Description:J. Turnock & Sons, family drapers, silk mercers and haberdashers at Bank House, Lower Brook Street, Rugeley, on the corner with Bees Lane. The shop is currently (2020) occupied by Savers. The business also offered ladies' tailoring and high-class dressmaking, and supplied rugs and carpets.
The business dates back to at least 1870 as Turnock & Playfer. When Mrs Playfer died in 1916 a newspaper report said that the partnership was upwards of fifty years old. An 1874 billhead states that the business was formerly known as Ottey & Bown. James Bown is recorded in the censuses of 1841, 1851 and 1861 as a mercer and draper in Lower Brook Street. George Playfer married John Turnock's sister in 1870. Playfer had a drapery business in Cannock from 1869 to 1908.
By 1876 the business was known as J. Turnock and Sons. John's wife Catherine was the daughter of an Abbots Bromley solicitor. She died in 1865 and John remarried in 1871 to Jane, the widow of Benjamin Thirlby, one time assistant to Dr. William Palmer (the poisoner) and eventual buyer of Palmer's medical practice. John died in 1898. In 1901 his son William is living at Bankhouse but fortunately the shop was not still being used as a residence when a fire broke out on a Sunday morning in March 1912. The drapery business (they also seemed to have been functioning as undertakers) premises was burnt to the ground. The family sold the plot which was later rebuilt as the Progressive Working Men's Club.
Image from 'Staffordshire Past and Present: An Historical Pictorial & Descriptive Guide' published in 1911 and edited by J.W. Bradley.