ONE of the area’s best-known shops is closing after more than 75 years as the owners retire.
Spencers Jewellers in Broad Street is believed to be the oldest family-owned and run business in Staple Hill.
It opened as Modern Jewels in 1950, and its first manager, Louis Spencer, bought the shop from original owner Stanley Bennett ten years later.
It was renamed Spencers Jewellers in the 1990s when Louis’ son Jon, who had joined the business in 1976 straight from school, became a partner.
Now Jon, who runs the business with wife Teresa, is approaching retirement age and will close the shop by the end of February.
Spencers has served generations of customers, not just selling watches, clocks and jewellery but providing a valued repair service.
Louis moved to Bristol from Herefordshire to manage Modern Jewels after serving an apprenticeship as a watchmaker and completing his National Service.
Jon said: “His local Baptist minister, who was relocating to Bristol, asked my dad why he wasn’t getting married and he said ‘I haven’t got a job and I’ve got nowhere to live’.
“The minister, Rev Robert Rowland, said ‘don’t worry, I’ll sort that’ and soon afterwards told him ‘I’ve found you a job, and luckily the flat above the shop comes with it’.”
Jon’s parents lived above the shop for 27 years before moving to a house near Page Park, and Jon attended Staple Hill County Primary School and Rodway School.
He and Teresa lived in Mangotsfield for many years but have now moved to the countryside.
Through the decades the shop has seen many changes, one of the biggest being the introduction of quartz watches.
Jon said: “My dad used to work at the bench until midnight repairing mechanical watches.
“He recognised that wasn’t going to continue and persuaded me to learn to repair jewellery instead.”
In recent years mechanical watches have made a comeback as high-end items, and Jon says another trend is more people, particularly men, collecting multiple watches rather than keeping the same one for years.
The future of the building is not yet decided – Jon and Teresa own it, and it is possible another jeweller might want to take it over.
The couple are hoping to travel, and see more of their two children and two grandchildren, who live nearby.
Jon also plans to brush up on his piano playing – he was taught as a boy by local teacher Ivy Wilcox – and says he has also been approached by men’s shed groups keen to use his skills.
The couple’s West Highland terrier Angus has been a familiar sight to shoppers as he sits in the window, and Jon says they will miss talking to their customers, who have kept the shop busier than ever, from the end of the pandemic through to its final weeks.
He said: “Staple Hill has been good to us.
“We get people coming in saying their dad used to bring them in as kids, and now they’re 70.”