W R Stone, Radio & Electrical Engineers, Radio/Records, 64 High Street, Hoddesdon, Herts.
Open from late 1940s until probably early 1970s. Also sold radios (and maybe televisions), had two or three listening booths and a record counter from what I recall.
My grandfather worked there as an electrical engineer doing repairs after leaving Edison & Swan Electrical Light Co. (Ediswans) in Ponders End sometime after the end of the war. The terrible dentist we went to as kids was in the building next door and I can remember going in the record shop before appointments - one particular visit especially sticks in my mind, must have been sometime in 1969, as I remember looking at the sleeves of John Mayall’s ‘Blues From Laurel Canyon’ and ‘Bare Wires’ (neither of which lived up to the promise of the sleeves when I finally heard them); Martha Velez’ ‘Fiends and Angels’; 'Touch' on Deram and The Fugs ‘It Crawled into My Hand, Honest’ and thinking that this was a world I needed to know about and be involved in (I would have been 14)!
After Stone’s closed another record shop - ‘Tracks’ - opened in the shopping precinct in the centre of the town. I still have Matching Mole’s ‘Little Red Record’ and Led Zeppelin III which I bought there. Also bought a copy of Comus ‘ First Utterance’ as a special order from them after seeing them at Turnford College - unfortunately sold that in a hugely misguided Stalinist record purge at some point!
regards
Neil
… and this classified advert in the 25th March 1960 edition: “ASSISTANT required for Electrical, Television, and Radio department. Experience of gramophone record sales essential.—Apply, W. R. Stone Ltd., High Street, Hoddesdon.”