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A much-loved butcher who has died aged 92, worked for over 70 years, having started full-time when he was just 12.
Peter Jennings, whose father ran a butcher’s shop in Twyford, later ran one in Hurst where his customers included former Prime Minister Theresa May.
Peter had just six months at the Maidenhead grammar school, before he had to leave in 1943.
His father, Leonard, a butcher in Twyford High Street, had had a terrible accident.
“He was making the mince. Something went wrong with the mincer and a part hit him in he mouth,” said Peter’s wife Eve this week.
At first his injuries seemed minor but Leonard died of blood poisoning three weeks later.
His eldest son Norman, 17, was training for the army. This meant Peter, not even a teenager, managed the shop for a few months until the army released Norman.
Peter never returned to school and worked in the business where his mother ran the money side. Their brother Bob also joined them at the shop.
WentWorth estate agents now occupy the building which still bears butcher’s hooks outside. There was a slaughterhouse behind.
Before working full-time Peter had delivered meat, using the shop’s bike with a sign saying : ‘LJ Jennings Purveyor. Twyford Phone 63’.
Peter went on to butchering meat, still at a young age. “I don’t suppose it worried me at all as I was so young,” he told William Sitwell who included Peter’s story in his book Eggs Or Anarchy about work to feed Britain during the Second World War.
Peter eeked out rationed meat, making 80lbs of sausages from eight pounds of sausage meat by adding luncheon meat to soaked stale bread from the bakery opposite. They were the only sausages to pass Food Office tests among the various Twyford butchers, said Peter.
He also told a story about a friend keeping pigs on a Twyford allotment. He would kill one and take it to the Jennings shop in a van, passing the police station. One day a wheel fell off outside the police station.
The police helped repair the van and never discovered the smuggled pig inside.
Later Peter, Norman and Bob ran butcher’s shops at Wargrave, Twyford and Earley, respectively, while a small Hurst shop was run by a manager. Peter later moved to the Hurst shop.
Peter and Eve’s son David worked at Earley where his future wife Jacky had a Saturday job nearby.
In 1982, David and Peter started running the Hurst shop, a wooden building, together. In 1990, a modern building replaced it. In 2016, it was a huge shock for the family and customers when David died suddenly, aged 57.
A month later the shop was closed.
At the time Peter had still been delivering orders.
Their daughter-in-law Jacky said: “Peter loved the community spirit of being in the shop. His childhood friends used to come in. People came a long way.” Hurst Playgroup visited to watch him sausage making. Peter called it “doing his knitting”.
Eve said: “The business was his life. He loved the meat. Theresa May came in at 7.30am or 8am on Saturdays. They all shared a joke.”
Eve and Peter’s grandsons are Michael, married to Beth and they have a baby, Lauren, and Stewart who is married to Kamalika.
Jacky said Peter had been unwell since Christmas. He died peacefully on June 10. He’d had wonderful support to stay at home, as he wanted, from the NHS including Twyford surgery and the Urgent Community Response team.
“We are just very grateful,” she added. Peter and Eve would have celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary in September. They and David were members of Henley Golf Club.
