars,
economic depressions and the arrival of
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supermarkets and online shopping.
William Orchard was 50 when he
launched the business. The seventh
child of a rural labourer from Dorset,
he ran a greengrocery business and an
inn in the country before moving to the
Island to try his hand as a tenant farmer
at Thorley and Easton.
The shop was originally built as a private
residence around 1845 and then became
a branch of Newport-based grocers
Misslebrook and Weston. The Orchard
story began in 1865 when William
rented the premises at £50 a year. Two
years later he bought the premises at an
auction held at what is now the Albion
Hotel in Freshwater Bay. With the help of
his 23-year-old son, William Thomas, he
began to expand the business and it was
named Orchard & Son.
The population of the Bay had grown
considerably, mainly on the back of the

Fred & Will Orchard (front row)