Palmers pet shop, Camden

This shopfront took my fancy when I was in Camden for the Steve Winwood concert at the Roundhouse a couple of months ago.

The building is now occupied by a cafe, but a Camden News article from 2008 describes Palmers in its heyday:

George Palmer set up the shop in 1918 and counted famous faces among his customers. When Winston Churchill wanted a cat to prowl the corridors of Number 10, he popped into Palmers and went back to Whitehall with a ginger kitten. Mr Palmer was given a cigar and a signed copy of the PM’s autobiography as a thank-you. Charlie Chaplin wrote to them from Switzerland and bought two Abyssinian kittens.

Alison and Sue recall working as Saturday girls with their aunt, and the host of exotic creatures they shared the shop with. Sue said: “It was like a mini-zoo back then. The pet trade 50 years ago was amazing – you could literally sell anything. They had parrots, baboons, chimpanzees and mongooses.”