Finish your photo's?

[Texas]

Does anyone remember a company calling themselves 'Photo Finishers', up Nether Edge?

This would be during the 50's. I remember it as a long low building with a long vat of acid and photographic prints strung on rods slowly making there way from one end to the other.

[hillsbro]

Yes - Photo Finishers was a sister company of the Sheffield Photo Co. (they had a shop on Norfolk Row), both firms being owned by the Mottershaw family. Here is an advertisement from a 1950s Kelly's Directory. The firm is listed in the directories I have from 1931 to the 1970s..

[mjw47]

My first day of work was as an apprentice joiner for a small joinery/'property dodging' firm at the bottom of Chippinghouse road.

 

On the first day I was sent to help one of the experienced joiners to carry out work at Photo Finishers on the corner of Union road.

 

Approximately 30 years later I had changed career ( 25 years before ) and owned my own electronic security company, and I sold them an alarm system which we maintained for many years.

 

Haven't been past for years, is the building still there?

[Hopman]

I used to use the photo lab back in the late 1970s. I think they ceased trading mid 1980s and their stocks and fittings were sold at auction on the premises.

[handypandy]

I wonder if anyone remembers a chap who was known to all as 'blind John'. I think it was here where he worked from leaving school. He went blind around the age of 16 but said he could do the darkroom job with his eyes shut anyway. He was well known around the working mens clubs, quite a heavy drinker but always managed to find his way home to Jenkin Rd. I would sometimes give him a lift if I saw him........ this must be nearly 40 years ago :o

 

 

 

 

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[TheDrib]

My mother, and one of her friends used to work there, back in the late 60s.

[Lensman]

Yes, I worked there from 1960 to 1964. Cherry Tree Labs was a rambling old chapel (I think) and when I was there they had just started to process colour film. In charge of that department was Ian Mottershaw. The company had a filming and photographic business also. I remember going past the place on the bus and there was a big blue painted wall with a logo of an eye and the words Photography for Industry.

[anthonyp]

My Mother worked at 'Photo Finishers' around about 1960,

does anyone remember her? Her name was Maureen Connelly.

[lectrolove]

I worked there around 1979/80, I used to print the damaged or oddly-exposed negatives. I remember the blind guy in the darkroom but he was on the night shift so I didn't really know him. All the film processing was done overnight, printing by day.

[trastrick]

In the late 50s there was a company called Gratispool.

 

Like the name suggests, you sent your negatives away by post for processing and they sent them back finished, with a free new roll of film.